Winter Longings

I think expats are prone to romanticising our home countries once we've lived abroad for a while. I can only imagine how difficult it must have been for those who emigrated before airtravel became affordable - all those poor (and I mean poor, very poor) Scandinavians who crossed the Atlantic and settled in the Mid-West for example, with no hope of ever returning 'home'. Sometimes there's a yearning for what I grew up with, and it's particularly strong around this time of year. Perhaps because January is a rather flat, grey month. All the Christmas and New Year excitement is gone. January is a bit like a deflated balloon...

Last night when I walked home from work in the dark I thought I spotted a strange light sheen across the fence in a neighbour's garden. I leaned over, and lo, their vigorously green lawn was covered in a fine layer of sleet. That's what the 'manna' referred to in the Old Testament must have looked like. It certainly was manna to me - the first snow we've had this winter! Today everything is vigorously green again, but I'm dreaming of snow, crisp cold sunshine, wooden skis with kandahar bindings, navy knickerbockers, woolly kneesocks, a 'Cortina'* woolly sports sweater knitted by my adolescent mother in the Fifties, a bright red anorak with a fur trim around the hood, a map stuck down the kangaroo pocket at the front, an old grey canvas rucksack containing a thermos of hot blackcurrant juice, an orange and a bar of Kvikk Lunsj. A couple of friends, Delial sunscreen in an old squashed tube, an old pair of my mother's sunglasses, and Swix skiwax. The fresh, clean smell of snow and spruce. The soft, cushioned sound of the forest. Chatting and gliding through the woods on the outskirts of Oslo.

It must be in the Norwegian DNA to love this.

Frognerseteren, at the top of Holmenkollen, with a panoramic view of Oslo and the fjord. It's an old timber building with plenty of authentic charm. We particularly like to climb up to the first floor (under the gable to the right there are tables in what feels like an indoor balcony) and marvel at the view while enjoying Frognerseteren's legendary apple cake and a cup of cocoa.

*Norwegian wool producer Dale Garn used to design a sports sweater knitting pattern for every major winter sports event in the decades following WW2. The 'Cortina' was a pattern designed for the Norwegian Olympic contestants at the Winter Olympic Games in Cortina in 1956. It was the 'thing' to knit these sweaters when my mother was in high school, and the patterns were very recognisable.

Photo: Dale Garn archiver.

 This is a shot of the female Norwegian 'alpinists'; Borghild Niskin, Inger Jørgensen, Inger Bjørnbakken and Astrid Sandvik wearing their official sweaters at the Cortina Olympic Games. Short hair was chic, and I am struck by how healthy and fresh-faced they look. Not a synthetic fibre in sight either!