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In Which I Cannot Believe My Ears

September 3, 2006 by Mike

Sogndal

Route: Skeid - under Jostedalsbreen - Sogndal

To Astrupturen, Nikolai Astrup's home, now a museum and gallery - Nikolai, you'll remember, being my great-grandfather's cousin and, by the way, one of Norway's most celebrated painters. This is the home he built for his wife and eight children (they didn't have satellite TV in those days, just long winter nights... no wonder families were so biug.)

It's as remote a museum as you could wish for, reached by a thin stretch of country lane etched along the lake from Skeid, set to topple from its half hidden hillside location into the lake at any time. Remote now, but that's as nothing compared with the way things must have been. Dying in 1928, Astrup missed the overwhelming impact of the motorcar -- and the oil money that has paved the way for Norway's road network.

That's probably for the best - his art and his motivation was all about preserving, recording, interpreting the rural world he had grown up in. His was a world of horse-drawn carts, rough country roads and goat tracks.

A primitive life, and sure enough there is a primitive quality in his paintings, in his broad, bold strokes and elemental colours. It suits his subject matter -- labourers and mothers with backs weighed down; old peasant faces; children picking berries in the woodland behind his home.

His father, a priest, had been pretty underwhelmed when Nikolai announced he wished to be a painter. But, well, growing success during his lifetime helped smooth things over and the family came to accept his vocation. Not sure Dad would have taken too kindly to Nicolai's fascination in pagan ritual (very much a part of his rural romanticism.)

Similarly, his father-in-law, a local farmer, was outraged when the artist won the heart of his bride-to-be. Not because she was only 15 when they married, mind, but because as a priest's son he was too good for his daughter!

Like my great-grandfather, I have a cousin called Nikolai Astrup. The two Nikolais were born 100 years apart. They wouldn't recognise each other's worlds. (But they're both active in Høyre, Norway's Conservative Party.. to my great shame and embarrassment ;-)

Now, it's probably best not to trouble the copyright lawyers, eh? So rather than filch them and post them here, please take a moment to visit the Astrupturen website. It's a good 'un, with high quality reproductions of his works, both paintings and woodcuts.

Seeing the area he lived and worked in, it's clear where he got his inspiration:

But before going to Astruptunet, I had stopped at the Skei Hotel to go internet crazy. I came across two English couples of a certain age, bluff northern men of substance wearing golf shirts in broad daylight without irony; wives in daytime pearls and silk scarves. All very Margo and Jerry Ledbetter.

I got talking to one couple. Lovely people. He had met motorcycle adventurers Arno and Sian years before and still carried their business card (nice idea). They spend their golden years travelling the world - Australia, the States, across Europe. Were loving Norway. Charming people. Love their grandchildren. Read the Daily Telegraph, of course; so I pulled up the Telegraph website to show them the news. There had been another outrage in the Middle East; Muslim suspects picked up in the UK.

"I wonder what old Enoch would make of it all?", he pondered affectionately.

What??????

Did I hear that right? Are there really people who still think Enoch Powell was right? I guess so.

And they say that travel broadens the mind...

I rode down to Sogndal in the afternoon. One hundred years ago, I would have travelled west to the coast, sailed round to Sognfjord and 100 miles inland to get there - a journey of a couple of days at least. It took me an hour, not least thanks to three huge tunnels which tok me under Jostedalsbreen, which may or may not be Northern Europe's largest glacier. I have no idea because:

a) the tunnels
b) even when the road surfaced briefly, the cloud was so low and the rain so heavy that I couldn't see past my nose.

A glimpse of the glacier behind the bike

On the outskirts of town I spotted a poster advertising Sogndal's home game with Sparta Sarpsborg this very evening. What luck! The chance to see Sogndal vs Sarpsborg!! And I hadn't even planned it!

'We' (I adopted the home team: they have a cooler kit and their fans got to sit under a roof, unlike the visiting supporters) wuz robbed. It finished 2-2. This was the Adeccoligaen - Norway's First Division and therefore.. English fans will appreciate this.. the second flight of Norwegian football. One step up from the game I saw in Alta.

Still not very good - but the atmosphere was: singing and drums if you wanted them, space to sit with the family and be entertained in the rain if that's yr bag. On view, and on target with the first goal, was ex-World Cup player and cousin of Tore Andre, Håvard Flo (remember him, Wolves fans?) Ole Hjelmhaug rescued the point with a late penalty (no, you're not supposed to remember him, Wolves fans.)

I can tell the difference between farmland that stinks of cow, farmland that stinks of sheep and farmland that stinks of goat. I have learned from experience.

The town of Sogndal is beautifully situated, on a small, sharp corner of the very long, often very wide Sognefjord. All 204 kilometres of it. The centre, where I found a cheap boarding house that looked far more appealing than a rain-drenched, windswept hammock, is a jumble of old wooden houses, white and red and ochre, picket fences and children's trampolines, stacked together in no geometric pattern whatsoever, as though they were a pack of cards thrown down by some heavenly town planner.

I walked though the narrow evening streets, where one family's living room overlooks the next's garage overlooks the next's back terrace overlooks the next's boat-house, under dark mountains, beside a still and peaceful fjord.

*Very* livable in.

Beside the Seaside

In Which I Cannot Believe My Ears

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