Warm summer memories from Norway

April 4, 2007
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My regular readers know I am on Lifecruiser Cyber Cruise for the time being (see links below). Today’s challenge for the A-Team Cruisers is to put up a memorable photo from a place we have strong memories of. It’s hard to choose, but since my blog is about Norway, our culture, traditions and habits and also the significant four seasons, I’ll take one from a summer holiday at a cottage by the North Sea:

The evenings catch:-)

This is from the stairs of a cottage we rented at Risør (200 km south of Oslo) at the beginning of august 2003. We’d heard from the local fishermen that mackerel had invaded the fjord and of course we had to try our luck at fishing. We used fishing equipment called a ‘harpe’ with 6 hooks in a row and there were three of us fishing with these at the time. In less than an hour we had around 30 fish (mackerel, cod and coalfish). Sometimes we got 4 or 5 fishes on each harpe and your might say it was very lively in the small rowboat. At one point my wife said: ‘If any more fish want to come in this boat, they will have to take a number!’

In the last post, I told you about the Norwegian tradition of going to the mountains at Easter to enjoy the last of the ski season. In the summer time, most Norwegian families travel to the shore of our extremely long coastline, to enjoy the beaches, boating and the summer sun. Many families have or rent simple cottages near the ocean to spend their vacation.

This kind of experiences really takes me down the memory line. I’ve been boating (I build my own small sailing boat when I was 10) and fishing since I was a little boy and made my own equipment, experimented with hooks and bait both for salt and fresh water fishing. Very soon I learned to clean the fish (feeling like a surgeon) and often we built a bonfire on the shore to grill the fish.

A nice swim – Boiling a fresh caught crab.

The areas around the cottages are usually quite private, so it is not unusual to simply go skinny dipping. It saves us the trouble of changing, and why fuss with all those wet bathing suits anyway:-) But you have to watch out when you are doing your skinny dipping, as you can see above, fish isn’t the only thing to be caught in these waters!! Fortunately this fellow is rather shy around swimmers.

Habits, Summer