The Furthest We've Gone...

Yesterday we reached the geographic zenith of the trip.  This bridge - crossed in the far reaches of Lappish Norway, on our way from one part of Finland to another - sits at 70°198947 N. The name of this place is Tana Bru.  There were a few low buildings, a store, leafless trees, grey skies, the swift Tana river and a small, wet pull off where we could park.  From there, our road turned back down towards the equator.
The experience had us thinking about the other extreme points of the trip, where we'd been the furthest east, west and south.  Here's our little cartography project.

It seems that we always reach these geographic extremes during cloudy, dismal weather.  It was a cold, windy day on the southern coast of Cyprus when we walked the Limassol shoreline, at 34°664911 N.  There were stacks of unused beach chairs and faded signs for "ombrellas," a few fishermen, rocky sand, strip clubs and blank holiday apartments.  Cyprus certain can feel like the sunny south, but in those earliest days of March we had no desire to swim.  From the beach, it's about two hundred and forty miles south to Port Fuad, Egypt.

Looking for lighthouses and glaciers, we rounded the western tip of Iceland's Snæfellsnes Peninsula, which is the furthest west we reached in our westernmost country (-23°973541 E).  The Azores are more westerly, but we don't intend to go.
The land out on the Snæfellsnes was dominated by volcanic rock and bright-green grass.  The waterside cliffs were full of bird nests, the air was full of mist.  It's a land of myth, and the local volcano was chosen by Jules Verne as the entry point into the center of the earth.

More than three thousand miles east, on the polluted shores of the Caspian sea, Baku was our other longitudinal extreme.  Oil derricks and harbor cranes hung in the sky, the city was gnawing itself to pieces.  Azerbaijan isn't a pretty place, and the Caspian was tar black in the January light.
The culture there is as much Asian as European, a mixture of Islam, Russia and its own independent fire.  Taking a night train overland through the dessert from Georgia, we awoke to grey scrub and brown earth.  The sea and the city, when we got there, seemed like the last place on earth.
As nearly as we can figure it, we reached 49°887371 E.

So, if these were our poles, where was the middle?  After some quick calculations, it seems that the east-west, north-south midpoint of our trip lands at 52°431929 N, 12°956915 E, which is about ten miles west of Berlin.
We've actually been to one (dubiously accurate) geographic center of Europe, in the Belarusian town of Polotsk.  It didn't feel like the middle, though.  Berlin seems much more accurate, even if our methods are a little unscientific.

Waffles Vs. Pancakes

The waffles were left to the professionals.  Here we have "Vaffelbui," one of the lower key food tents at Seljord's Dyrsku'n festival.  With no olfactory input, one would think it was some sort of sewing group.  Three ancient women and one man, seated at a long table, each hard at work behind a white machine. All wore colorful floral aprons and made no small talk, focusing on their equipment: a waffle iron, bowl of batter and ladle.  Sweetshop workers.

Waffles are a tradition in Norway, eaten most often as an afternoon snack with a dollop of jam or sour cream and a cup of coffee or tea.  Norwegian waffles have a very specific, very pretty, shape - like a paper snowflake cut to resembles a series of hearts.  Or a five leaf clover, if there was such a thing.  They are light and thin, without the deep ditches of the Belgium variety.  Norway's waffles are foldable, stackable and pretty much uniformly delicious.

As for the pancakes.  Pannekaker are most certainly a traditional food... except, these aren't them.  Don't be fooled by the folk costumes!  Norwegian pancakes look and taste almost identical to crepes and Swedish pancakes.  These fluffy bad boys are much more IHOP than IKEA.  At both the Dyrsku'n fair and the harbor market in Oslo, festively dressed flippers were enlisted to give an extra edge in the great Waffle vs Pancake battle.  Let's call them Flapjack Jills, shall we?  Pretty in their bunads, they poured, flipped and plated the pancakes with smiles.  While the waffles piled up, the American-style pancakes were gone as soon as they were ready.  Pancakes 1, Waffles 0.

