WEEK 42-44 IN NORDMARKA - ALEX

 July 29 to August 17 - Cabin Life

Living in the cabin the last couple of weeks has been an adventure. The weather has cooled off significantly, back into the normal 50-60s, but that also means that the lake we bathe in becomes colder every day. The commute to the city, although almost all downhill, is still 25-30 minutes, because there’s so many turns on narrow gravel roads that you can’t let your speed get too high. The ride back up is at least 45 minutes and is sure to leave you sweaty and feeling tired. Walking or the walking/public transit option is 1.25 to 2 hours. All nice pleasant options, just a greater time element than we had before and one we didn’t fully appreciate until moving here. Getting to the gym has been a little more work than I thought, so I have properly showered less than I anticipated I would, fortunately the lake is doing a pretty good job and keeping my stink down. Morgan is able to shower at NGI and rinses most nights when she gets back to the cabin.

Left: Morgan leaving the cabin on her way to work.

Right: Me hanging out at the cabin.

More than anything the daily grind of going up and down at least once is tiring and can be a mental hurdle. Each grocery shop is limited by what I can carry on my back so I have been going almost every day I go into the city, about 4-5 times per week. Laundry isn’t the end of the world, but still annoying and expensive, $7.50 per wash, $7.50 per dry. Although, having access to a dryer and not having to air dry in the park across the street from the laundromat has been nice and worth the money. 

There’s no wifi at the cabin, which wouldn’t be the end of the world except it greatly limits what Morgan is able to do at the cabin and means she ends up spending more time at her office in the evenings and weekends. We question the water quality in the shallow ground well so we boil before using an extra step in the process. We also procured a water filter, a week-long anti-Norwegian process. Norwegians are exceedingly proud of their water quality, something we have been told unprompted multiple times, and I doubt if they would be able to comprehend their water being contaminated in any situation. 

With all that said, the last couple of weeks has been a lot of fun. We’ve had friends over a couple of times, including an overnight guest with plans for more in the coming week. Bathing in the lake sounds miserable before jumping in, but afterwards we both remark on how good we feel. Not having wifi at the cabin means we are leaning more into a preinternet lifestyle and getting CDs from the library to listen too. As I mentioned the weather has cooled down and we have found ourselves chilled, so we’ve utilized the fireplace to stay warm and had cozy nights knitting, reading, or watching download movies on our phone next to the fire. We’re also surrounded by blueberry bushes with ripe fruit, so we’ve been eating our fair share of fresh berries everyday.

Cozy time at the cabin knitting, reading, and eating pancakes.

Some of the knitting projects we have finished in the last couple of weeks. I was working on a hat for our expecting friends and Morgan has been making a whole collection of Sophie Scarves.

Oslo Bucket List

With our time in Oslo quickly coming to an end there were a few cultural things we wanted to do before we left. The first Saturday in August we checked off a couple of the items by going to Oslo City Hall and the National Museum with Emma and some of her visiting friends. It was a rainy day so being inside was actually preferable for us. The draw to City Hall are the large murals in the entrance hall that overlooks Aker Brygge and the waterfront. We had to wait for 30 minutes to enter, but it was free, the space was nice and I’m glad we did it. Across the street was the National Museum. I have only gone to the library in the building, a personal favorite city workspace for me, but we hadn’t been in the proper museum yet. We quite enjoyed the permanent exhibit and the five of us had a collective exasperation at whatever was displayed in the temporary contemporary art exhibit. Overall we both enjoyed it and preferred it to Munch, the other large art museum in town.

Top: Munch’s murals at the University Aula.

Bottom Left: Morgan in the main chamber at Stortinget.

Bottom Right: Oslo City Hall (Not Munch)

The following week we finished checking off our cultural checklist by taking a tour of Stortinget (Parliament) and going to Open Aula. The Aula is home to some of Edvard Munch’s most impressive murals that were commissioned by the university in the 1910s. The Aula was something we wanted to do since we first went to Munch only a few weeks after moving to Oslo and saw copies of the works, but is only open to the public a handful of days throughout the year.

Our tour of Stortinget was quite good. It was in English and was set up on a first come, first served basis. Norwegian tours are run throughout the year, but the English tours are during the summer high season only, once per weekday from the beginning of July to mid-August. Not being able to reserve added another wrinkle and since we wanted to make sure Morgan wasn’t going to step away from her computer on a weekday morning for nothing we made sure to get there early just in case. We showed up about 45 minutes before the tour officially started and were the 26 and 27th people in line. Since the tour is capped at 30 people we ended up being quite lucky with our timing. Like many Norwegian public buildings, especially those built in the 1800s pre-independence, it is not as opulent as you might expect. Still, the parliament's chamber was nice and similar to a house chamber in a US state capitol building. The tour was also quite informative about the Norwegian political structure.

Other things on our bucket list are a little more specific to us and what we’ve done over the past 10+ months. There were a couple of prominent points in Nordmarka, Kikut and Oppkuven that I wanted to get to before we left so I made sure to do that over the past few weeks. I also wanted to go on at least one more long bike ride with Morgan, so we did a one way, 135km ride to Gjovik and took the train back. There is also a hidden suspension bridge in Nordmarka, Bjornsjohevelte that she hadn’t been to yet so we went there as part of a long Sunday walk through the forest and stopped for a bolle at Bjornholt Gard.

The lookout tower and view from tower at Oppkuven and the Skiforeningen sign at the top of Kikut.

Clockwise from upper left: Morgan at Bjornsjohevelte, me eating Chocolate cake at Bjornholt Gard, looking out at Oslo from our table at Grefsenkollen, lunch at Tryvannstua.

Other than that it’s mostly returning to some of our favorite cafeterias in the forest and going swimming in some of the lakes we have spent a lot of time around. Another prominent bucket list item for us was going to Grefsenkollen, a hilltop restaurant that is seemingly visible all over the city. It’s so prominent that at times we’ve been annoyed at its visibility, so we biked up there for dinner and a great view of the city.

Swimming at the lakes around Nordmarka. On the left is me in Lille Tryvannet, in the upper right Morgan is in Stromsdammen, and on the bottom right is Skjennungen, the lake outside of our cabin.

Time with Friends

The other thing we want to do before we leave is spend time with the people who have helped make our time here special. We met up with Dan and Alice for dinner the night we biked to Grefsenkollen. I went berry picking with Dan in Ostmarka and we’ve hosted friends for berry picking and mushroom foraging on more than occasion. Morgan’s colleague and one of the Norwegians we are closest with, Sjur, has come over for dinner more than once. We’ve also had an overnight guest, Clarrise and she has plans to return for another night with her boyfriend and my biking buddy Jonas. We are also looking forward to having a contingent of Morgan’s NGI friends come over before we leave. We didn’t know what our social life was going to look like a year ago at this time, but are proud of the community we’ve built since living here.

Berries and mushrooms foraged around our cabin. The mushrooms were foraged by our friend Mathilda.