Norway

​NORWAY:
Friday 17th October Oslo.

This time last year I was hitch-hiking to the first white settlement of North America; L’anse Aux Meadows, settled by the Vikings. 

I had a feeling it would take two or three days to get to Oslo, and that’s how long it eventually takes. 

I wait by the side of the E6 at Dingle (Din-glay) all morning, which is beautiful; rocky outcrops and birch, oak and poplar all doing their Autumn thing in the morning mist and sunshine. Eventually I get a ride all the way to Oslo with a Dutch chap who has driven up to research geology. We get on quite well which is good, and he introduces me to some new music; Apocalyptica from Finland who are cello quartet who do Metallica covers (I can’t stand them) and ‘Spinvis’ (Spinfish) from Holland who I like very much; similar atmos as Royksopp. 
Upon arrival in Oslo at 3 pm, I make for the spot I’d stayed in when I worked in Oslo two years ago; in a clump of woodland trapped between the motorway and a tram line. No-one goes there; it’s all slopes and noisy. No-one would sensibly think to go there to hang out. The platform I had built last time is still there (made of two pallets) and the charcoal and bags I had left are still there. It looks like no-one has been there since I left. A good sign. I quickly build a camouflaged shelter over the platform, stash valuables (rucksack, mp3 player, camera and bits) in a black bin-liner, find a nook by a tree to put them in and cover them with leaves not too far away from the platform. That way, if someone comes along and decides to ransack the place, all they’ll get is my sleeping bag, my guitar and various bits of food and washing tat.
Looking out over a fondly remembered view, across the harbour, the docks and a whole span of the city tucked into the mountains is a satisfying feeling; after an hour of settling, I think about what I need to do next. I need to figure out how to go about getting work and money. I set off down the thirty degree slope to the highway and walk into the city centre about half a mile away to check out the haunts of my fund-raising days on Karl Johans Gata opposite the train station. I go to see if the UFF shop is still there, and it is; I go in and Mattius who I knew from before is still working there, so that is a very nice surprise. Bizarrely (he’s quite a shy chap), he’s got married to a Peruvian woman he’d met on the internet. He offers me a genuine Russian fur hat for twenty Norwegian Kroner (about a quid) as I have managed to lose my other hat.
With earplugs in, I sleep well and wake up for what I think is 5 am so that I would get to Losang employment agency in time for 6 am. Actually I get there at ten to seven because I’ve forgotten to change the time on my clock. Anyway I go there, introduce myself and find out what I need to do; so the next step from here is to get a work permission stamp from the police station in Groenland and a tax code from the city Kommun in Toyen.
In the meantime, I meet a chap called Erik who shows me where I can get free food every morning at a place called BlaKors (Blue Cross), a Salvation Army style food kitchen. Strangely, ‘Blue Cross’ in England is an animal rescue charity! I have coffee (good), pizza (crap but warm and filling) and rice and sweet and sour Thai vegetable goo (dire). I’ve only ever come across one nation that ruins food more than the English and that the Nogs. Anyway that’s one less thing I have to figure out anyway, so I am still grateful for these good people making my life possible.

I meet there the chap who I’d met earlier on at Losang who recommends holding up a bank as a way to make money. He hasn’t worked for a while and is quite frustrated. He is really quite negative about most things, but I know what it’s like when you go into the Losang office day after day and no work comes. You just want to get on but you can end up just waiting and waiting. I’m keeping this in mind for myself, but I don’t mind so much because there’s still other things I have to do before heading for Down Under.
I have a nice warm library space to write in, some squats I can go visit if I feel like it (not really that bothered – I’m on a mission and I’m kind of sticking to it) and things I can do if there’s no work for the day; photos of Vigeland Park and writing. Maybe I shall call up Esther. Found a nice warm winter coat this morning. Bonus. Now all I need is another hat. The one Mattius sold me is too small and gives me a weird headache. 
Whilst in the library I meet a woman who is an ex-air stewardess from Hollywood USA and owns two properties in the States (one in Colorado and one in Florida) and three in Norway. We chat outside on the steps of the library and then she invites me back to hers for coffee, which turns into an invitation to help her clean up one of her apartments in exchange for food and a bed. (A very cosy bed it is too – a real boat-builders style box.)
This time last year I was in L’anse Aux Meadows discovering Viking long houses made of peat. I wonder where I will be one year from now.
October 26th? (Saturday)