The thing about Norwegian waffles is that they're not as time sensitive. The appeal of pancakes is their freshness, the way butter absolutely vanishes into one when its warm. When I was a child, I would go ahead and apply another pat. If I don't see it, I may not taste it! (I went through a chubby phase). Waffles, particularly Norwegian ones, are great at any temperature. Case in point: our first taste of Norwegian vafler was on the ferry from Bergen to Stavanger, a pair of them, folded in half and plastic wrapped. It was around 1pm and everyone was having them. The limp package, plastic wrap and all, was thrown into a microwave before we could shout Holy carcinogen emission, Batman! and served with a tub of bringebær (raspberry) jam.  It hit the spot.   Pancakes 1, Waffles 1.

Testament to the To Go nature of the Norwegian waffle, folding them in half appears to be the favored method of both carrying and eating them.  An afternoon waffle with jam and tea is probably still the ideal waffle eating scenario.  But this is the 21st century and a big wad of folded ones consumed greedily on the go with a cup of coffee somehow balanced on top or below is modern waffling in practice.

Which is maybe why these non-traditional pancake stations are pushing hard for the 'traditional' angle. Perhaps waffles have gotten too commoditized, have been pushed too far from their cast iron origins. The pancakes wind up being a slow food version of the same thing, eaten just about the same way, with the same accoutrements, but on a plate with a knife and fork. Homemade, hand-flipped, fresh off the griddle.

Like the waffles, these flapjacks weren't very sweet, but the toppings on hand were.  Lumpy, sweetened apple sauce, jam, pink strawberry cream and a big bowl of sugar.  Also available for smothering were big, yellow blocks of butter in varying states of decimation.  Again, a hot pancake is pretty much the best thing ever for butter slathering.  The going's always a little bumpier with waffles.  Waffles 1, Pancakes 2.

I was a little surprised by the lack of variation from station to station.  No blueberries thrown into the batter.  No cornmeal or whole grain.  No chocolate chips or chocolate syrup (both blasphemous in my book).   There was an unwritten rule about what these pancakes should be, even if not "Norwegian." Maybe this is the beginning of a new tradition - maybe some people made the switch because it's a lot easier to keep re-using and/or clean a griddle than it is a series of waffle irons.  There's something to be said about the experts chosen to man the Vaffelbui.  We saw many catastrophic gos at our hotel's buffet-breakfast waffle iron.  Style and skill points go to Waffles (and the Vaffelbui crew), for sure.  But you've always got to leave room for new traditions.

Eating With Immigrants in Grønland

Down a flight of stairs, in a bare room with orange walls, Somali men gather in the heart of Norway's capital to eat lunch and sip coffee.  This is the great normalcy of Oslo's Grønland neighborhood, where Iraqis, Vietnamese Kinh, Pakistanis and ethnic Norwegians rub shoulders.  It's a place where the smell of cumin and roasting meat wafts down the alleyways and people of all religions shop at the same Filipino fruit stand.  We ate two lunches and a dinner in Grønland, enjoyed ourselves a lot and discovered something new about what it means to be Norwegian.

Jubba - our downstairs lunch spot - is more popular with the Grønland locals than its famous Somali neighbor, Salaama, which looked louche and red-tinted from the sidewalk.  There, the tables were covered and the atmosphere was almost formal.  At Jubba, formica and counter-service sufficed.  The place was full of regulars, and the word "tourista" made its way from table to table when we came in.
We Americans were given forks and knives, the Somalis ate with their hands.  The menu was given to us verbally: "we have meat, fish or chicken," the chef announced.  Others were given more choice - there were various pastas and a strange type of chopped pancake called canjeelo.  Everyone was given a banana.  A bowl of sauce and a squeeze bottle of spice were put on the table.  The man who brought them said "strong" and "epicé," sucking in his breath to illustrate how hot it was.  Men at other tables repeated the words, one man said "spicy."
The food was really very tasty.  The chicken was moist and well spiced, the fish - coated in ochre powder - was reminiscent of something cooked in a tandoor.

Underneath a skyway, a saturday flea market bubbled with different voices and cultures.  Women in headscarves jostled up against blonde women with tattoos under their t-shirts.  A street away, tired-eyed derelicts drank their morning beers.  Next door, middle-eastern men sipped coffee.  The boulevards of Grønland are full of Turkish barbershops and Persian clothing boutiques.  There are Islamic centers and churches.  It's a place where anybody can feel at home.

