Siri in Lofoten

Friday, September 15 We wake up to a sunny morning at the Kysthotell and join other travelers for the traditional rich Norwegian breakfast, which features several types of herring, coldcuts, eggs, cheeses, yogurts, and jams. Long loaves of bread are held in cloths while one saws off great slices. We're used to a little yogurt and granola in the morning with coffee, maybe some fruit, but tuck in with gusto.  As a result, in a blur of what Victor might call a "madd carb fog" we take a drive arround the nearby Hadsel island, centered by impressive jagged mountains and bordered by long vistas of water and mountains shining in the sun from the neighboring islands. In the fields the sheep haven't bothered to get up yet. Yesterday we saw them lying down in the early evening. They must enjoy a long sleep in their cozy wool furs. We stop at a picnic area near a beach, where a woman is preparing breakfast outside a camper, accompanied by a watchful dog. He's cha...

Thursday Sept. 14 - afternoon and evening It has been my experience that you have to pay in advance for good things to happen to you. Thus it is today, after a remorseful SAS person lets us wait for our flight to Narvik in the comfort of the executive lounge. The subsequent flight is less than two hours, filled to the brim with other passengers stranded by the strike. As we begin our descent, we see the Lofoten Islands shimmering in the sunshine, and we know our luck has turned. We get a cool nail-polish-red Peugeot, with a registration plate that starts with ZA (for Zaffy 🐺) - another good sign, and we're off on our two hour drive to the Vesterålen Kysthotell. The sun is as strong as on Easter Island - if you happen to look at it directly, black spots dance behind your eyelids for a long time - and view after view compel us to stop and take photos, while huge trucks shudder by, way too close, on the two-line highway. We drive through Sortland, where my great-grandmoth...

A couple of days before we're off  the invitation for my uncle Arne's 90th birthday bash arrives, water-damaged from its long passage through the postal system. In the picture he looks remarkably like Prince George The night before we leave for Oslo via Amsterdam we receive an alarming message from KLM, warning of "unfavorable winds" in Amsterdam, causing flight delays and cancellations throughout Europe. At the same time my cousin Sissel informs us of a SAS pilots' strike due to start Thursday, Sep. 14, when we have a flight to Tromsø. As we descend into Schiphol, strong winds tug at our, luckily, big sturdy plane, and once on the ground, but not immediately, of course, we discover our connecting flight has been delayed almost 2 hours. The "not immediately" causes us to traverse the enormous airport through throngs of travelers, leaving the lively restaurant and commerce part behind to eventually settle down to wait hours in a much less attractiv...

My great-grandmother, Anna Ellingsen, was born in Sortland, Lofoten in 1868. Unlike her descendants, for the most part tall and blond, she was a petite lady with flashing eyes and dark hair. She looked Italian, my mother used to say. Way up in Norway, above the Arctic circle, she must have cut an exotic figure and also been quite adventurous and spirited, since she traveled by herself to distant Bergen to find work in the telephone company. Her boss was Johan Wibye Meinich. They were the same age and it was probably love at first sight, because they married and had two children. My granduncle Birger, born in 1896 and my grandmother Ruth, born in 1898, were both very handsome people with the deep-set hooded eyes of their mother. On my wall hangs the framed embroidery cloth that Anna made in Sortland in 1881, when she was only 13. The thoughts of someone sewing tend to wander, but she could certainly not have imagined that her little cloth would end up on her great-granddaughter...