After Sunday brunch, it was time for some friluftsliv - Norwegian outdoor living. Spending time in nature is a quintessential part of Norwegian life. We went for a walk in the forest nearby Host Family’s house, and I couldn’t help comparing it to British Columbia. There was the smell of pine trees, and though late in the season, still plenty of berries to be found.
Post lunch friluftsliv.
It was a little early, but wild mushrooms were starting to appear. Host Dad taught B how to identify chanterelle mushrooms,
They are brown with bright yellow stalks, and they have this divet in the top.
B picked a handful. L wanted to know which ones they should be picking. B showed her one, and said:
Chanterelles are these brown ones with the butthole.
I found some brown looking mushrooms and asked Host Dad if they were chanterelles. Host Dad replied,
There are buttholes, and there are buttholes. Those buttholes are not deep enough.
I look down at my potentially poisonous mushrooms,
So I have to look for brown ones with deeper buttholes…
I should point out that Host Dad was Australian before he also became Norwegian. When I relayed this conversation to Host Mum, she didn’t hide her disappointment. She rolled her eyes and sighed,
Ugh, he’s so Australian.
Butthole ‘shrooms found and identified by B.
In Oslo, we earned our friluftsliv L plates through a nature walk, some butthole ‘shrooming, and a trip to the sauna next to the fjord. With that, we were launched into greater Norway. Knowing that I was busy doing things like organising quick dry underwear before I left Melbourne, Host Mum kindly helped me organise a countryside itinerary. It included options such as staying in some very quaint country homes including a lighthouse only accessible by boat. All I had to do was pick from the curated selection. Too easy.
We set off from Oslo through beautiful rolling green hills with adorable country homes dotted throughout the landscape. It made me think I had probably wasted my money in Oslo at the folkmuseum (see blogpost #37). You can get an eyeful of plenty of quaint country homes in picturesque Norwegian countryside for free if you are prepared to drive 15 minutes out of Oslo. For several hours, that’s all we saw: cute country houses, lush green hillsides, rivers, and lakes.
The countryside just out of Oslo.
Even the servo (petrol/gas station) we stopped at, was incredibly cute. It was clean, and there were flowers next to the washbasin in the toilets. WTF? Did these people not know there is a cost of living, and climate crisis going on? There’s also famine, and war, but Norwegian servos are putting flowers in the loo?! We ate lunch at a picnic table at the servo. It was built like a mini log cabin with a grassy roof, just like the 13th century farmhouses I saw in the folkmuseum. Now I really wondered why I spent the day at the folkmuseum. I got the same ambience at a servo on the highway just over an hour outside of Oslo.
We packed our own lunch, but again this servo seemed to be operating in an alternate universe. Unbelievably, it sold fresh, and healthy looking roadside meals at reasonable prices. Really. WTF?! Where was the bombardment of advertising for chocolate bars, chips, and sausage rolls? We ventured to try one of their less healthy snacks, a traditional sausage on a bun (pølse) recommended by Host Daughter, and it was incredibly tasty. This was not some “special” servo. This was a random servo that appeared on the highway as we were getting hungry, and we needed to use the amenities. And yet, it appeared to have the trappings of ideal world.
Only in Norway, the servo advertises healthy lunch options at the bowser. The last sandwich offering has Norwegian brown cheese.
We arrived at our little country house recommended by Host Mum. It turned out to be a hundred year old house built by the owner’s grandfather. We drove up the hillside, and about 40 doe eyed alpacas came to say hello. At this point, spending time at the folkmuseum felt very much redundant.
A one hundred year old cabin, and herd of alpacas.
Host Mum suggested we might enjoy a day at the local animal park. The one she suggested was reviewed as good, but had a lot of signage in Norwegian. We were still scarred by wrangling the car hire kiosk at 1:00am without any Norwegian language skills, so we opted for Bjørneparken, Bear Park. We thought we should arrive early to avoid the crowds, but we should have known better. There were none. The entire day we saw about two dozen people. We spent all day at the park, and never once did we get lost, or compromise on the activities. The animals live in massive outdoor enclosures. You’ll never see them unless they are enticed out for a feed. We got a feeding schedule which had an enclosure to visit about every 30 minutes. This is enough time to walk to next enclosure, hear the rangers talk, and see the animals. For the benefit of the linguistically challenged like us, the rangers gave bilingual talks.
