endeløs sommer

Having just passed the solstice in the northern hemisphere with the hours of sunlight each day gradually decreasing until we come to the December solstice and the slow retreat of the night, we found this proposal by the residents of the fishing village north of the Arctic circle, Sommarøy, west of Tromsø, straddling the Norwegian island of Store Sommarøy and Hillesøya—the become the world’s first time-free zone rather intriguing.
Though balanced out with the corollary of the long polar night spanning from November to January, the three hundred permanent residents and numerous visitors enjoy sixty nine days from mid-May to late July when the sun never sets, during which the conventions of normal time-keeping are discarded and people accord themselves according to their own schedules. Local government is in serious talks with the Stortling to discuss the legal and practical raminification of carrying through such a plan. Though the announcements have led to a boost in tourism and the fences of the pedestrian bridge that connects the islands with the mainland are decorated with wrist watches rather than love-locks, proponents insist that the move is far more than a gimmick

båly bay

An undersea restaurant on the Norwegian southern coast whose ground-breaking caught our attention a year and a half ago is celebrating its official grand opening and welcoming diners. Designed by the Snøhetta group to suggest an emerging periscope, Under (that word also means a wonder in Norsk) hosts up to forty guests, for whom I hope the liminal experience makes a lasting and profound impression, and serves a dual purpose as a marine research laboratory when not serving meals. Learn more at the links above, including a peek at the menu and where to book reservations.

7x7

suburbia: Eliza Gosse paints Australian Mid-Century modern homes

emancipation of the dissonance: economist and performer Merle Hazard delivers an atonal tune

threadstories: crocheted masks and headdresses examine our online avatars and personæ

autoglyphs: Michael Light takes an aerial survey of the arid American west

forget about it: a versatile Italian word to know

needs more salt: a seasonings purveyor and a tech company collaborate to optimise spicing up your recipes

byggeskikk: a photographer becomes quite taken with a picturesque cabin 

selbuvotter

Often interpreted as a snowflake instead of a flower and universally as shorthand for all things wholesomely wintry and Scandinavian, the knit pattern selburose is an ancient symbol and predates its 1857 appearance on a pair of mittens (vott) that had the whole congregation of the town of Selbu quite smitten with the design.

The popularity of the pattern (selbumønster, which also sparked a whole cottage industry and helped women become more economically independent) coincided with the Norwegian independence movement from Sweden and became somewhat of a bold fashion statement as something distinctly Norsk despite the mixed pedigree. Read more on the origins and spread of this icon at The Atlantic and find similar stories about the familiar and everyday syndicated at Object Lessons.

østenfor sol og vestenfor måne

Public Domain Review introduces us to the Norwegian folk tale East of the Sun and West of the Moon via the sumptuously illustrated version translated and published for English markets in 1914 by artist Danish Kay Rasmus Nielsen (*1886 – †1957).
Classified under the Aarne-Thompson system as “the search for the lost husband,” the story references universal motifs and to a degree informs “Beauty and the Beast.” A poor peasant is approached by the White Bear with a proposition: in exchange for his fair, young daughter, the bear will make the peasant wealthy. The father is persuaded and the daughter is spirited away to an enchanted castle. At night, the bear transforms back into a human to be with the young woman but under cover of darkness, she never catches his unursine visage. The woman grows homesick and the bear will allow her to visit her family, provided that she promises never to speak with her mother alone. Her mother is persistent about addressing her situation one-on-one and eventually corners her and presses her for details.
Without getting much more out of her daughter, the mother proclaims that the White Bear must really be a gruesome troll and gives her daughter three candles to investigate. Curiosity getting the better of her, she lights the candle one even after she returns to the enchanted castle to find the White Bear’s true form is that of a handsome prince. Dripping hot tallow on the sleeping prince accidentally, he bolts upright, bleary-eyed and bemoans the fate that he’s now consigned to: his wicked stepmother bargaining that the prince could not sustain the love, trust of another for a whole year and keep his true appearance from them. Now instead of being free from the curse, the prince must now journey to the stepmother’s castle, east of the Sun and west of the Moon where he is to be wed to his step-sister a troll princess. Read the rest of the story (which ends happily ever after) and learn more about the illustrator—who contributed to Fantasia (1940) and posthumously to The Little Mermaid (1989)—at Public Domain Review at the link up top.

tafl top

Our gratitude to TYWKIWDBI for the introduction to the family of Nordic and Celtic strategy board games played out on a grid with asymmetrical armies with the player on the defensive clustered at the centre of the board—protecting a king or castle from capture.
Known as hnefatafl (fist-table—I guess for pounding the table and upsetting the pieces out of frustration over losing) or Viking chess, variants were played in the British Isles and Scandinavia for centuries—with the received rules written down by natural philosopher Linnaeus in the eighteenth century, but so rife with errors and mistranslations that the rules needed to be re-written and the original form of play was lost. Trying to reconstruct this ancient game, however, and watching it evolve has proven to be a fun and fertile activity. Learn more at the link up top.

