St. Anne's Catholic Church

     St. Anne's is a parish church. Picture as seen from my window.

St. Anne's Catholic Church, rue de Tolbiac

     Construction begun 1894, finished 1912. Architect: Prosper Bobin (1844-1923). Style: Romano-Byzantine. The façade is called the "chocolate façade" because the money for its completion was provided by the Lombart family, who were chocolate makers. Due to the fact that an embankment of the former Bièvre River lies beneath the church, it had to be built on 71 stilts, reaching bedrock at a depth of from 16 to 22 meters.

Sankt Hans---a pretext for more gammeldagsmat

     The longest day of the year is Sankt Hans, otherwise known as Midsummer's Day (June 24). There are still many people who build bonfires on the evening of June 23, which is traditional. At the Heggstads, we celebrated with more gammeldagsmat including a dish that I had never had before: potete båller.

From top clockwise: mørpølse (two kinds), kålrabistappe (mashed rutabaga), boiled potatoes, bacon, and pinnekjøtt (rack of lamb cured in brine, etc.). Potete båll in the center. It's made mainly of potatoes and barley flour with a little piece of mørpølse (a kind of sausage cured in salt). Not pictured: a glass of buttermilk. Prepared by Johanne Heggstad.

Happy eaters of potete båller. From left: Ragnhild, Kenneth, Cornelia, Camilla, Asbjørn, and Annette.

Ålesund---miscellaneous photos

Camilla, Malene, Kenneth Holstad

Asbjørn, Nikolai, Sjarlotte, Annette Heggstad

Downtown Ålesund from Fjellstua. Ålesund is a very photogenic city.

Ålesund Football Club (AaFK) vs. Stavanger Vikings. Ålesund won 2-1.

Queen Mary II in Ellingsøyfjord

Sjarlotte Heggstad in cherry tree

Vidar and Elisabet Heggstad's modern style house in the midsummer night

With Heggstad Family, 1990

Sankt Hans bål

     Traditionally on June 23, the eve of St. John's Day (Midsummer Day), you have bonfires in many countries. Here in Ålesund, a pile of freight palettes, cleverly nailed together, forms the combustible material for a special bonfire.

Nearing completion several days before ignition

The fire is built on a small island in the fjord. In addition to the viewers on shore, the island is ringed by small boats.

Gammeldagsmat in Christiansund

    After a hard day of explaining the various features of the passive house, Kjell, Frank and I visit Smia (literally "The smithy"), a historical building that's been turned into a restaurant. Their specialty is klippfisk, a traditional food of Møre.

Smia in Christiansund

     Strictly speaking, I don't know if this particular dish is gammeldagsmat, but the main ingredient is klippfisk---dried, salted cod (also known as bacalao in Spanish and morue in French) that's been reconstituted and desalinated. Cod are fished off the coast of Norway, and Christiansund has always had a substantial cod fishing industry. Though the export of salted, dried cod only goes back a few hundred years, the preservation method is much older. My ration was served with carrots, rutabaga, bacon and a blue mussel. Seemed like typical Norwegian food to me.
     A glass of Dahl's pilsener was a suitable accompaniment.
     The menu featured various other dishes made from klippfisk, including bacalao.
   

Museum exhibit showing a traditional method of making klippfisk. There was a sign in English and German, saying "Please don't touch" and a sign in Norwegian saying "Please don't touch or taste."

     Next morning, we partook of the usual brobdingnagian hotel koldtbord. Two features of note were gravlaks med sennepsaus (corned salmon with mustard sauce) and pickled herring in sour cream.

Round 1 at the koldtbord

The Passive House

     I met Cousin Kjell in Christiansund to see a passive house. What is a passive house? "The limit for energy consumption in a passive house is 15 kWh/m2 per year. A passive house is a construction form where the energy consumption is minimised as much as possible via passive initiatives."
     Kjell's company (http://www.grunnmur.no/) provided the foundation. They are probably one of the few foundation subcontractors who could do this because their unique polyurethane/concrete product is designed so as not to lose any heat to the ground.
   

The wall insulation looks thick enough.

The house has two floors.

Solar panels heat water which is pumped through the floor of the house.

A large part of the top floor is deck.

All of the utilities are found in one small room on the ground floor.

The house has such modern features as control of household appliances from your smart phone.

The continuing saga of gammeldagsmat

Clockwise from top: kjøttkaker med brunsaus (meatballs with gravy), tyttebærsylte (lingonberry jam), steamed cauliflower and carrots, ertestuing (mashed? dried peas), boiled potatoes, by Johanne Heggstad.

Lingonberry (Vaccinium vitis-idaea; Norw. tyttebær) grows wild in the mountains in Norway. They won't be ready to pick until late summer.

Johanne makes svele on her flatbread griddle

Svele probably looks like a pancake to you Americans out there, but actually American pancakes, Norwegian sveler, and Norwegian pannekaker are three different things. Here I haven't been able to resist smearing sour cream and strawberry jam on my svele. Sveler were originally a regional specialty of this area of Norway (Sunnmøre).

Gooseberry wine made by my second cousin, Asbjørn Heggstad. Asbjørn is no longer with us, but he left behind this excellent wine, among many other things.

Nynorsk

  On the way back to Ålesund from Sæbø, we passed through the little town of Ørsta, famous as the birthplace of Ivar Åsen.

  Norway is a country  that has two official written languages. One of them is Nynorsk or Landsmål, invented by Ivar Åsen, based on some of the spoken language(s) of western Norway. 