I expected that the rangers do most of the feeding, but they give us a chance too. We fed branches with leaves to moose, hand fed pellets to foxes, and threw apples and carrots to bears. Due to the small number of visitors see the bears, (the main attraction of this park), they were happy to let us feed the bears which was a super bonus. We stood on the deck, and flung apples and carrots to a giant bear sitting up like a dog catching them with his mouth. We squealed with delight when the bear caught our offerings.
A moose waiting to be fed.
A bear, sitting and waiting for lunch.
As we were leaving the park, we ran into some rangers who told us that if we aren’t too squeamish, they were about to feed the bears a treat. They usually wait until the visitors are gone to dish up this meaty snack, because it’s a bit messy. We’re not vegetarian, so we watched on as the rangers hurled sheep carcasses complete with woolly skins, and horns over the fence. The sheep were sawn in half so one bear got the butt, and the other got the brains. Apparently butt is highly sought after. They particularly love playing with, and rolling around the intestines. They think it makes them smell attractive?! The five of us watched with fascination as the very excited bears tucked into dinner like oversized puppies. After a big day, we went home to our little cabin, lit a fire, and had dinner while the sun set. Getting out for some friluftsliv, makes you hungry for more friluftsliv.
Building a fire for dinner.
Our last destination in Norway was to the Host Family’s mountain cabin. Host mum played us a video to educate us about cabin culture in Norway. It’s a thing.
Again, haha so funny. She then deadpanned,
It’s true, take a piss outside but make sure you change up the spot, and never shit outside, use the outhouse. And we really don’t have running water.
Host Mum has a family cabin pretty much exactly like the one in the video, but she got sick of it. She’s a woman of the world with fabulous style, and as per the video, she was sick of sharing with her mother, father, sister, brother-in law, and their brood. She bought her own family cabin, and put her stamp on it. It has her distinctive mark of colourful eclectic quirks collected from her travels. She has mismatched chairs, cushions, and crockery, but not cutlery. I would never have guessed that nothing annoys her more than mismatched cutlery. Just like her home in Norway, it is perfectly curated, and gives you hug as soon as you walk in the door.
When it rained too much to leave the cabin, we were so (not) sad to miss out on Dad’s country excursion.
We lived the mountain life wandering in the countryside, swimming in the lake (because there’s no running water), and jumping in the hot tub. We sat by the fire, and toasted marshmallows for s’mores. We kept warm wearing some hand knitted woollen sweaters we found at the op shop. A had one that made her look like Elsa, and I had one like the burly shopkeeper Oaken, of Wandering Oaken’s Trading Post and Sauna, from Frozen. The girls kept sneaking up on me and yodelling,
Yoohoo, big summer blowout!
(Fun Fact: “Wandering Oakens” is an anagram of “Naked Norwegians”).
B and A happily complied with the cabin rules which dictate that one must swim in the lake before getting in the hot tub. No pain, no gain.
Host Mum decided that she would relent on her appraisal of all Norwegian food is awful, and Host Dad made a spectacular reindeer stew with all the trimmings of a Christmas dinner. We sat outside with views over the lake and the sun setting. We felt so fortunate to have such wonderful friends who opened up their Norwegian lives to share with us. Our friends have always had a special place in our hearts, but now Norway does too.
We left our friends, and Norway with a lot of sadness. We left Host Family some notes in their cabin guest book, along with some fun family pictures of our adventures together. I can only hope we get the chance to be stuck on the walls of their cabin as per the cabin song. That’s a place I could happily exist (until of course Host Daughter, and Host Son inherit the cabin one day, and decide to clean out the relics).