tituli picti or norman consequence

On this in 1066, the forces of William, Duke of Normandy (previously) crossed the English Channel (la Manche) and established a beachhead at Pevensey, East Sussex, in order to dispute the claim to the Anglo-Saxon throne by King Harold Godwinson, precipitated by the extinction the Wessex line with the death of Edward the Confessor, who died without issue.
Harold’s elevation was challenged on three separate from by the Norwegian sovereign Harald Hardrada and Harold’s own brother Tostig—whom were repelled divisively (but at a great cost of men and materiel) under the Battle of Stamford Bridge in Yorkshire on the twenty-fifth of September, but eventually fell to William’s armies at the Battle of Hastings on the fourteenth of October. Norman troop frustrated when their advances were stopped at first and were unable to penetrate English front lines adopted a tactic of pretending to retreat and then—more agile—turn back on their pursuers.

janteloven

We’re grateful to TYWKIWDBI for the introduction to the “Law of Jante,” originally a satirical way to codify Scandinavian social foibles and group behaviour but now something taught in schools to reinforce social mores.
Setting his observations and reflections on small town life in a 1933 humorous work called “A Fugitive Crosses His Tracks” (En flykning krysser sitt spor), author Aksel Sandemose creates the fictional village of Jante and prescribes ten rules, which all echo the prevailing sentiment that overt ambition and rebellion—within certain tolerance—are selfish and inappropriate and one ought to adopt the Golden Rule to have the empathy and self-awareness to know that one is not better than everyone else. Outside the classroom, the term has taken on an idiomatic sense of disdain for over-achievers and agitators for agitation’s sake, and the attitude is testament to the social cohesion, tolerance, equity and compassion demonstrated by the Nordic culture. Visit the link above to review the full rules and learn more.

bierkönig

Via Coudal Partners’ Fresh Signals, we are introduced to a comprehensive and exhaustive collection of drink coasters, beermats and other bar paraphernalia from around the world. A casual curator myself, I was really engrossed with the history—the first non-saucers made from high grammage pasteboard were produced in the town of Magdeburg in 1880 as a way to primarily protect tables from condensation but quickly became a vehicle for advertising and other messaging spreading from Europe outward.

museet

Hyperallergic reports that the curatorial staff of the Munch Museum of Oslo have digitally archived and made available to the public over seventy-six hundred paintings and sketches of Edvard Munch (previously). This ambitious and comprehensive catalogue of the artist not only includes the museum’s own collection, revising many works that had not been on display for years if ever, but also sought to capture the holdings of other museums and those works in private hands.

pilea peperomiodes

Though my adopted specimen was not getting adequate sunshine for some time, once I found a better spot for this particularly hardy succulent that goes by many different common names—the pancake plant, the Chinese money plant, the UFO plant—it’s begun thriving.
First described and collected by Scottish botanist George Forrest (perhaps a further example of nominative determinism) at the turn of the last century while exploring the southwestern Yunnan province, this evergreen with circular leaves known in its native land as 镜面草 was rediscovered in 1945 by a fleeing Norwegian missionary who took cuttings back with him and introduced them in his home country, propagating them throughout Scandinavia. Not a detrimental transplant it spread in the wild and was exchanged as houseplants under the radar of researchers and it was not until 1984 that the P. peperomiodes was formally identified and where it came from was known.

grøtmelet or the breakfast of champions

We enjoyed learning of the great Norwegian Porridge Feud of the mid-nineteenth century that was sparked by “scientific” thought encroaching on traditional foods. Domestic science—which did not always ascribe rigorously to the scientific method with opium and cocaine and sugar considered safe active ingredients or breakfast cereals promoted as a remedy against autoerotic excess and has a history of crazes, ulterior motives and a rather spotty reputation—sought to overhaul kitchen-witchery and folkways.
The first perceived assault came in the form of a cookbook that presumed to tell housewives that they’ve been making their porridge (grøt) and other staples wrong all along, authored by the well-meaning Peter Christen Asbjørnsen (under the pseudonym Clemens Bonifacius—the Gentle Helper). Would you have taken sides? This controversy, seen by many to be a grave insult to homemakers but alternately drew many to companion the new science, forwarded the debate between traditional wisdom and expert application in view of the evolving realities of the way we live and eat—both ushering in a greater variety for Scandinavian diets but also the ills of processed and refined foods.

