Hei Alle!
I’m trying to play catchup here so let’s go back, back, wayyyyy back to February 15. On that day our supervisor, Randi, arranged for us to go and visit the R�ros winter fair. R�ros (pronounced something like rUH-ros)is located about 2 hours east of Trondheim in the mountains that separate Norway and Sweden. R�ros is a UNESCO World Heritage site so I was very excited to see what it was all about. Plus we got to play hooky from school, which is always fun. (Although writing substitute plans is not, as I found out.)
Randi picked Megan and myself (as well as the two other teachers, Hester and Marlise) early that morning and we were soon on our way to R�ros. The scenery was absolutely beautiful (as always) and Randi gave us lots of fun information along the way. R�ros used to be an old copper mining town. Every February the miners would trek back into R�ros from the surrounding areas to drop off what they had mined. There was a large celebration in the town square in front of the smelt house. Although the copper has long since run out people still celebrate this time of year. Men and women travel with horses and even reindeer from all over Norway and Sweden to come to this festival. Remember, it is still winter here in Scandinavia so the trip is quite treacherous. In fact, two carriages actually were lost along the way to R�ros but were thankfully found the next day.
We traveled through many small towns on our way to R�ros. Each town/municipality (or kommune) has its own symbol. It was really fun looking at all of the symbols and hearing the backstory behind them. Before we knew it we were in R�ros. It was a beautiful quaint town literally stuck in the mountains. It was mobbed with people for the fair and there was a cute street festival going on. It reminded me of the street festivals you’ll find in the States during the summer. It was so weird to see them with snow on the ground.
Speaking of snow, it was cold. Like REALLY COLD. Like, -12C (10F) cold. We were outside for a LONG time waiting for the carriages to arrive. There was a cute pre-parade show with local singers and dancers. My personal favorites were the local Norwegian rap duo (adorable, although that probably wasn’t quite what they were going for) and the local upper secondary school dance performance. The school performed the local traditional dance and it was really fun because all of the townspeople joined in at the end. Unfortunately it was absolutely mobbed so I wasn’t able to get good pictures of the parade. It was really fun, but painfully cold. We somehow managed to survive the nearly 2 hours outside for the parade. We then decided to walk around a bit. I managed to get split from the group (as usual) so I took a few pictures. My mentor teacher, Ove, offered to let me bring the school’s Canon DSLR (really fancy) camera so I used both my point-and-shoot as well as the school camera:
After enjoying the fair for a bit we drove another hour to Randi’s cabin. It was such a beautiful drive! Unfortunately my camera was in the trunk so I could not take pictures =(. We essentially drove along a HUGE lake. However you would never know that it was a lake because there was at least 3 feet of snow on top of the ice of the lake. It was incredible to see this gigantic tree-less area in a heavily wooded area. It felt like we were on another planet. When we got to the road that Randi’s cabin is on we found that it was closed due to too much snow. However, Randi had a Honda CR-V and the snow looked loosely packed so we decided to try off-roading. Bad idea. We got stuck. Way stuck. There was so much densely packed snow that the bottom of her car (i.e. the axles and whatever else is down there) were stuck in the snow. Try as we might, 5 women were not going to get this car out. We tried for about 30 minutes and finally flagged down a snow plow (the biggest one I have ever seen) to pull us out. Thank goodness for good samaritans!
We ended up going to a nearby hotel for a late lunch. It was a charming place that served some traditional Norwegian food…like reindeer burgers! I had to try one. (To all of my Rudolph-loving friends, I’m sorry. Santa has another 10 months to figure out who will lead his sleigh Christmas Eve.) It was delicious! It wasn’t nearly as game-y as I anticipated. I would definitely eat it again. I managed to get a shot of the hotel and surrounding area at sunset. Beautiful! (The big white area with no trees is the lake.)
We began our trip back to Trondheim after lunch. We made two pretty cool stops. One was in a town called Selbu, which is where the “Selbu rose” knitting pattern was designed. If you’ve seen a Norwegian sweater, you’ve seen a Selbu rose. The big tourist attraction in town is the giant troll statue at a gas station. Obviously I had to get my picture taken with it.
Our last stop of the day was to a town pretty close to Trondheim. In fact, it’s where the Trondheim airport is located. The name of the town: Hell. Now, I LOVE the fact that there is a Hell on Earth and it has, in fact, frozen over. No word on whether or not it is possible to get a beer in hell (sorry, Tucker Max). As you can tell, I love good (or bad) puns about Hell so I managed to snap a few pictures even though it was dark. My favorite is below:
Location: Edgar B Schieldropsvei 42-18 7033 Trondheim Norway
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