Ohmigod. The last few days I’ve been very very very stressed; to the point where it seems like everything I try to do seems destined to fail. This has manifested in my brain the irritating and recurring phrase ‘Please fry my brains in butter’. Now there’s a really dumb-arsed thing to put out to the cosmos.
No-one seems to want an English-man to work for them, there doesn’t seem to be any work anyway; three thousand postal workers are about to be laid off just in time for Christmas, the zip on my coat and on my top have both broken (so now I can’t get my top off!), my camera broke again. I am stinky and I need a bath. And it’s cold. Of course.
I’m walking around with ‘stressed eyebrows’ as Gill used to call it; worrying so much it messes up my sleeping pattern and I feel like I’ve been drinking coffee all night and my eyes are popping out of my head. I still feel like that now even though things are turning back up again. Dribble dribble. Next, I visit the Student Travel shop and aquire myself an ISIC card (International Students Identity Card). I type up a made-up letter from University of East Anglia saying I’m a student (nice blue letterhead and everything) and print it out in the library. I present it as evidence of me being a student and get the card for 7.50 Nok. It may end up saving me on a bus or even a plane fare. The fact that I’m thirty-five, beardy and look like a greasy bum doesn’t seem to bother the woman issuing the card. Perhaps she thinks I’m a philosophy student. I go to a couple of travel agents to check out how much a ticket to Australia is going to cost me. It’s starting to look like it’s going to happen now. I’m feeling a lot more purposeful.
The Hollywood air stewardess, Leigh has offered me one of her properties to stay in if I promise to tidy it up; an abandoned Turkish delicatessen. She bought it six years ago, and has clearly done nothing whatsoever with it.

I spend the evening emptying the shop of useless trash, crates and old Turkish newspapers. I sell two crates of unopenned beer to the first pair of guys to walk past. Even though the shop has been empty for over five years, the beer is still good. Now I have a bus fare to the airport – which is a godsend considering how much free food I’m going to be carrying out of here when I leave. 
Leigh is off to work, so after a few days I move out of the shop and move in to care-take her empty flat which is warm, light and cosy. I do a bit of DIY and tidying up. Living off food in the shop dated from 1996, which amazingly is (mostly) completely perfect. I have been eating Italian sun-dried tomatoes in olive oil, pasta, salad vegetables also in oil, tuna, sardines, tinned pineapple, pears and mandarins in fruit juice. I buy posh bread. (Almost the only money I’ve spent on food in two weeks here.) A brief taste of some kind of luxury. No wonder I feel like doing nothing today; I think I want to enjoy this! Played guitar well last night. I am getting better at it. Mended camera, hurrah!, so I can take Vigeland pictures today too at some point. 
I buy a ticket back to England, which I’m sort of dreading; I am quite keen to pull up anchor and get out of Norwich, but now I’m going back, and I’ve got Christmas and Helen’s birth to fit in (or not). That’s making me anxious – I always feel so familiar in Norfolk that I fight to keep myself from just staying there.  

I joined the Oslo library yesterday and get out two books on Australia to give my stressed imagination something more directed to focus on. 
I spend the day taking hundreds of photos of Vigeland Park. Even though the work thing hasn’t happened, at least I’m satisfying a very long-standing urge to capture this place in pictures. Very satisfying indeed. Whenever the subject of sculpture arises in conversation, I inevitably ask the person I’m talking with if they have ever heard of Gustav Vigeland. I’ve never met anyone outside of Norway who has ever heard of him. This really amazes me. Vigeland is a world-class sculptor who deserves as much recognition as Rodin or Maillol.
Gustav Vigeland was commissioned by the Oslo Kommun (city council) to make sculptures for the city. He had made a sculpture for someone and the Kommun were so impressed by it that they offered him a deal: They would give him a nice big house with workshop space all placed beautifully in a large park in the city. All they asked was that the sculptures he made were to be placed around the park for the people of Oslo to come and enjoy. And to this end he laboured the rest of his life recreating all the stages of life and family interaction that exist, from mother and babies, fathers and sons to elderly people pondering their fragility. I can’t describe this guy’s work adequately. I go and find some images on the internet, and then go and see them for real. There’s over two hundred of them and they are so full of humanity. Ace.
After finishing doing the photography, I tidy up at Leigh’s. I manage slightly painfully to carry my rucksack mountain to the bus depot. No way I’m hitching with this little lot. I get bus to airport. Talk to nice Norwegian chap. Watch landscape roll by. Feel like maybe I’ve got Norway out of my system.