At Lahoree Dera, the food was from further east.  We ate Pakistani lamb Lahori haleem and a vegetarian mix of chana and saag.  The spinach and chickpeas were spiced with nutmeg and chili.  The haleem was a thick, orange lentil and lamb paste that stuck to the spoon and had a slow-building heat.  We were served a basket of nan bread to sop it up.

In a testament to the peaceable mixing of cultures, it's not uncommon in Oslo to see restaurants that advertise both "Indiansk" and "Pakistanske" food.  At Lahoree Dera, the line was a little more clear cut.  "The restaurant is Pakistani," the man behind the counter said with certainty.  When I asked him if he was from Lahore, though, he said no.  "I'm from Afghanistan," he chuckled.  The television had advertisements for Afghan cell-phone companies and video clips of rockets flashed on the screen.

Norway has long embraced immigration, especially by asylum seekers and people from war zones.  In Kosovo and Bosnia it seemed as though everyone had a relative here.  While the largest immigrant groups, by far, are Poles and Swedes, they aren't as culturally visible.  The only Polish restaurant we could find was closed when we visited, and Swedish culture is hard (for an outsider) to distinguish from Norwegian.
In contrast, people from the middle east, Africa and South-Asia have become distinct parts of the capital's cultural map. At Cedar Sunrise coffee shop, the Lebanese owners play host to caffeine drinkers from all over the world.  Right on Grønland boulevard, with tables spilling out to the edge of traffic, the cafe is a focal point for local greetings and gossip.  The kaffe au laits were strong and expertly made, the baristas call out to everyone by name.

At Mama Africa, on the second floor of the central bus-station, the Ethiopian food is spicy and served with yards of injera, the porous flatbread so popular in East African cuisine.  A man there told us that his entire family lives in Washington D.C., but that America was "too hot" for him.  He blamed his asthma, and the southern swampiness.  He likes Oslo, but wishes he could be around people he's used to.

The bus station was full of people rushing from place to place - most of them didn't even seem to notice the dark restaurant serving doro wat and beyaynetu.  Those that did stop in seemed to be a mixture of the curious and the practiced.  Mama Africa was a pleasant mix of cultures - there were Ethiopian friends of the owners, Norwegian families, tourists from continental Europe, the two American travelers and a few Indian young people.  We all ate with our hands, drank coffee and listened to the mixing of languages.  It was fun, it felt like Oslo, we left very full.

Wharfside Norway

In Arendal, we finally gave in to the pier pressure.  It's a particular societal pressure, to turn your chair outward toward the water and have a mid-day beer.  Arendal is known for its pretty, chi-chi dock and for its local beer (delicious Arendals).  On a sunny Saturday afternoon, people pulled in on their motorboats from the suburbs that are scattered across the nearby islands and peninsulas.  Most of these well-heeled brunchers were heading to join the rosé sipping set.  We joined the already settled in crowd at Fiskebrygga ("Fish Wharf").  A different sort of 'in' crowd.  The type we always feel lucky to join.

The older set at Fiskebrygga carried newspaper cones to their tables, filled with golden brown fish and chips.  We ordered the fiskekaker - a flattened and fried version of fiskeboller.  The Fish Wharf professes that these are the best fish cakes on the southern coast.  The trio of fish and flour patties, which oddly resemble English muffins in this photo, tasted elegant, a little sweet, dense but fluffy.  They were served pub-style, with potato salad, a packaged tab of butter and some slices of white bread.  The thing about dock-sides is that they have a salty quality about them.  There's something that makes you want to use your hands, have something a little greasy or a little messy.  Something completely simple. 

At the center of Pollen, the name of Arendal's rectangular inner harbor, this fishing boat sold peel-and-eat shrimp, small crabs and big ones - which were split in half by hand before being bagged up for customers.  It was the sort of harbor lunch that you brought home to enjoy, at least here in Arendal where the crowd isn't necessarily one to sit on the steps and tear into shellfish.  The scene is something we now expect from a Norwegian dock.  Norway is the world's second largest exporter of seafood (after China) - but there's still plenty kept in the country to go around.