6x6

a murder most foul: an interactive map of crime scenes and hauntings of Victorian London, via Things Magazine

crying in public: a comparable emotional map of New York City, via Waxy

klimaendring: receding glaciers are revealing ancient artefacts in Norway faster than archaeologists can keep up, via Strange Company

editorial board: moving beyond titles and suggested topics, neural networks are being trained to write Wikipedia articles, via Slashdot

expo 67: Canada Modern archives the early golden age of the country’s contemporary graphic design movement, via Present /&/ Correct

postcards from sakha: photographer documents like in Yakutsk, Russia’s arctic republic

under

The international architecture group Snøhetta (which is seeming rather busy these days) has released concept images for a new undertaking outside of Oslo at the southernmost point along the Norwegian coast, a monolithic submerged structure that’s more than an aquatic dining experience for patrons but also a unique marine research facility. The gourmet restaurant is to be named simply under (also Norsk for something that’s a wonder) and will have a panoramic view and an outer surface conducive to barnacles and other reef-dwellers sheltering there, making the structure part of the environment that is the subject of its study.

må jeg skjære ham i fingeren? må jeg rive ham i håret?

Synchronised to a two-dimensional physics simulation, animator DoodleChaos’ line-rider rendering of Edvard Grieg’s (previously) In the Hall of the Mountain King was a rather thrilling sled ride. You should definitely have the speakers on full blast for this one and watch it through to the end when it gets really harrowing.

incidental music

We enjoyed this appreciation of not only of the musical stylings of Edvard Grieg but how the snatches of sound and motifs have thoroughly inundated popular culture—resounding especially through the composer’s accompaniment to the stage play Peer Gynt by Henrik Ibsen, nearly on par with the Strum und Drang of Richard Wagner. Although one might not be able to name or attribute In the Hall of the Mountain King or Morning Mood (Morgenstemning—and we agree it’s funny to call any song a mood), all those works are instantly recognisable, evocative and indulgent.

après nous, le déluge

Though the breach did not result in any loss of the seeds stored within and scientists are working to make the structure more secure, the fact that the Svalbard Global Seed Vault built in 2008 and designed to weather an eternity of assault is already showing signs that it’s not able to withstand catastrophic, run-away climate change is a depressing prospect. The integrity and diversity of seed banks has already been demonstrated as vital to rehabilitating civilisation and there are multiple repositories all over the world, and while it is frightening enough to find this ark prone to flooding due to melting permafrost, it’s an even more arresting thought that there will be no place where these food crops might be grown because of radical changes in temperatures and long-term weather patterns.

fengsel or recidivism-rate

Recognising that for some, the loss of liberty is punishment enough, one progressive incarceration facility on a Norwegian island, garnering the reputation of the world’s nicest, is demonstrating itself as one of the most effective for rehabilitating criminals and has the lowest rate of re-offending.
The experimental prison on the island of Bastøy is just off the coast from Oslo and was once infamous for a violent uprising in an earlier incarnation as a juvenile detention colony in 1915 but since 1982 has embodied a model that is diametrically opposed to its roots—with inmates accommodated in cottages instead of cells, work the prison garden and are afforded other amenities, including high-quality education and skills-building programmes and guards that are trained social workers. The penal system of the Scandinavian countries is the exclusive bailiwick of expert criminologists and not the emotionally-charged plaything of politicians. Inasmuch as confinement is its own indignity (violence only begets violence) and can be reforming—for some victims of criminals, and there are murderers and rapists at this minimum security facility, no amount of punishment meted out could ever be enough. What do you think? Bastøy’s success rate suggests that taking vengeance out of the equation and replacing it with respect and redemption might be the best way to fight crime.

uidentifisert flygande objekt

Informed by Geoff Manaugh’s ever excellent BLDGBLOG, we learn that a Norwegian valley due to a collusion of geochemistry is a natural battery.
One of the parallel ranges is rich in copper and the opposite side zinc with a vein of sulphur in between. Even if there is adequate explanation for what’s known as the Hessdalen phenomenon and its ball lightning that were often taken for alien craft or even stranger things, it’s no less remarkable that Nature can prefigure human invention and makes me think of those infernal coal fires around the world or the naturally occurring nuclear fission in the central Africa. I wonder what other genius lies outdoors that we’re unable to recognise yet.

lido deck

In what seems like a scene from an increasingly more daunting and improbable action, demolition movie, as Super Punch informs, luxury automotive manufacturer Ferrari and a Norwegian cruise-line are teaming up to furnish the Shanghai to Tianjin route with a leviathan of a boat which will have a double-decker race track on board, among other amenities. Would you like this sort of vacation experience?  That’s a far cry certainly from a nice and sedate round of shuffle-board.