Ski and Paddle Norway 2009

Distance 0km | Time 0hrs | Ascent 0m | Descent 0m

I woke late at 0800. Not the early start I needed. However when I looked outside I could hardly believe it. All the clear, cold, calm weather of yesterday had deterioated into a swirling, hissing blizzard. To confirm I opened the cabin door which was nearly wrenched out of my hand.

It was a blesing in disguise. First I would have been a bit late in setting off and secondly my improving muscles were still stiff. I was not going to be able to navigate to Bleskestadmoen cabin in that and did not want to try and set up the tent or dig a snowhole in some 7 hours time in those conditions. So there was only one thing for it and that was back to bed.

I had been musing about the Norway and the Norwegians in the last few days. I have spent time in some 50 odd countries and none seem to have the sense of order, reliability and of being looked after as much as Norway. Their history, Stone Age to recent, has much to do with this.

Norwegians first came to this wild land some 10000 years or 500 generations ago. They followed the reindeer and they migrated north away from the growing forests of the Germanic Plains to this land which was emerging from under the ice sheets.

To survive the earliest settlers had to be very resourceful and had great foresight. Through the 10 millennia since then, the descendants of these first settlers honed their hunting skills and established a migaratory transhumance existance exploiting both fjord and mountain. Some 1500 years ago agriculture became more established, while the hunting and gathering continued

This entry was posted on Friday, January 16th, 2009 at 2:11 pm and is filed under Update. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.