Reker, shrimp, most often show up in piles atop halved round rolls and stuffed into split baguettes with a slice of lemon on top and bed of mayo below.  But this is how Norwegians like their little pink crustaceans best.  Into the gusty port air, a plume of shellfish steam goes up like a smoke signal.  Open for business!  It was the first thing we saw when we stepped off the ferry in Stavanger.  This man, sorting through his freshly steamed catch.  The scampi (long clawed mini lobsters with a body about the length of a cigar) were separated out and placed in a blue, plastic bag.  The rest were available to be scooped up and weighed and given to waiting customers.

Stavanger's harbor was that perfect mix of luxury and grit.  Of life by the water and life on the water.  Boat shoes and neck tattoos.  As Merlin put it earlier, Stavanger's history is one of 'depression and wealth, boom and bust' all tied to the sea.  So, its dockside life has that extra edge of energy that comes from a sense of desperation. I've always loved the term 'watering hole,' because there's a suggestion that there's something life giving, thirst quenching and habitual about visits and returns.  Sometimes, it just fits a place so well... and dockside pubs are often that place.  Under the canvas awnings outfitted with heat lamps, men find the drop to drink they craved so much when they were out there with water, water everywhere.

A raucous maritime bar wreaks of jubilation to be back on land, but also a strange sense of sorrow to have left the sea.  At least, I get that sense.  Piers have an atmosphere all there own.  The way the water intensifies sunlight and seagulls squawk energetically, hit the senses sharply.  But then there's a rhythm to it that builds up.  There's that melodically melancholy squeaking of docked boats, the creak of their wood, heavy like sighs.  And when you watch kids sit on the edge of a quay looking out, you can almost see them creating a memory that they won't necessarily think of in words.  Above, the wharf in Oslo - a tip of a calm in a great, busy city.

Of course, Oslo's harbor had its resident shrimp boat, scooping out servings.  There were at least fifty tents set up this Saturday, some sort of food festival that included farmer's stands, outposts of the Norwegian grocery chain Meny and a ridiculous array of prepared food.  It was everything from chicken and rice to waffles and baked goods, an all you can eat herring station and the requisite fish and chips.  But the shrimp guy was still there taking care of his loyal customers.  When you're docked in the water, it's a lot harder to get lost in a crowd.

Seljord Dyrsku’n Days

In the granite mountains in the heart of Norway, where the fields are rocky and the pine trees grow thick, we wandered for hours among antique tractors and penned sheep.  We ate heavy food, breathed in country air, listened to the music and voices of tradition.
Festivals and country fairs are a traveler's holy grails.  There is always a lot to see, there's always plenty of "culture," there are opportunities for photos and good food, strange happenings and chances to really get at a country's soul.  So we made sure to make it to the Seljord Dyrsku’n, the largest farm festival in Norway and a perfect way to begin the Autumn.

In a beautiful courtyard, with the red, blue and white Norwegian flag flapping overhead, proud farmers showed off their husbandry, their animals, their brocaded skirts and cowboy hats.  The stables on three sides were purpose built for the fair, and were full of animals.  The heifers were buffed and brushed to a high gloss, the horses were groomed until they shone.
The Dyrsku’n began in 1856, as a simple cattle show put on by the local Telemark government.  The event has grown to include show-goats, horses, sheep and even - in the exhibition barn - pigs and llamas.  The animals are shown in some obscure set of categories, with age and breed seeming to play a part.  This young agriculturalist and his charge were enviably calm.

Watching the cows being judged was a bemusing and somewhat silly experience.  It's difficult to get a group of bovines to do exactly what they're told, especially with a crowd and strange sounds booming around them.  There was a lot of milling around and frightened lowing.  The owners tried to keep things as calm as possible, but it wasn't easy.  We're not sure if temperament was factored into the judging or not, but the more phlegmatic animals seemed to score the highest.  A young girl in traditional dress was enlisted to hand out ribbons and diplomas, which she did shyly but with great accuracy - only a few times did she bestow a prize upon an undeserving farmer.