     As I told my relatives when we were chatting over coffee the other day, in order to do the research for my book on the life of my grandfather, I had to read documents in three languages: Bokmål, Landsmål, and Dano-Norwegian (the language my grandfather wrote in). Somebody said jokingly "If only they could have shot him [Åsen] before he invented Nynorsk." 

     There is a certain amount of ambivalence to Nynorsk in the city of Ålesund, though the surrounding countryside is strongly pro-Nynorsk. 

     I suspect that some people, whether inside or outside of Norway, might have the idea that since there is a country called Norway, there should only be one Norwegian language. This is related to a phenomenon one sees in countries such as France and Japan---the central government promotes a single, "official" language to the detriment of "dialects" in its efforts to forge a nation-state. The language that is promoted is always most similar to what is spoken in the capital.

     If not for Ivar Åsen, this probably would have been the script for Norway as well. But when Norway became independent in 1905 and set about establishing a "national identity," complete with national language, Nynorsk was already a fait accompli with an established constituency. 

     Unfortunately from a certain point of view, Nynorsk was not anything at all like the way the power elite living in and around Oslo spoke. Another rule of linguistic imperialism might be that, no matter how desirable the adoption of a national language is deemed to be by a power elite, that power elite will not want to do so if it means giving up their own language and adopting the language of a lesser-status group of people. Hence, the bi-literary situation in Norway today.

 

Statue of Ivar Åsen in the center of Ørsta

The rorbu

     A rorbu is to fishing and boating what a hytte is to hunting and skiing. You build a second story on top of a naust (boathouse), and you've got a rorbu. They used to be used as seasonal residences for fishermen. The boat was stored on the ground floor and the fishermen lived upstairs during the fishing season. With the advent of modern fishing technology, fishermen stayed on their boats all the time, and the rorbu became obsolete. Gradually, many of them have been converted into vacation homes. Some remodeled rorbu are actually quite luxurious.

A rorbu on Ellingsøyfjord.

Usually, you would expect the boat to be kept on the ground floor, but the ground floor of this rorbu is used only as a kitchen and dining area. One of the best times to use the rorbu is in the Fall---crab season. Note the large crab steamers along the wall on the left.

Grindverk

     Thanks to Kjell Heggstad for pointing out that grindverk is a traditional building technique that dates back to the Viking Era. The photos below are of a structure built by Thomas Hustad.

     Though planks may be of any old wood (usually fir or spruce), the curved structural members have to be of birch. The builder has to somehow procure trees that have grown into the desired shape in order to make these structural pieces. Fastening is done with birch dowels that are first dried, then inserted into their holes, and then moistened so that they swell up again to their normal size and make a tight connection.

This particular structure is a canopy for some picnic tables in a scenic spot in Sæbø. 

 .

     Of course, what would a grindverk structure be without a torvtak (turf roof)? The torvtak is still widely used in Norway, especially on farms and leisure structures (e.g. ski cabins). Some small tourist hotels feature units with turf roofs.

     Today, torvtak builders make use of modern underlayment materials that extend the lifetime of a roof from about 20 years (for a traditional torvtak that uses no modern materials) to as long as 50 years. True to the spirit of the grindverk, the torvtak in this photo has been constructed in the old style, with birch bark underlayment.

Birch bark has also been used to insulate critical areas from water damage.

Sæbø

And now I have to move on to Møre, where the fjord country begins. The next day after arriving in Ålesund, we go to a small village (pop. around 200) on Hjørundfjord called Sæbø.

Sæbø Church across the valley. The hole between two mountains is called "Olauhølå" (Literally, "Olaf's Hollow"). Said to be a place where St. Olaf sat down. One wonders how a man of that size could lose the Battle of Stiklestad.

My hosts, Kjell and Johanne Heggstad, have a house in Sæbø, where Johanne is originally from.

Everyone who has been to Norway must at least know about the ubiquitous open-faced shrimp salad sandwich. But I had never had one that was as tasty as this, which I made myself, using shrimp provided by Kjell and Johanne and bread from the Sæbø bakery---"Hjørdunfjordbrød." On the right side of the plate was some sursild (pickled herring).

The Skonndal River

A well provides water from the  Skonndal River. This was the best water I had in Norway. When I was here 23 years ago, almost all the water tasted like this, but with the growth in population, it has become necessary to institute water systems with chlorinated water. 

Where the Hjørundfjord meets the Storfjord. Kjell tells me the best fishing here is for pollock. Some of them grow very large and you have to fish for them in a boat equipped with a winch in order to get them out of the water and into the boat.

Another view of  Sæbø, mountains and fjord, from in front of Kjell and Johanne's house.

Farvel, farvel

Ruth and Svein in front of their house, built by themselves, of course. Takk for gode minner! And so I say goodbye to Verdal, birthplace of my father's father.

The hytte

For the purpose of this blog post, I'll define a hytte as a ski cabin, not because you necessarily have to ski when you get there, but because traditionally skiing was the way to get there.

This is Trond and Aud Bjartnes' hytte

This is Svein and Ruth Sende's hytte. It was built by Svein and Ruth themselves with help from Svein's brother Asbjørn and their father Ole. Ole was a carpenter, as was also Asbjørn (now retired), and Svein continues to work as such. 

Entrance, Svein and Ruth Sende's hytte.

Interior, Svein and Ruth Sende's hytte.

Fireplace, Svein and Ruth Sende's hytte