Of course, like fairs anywhere, there are spinning attractions and fried foods at the Dyrsku’n.  Unlike fairs in other places, though, the noise and chaos are kept to a minimum.  There are no barkers and the rides and pop-shot booths don't play music.  And through it all, surrounded by green mountains and under September sun, there is a parade of heifers and fiddles.  For a few moments on the midway, as the cows go past, it feels as much like the 19th century as the 21st.  Everyone stops and claps, a few young animals kick up their heels.  There are top hats and black vests, young men in sneakers.  The audience holds paper plates loaded with waffles and sausages.  The Dyrsku’n is a celebratory festival, not really a carnival.

There are two distinct parts to the fair, and each side is kept somewhat separate from the other.  There is the country fair exhibition, where the pigs are shown and flowers are worn in the hair.  There's also the trade show, where excavators gleam and chainsaws rev.  If the first part of the fair is laden with nostalgia and pancake batter, the second is very of the moment.  Old men in rubber boots get excited over brochures, young men climb into tractor cabs and kick at snowblower screws.

We ate pancakes with sweet applesauce, baked potatoes and lamb sausage.  We basked in the autumnal sun.  We listened to a band play their string instruments and watched a young couple dance. There's something pleasing about spending the day around people who've dressed up.  In the hazy spirit of Thomas Hardy, the fair had us dreaming of yesteryear. Because nobody spoke in English, it was almost believable - as though maybe Seljord really was a forgotten place, where young maids walked with their goats and old women made cauldrons of mushroom soup.

In some ways, the Dyrsku’n trade show is more for the Telemark farmers than the competitions are.  The fair's website proclaims that one can "find almost anything that money can buy – from the very latest in agricultural machinery to old clocks, sports gear and ecological food."  There are almost six hundred exhibitors.  Even local car salesmen have booths.  We saw a man selling herring in a sea captains cap and Finnish saunas lined up alongside pellet stoves.  Cherry pickers loomed over it all like giant cattails.

Tens of thousands of fairgoers descend upon Seljord every year, and a lot of them stay the night.  In nearby fields, scores of RV's were camped with lawn-chairs and barbeques arranged messily between them.  It looked like a happening scene.  Most of the vehicles had Norwegian license plates.  The town - not a big place - was overrun.  Men in bright yellow vests and mittens tried to keep the traffic flowing, but it was difficult.  We imagined what it must be like at night, with music wafting in the darkness and meals cooked under the stars.

When we arrived at the Dyrsku’n, the sky was dark and there was a fine drizzle in the air.  We had blue skies and bright sun after half an hour.  It was cold again by the time we were leaving, with a fine-edged September wind.  As we drove east, back towards Oslo, it felt as though the fall had found us there in the mountains.  When we arrived in the city that night, Seljord felt very far away, as though it was something we were remembering from childhood or a book.

The Telemark Canal

Canals are that forgotten collection of map lines.  For most, an expanse of land is crossed by road or rail, the earthly passage made along firm trails.  The road grid is expanding like fast vines.  By airplane, the points are connected in the abstract, reduced to points in time - flightpaths exist in thin air.  Canals on the other hand - those flat and blue marvels of antique engineering - are relics. They silt in, they're clogged with weeds, they lie disused.  Old buildings line their shores, their purposes as obscure as the mud along the bottom.  It's not really a sad thing.  Unlike a road or a stretch of disused rip-rap, a canal can revert so peacefully to nature.  It's only water.
The Telemark Canal runs sixty five smooth miles between Skien and Dalen, connecting a collection of long lakes and rivers.  The canal is noteworthy for its complex lock system - there are 18 wooden-sided chambers in all, scattered along the length, still in about the same shape as they were in 1861.  Boats still use it; in fact, it's a point of Norwegian pride.

When the Victoria approaches a lock, it's with a proud sashay - the boat glides into the narrow chambers so smoothly that it seems to be on rails.  The boat is beautifully kept, with worn and polished wood and bright green decks.  It's hard to believe that she's over a hundred years old, or that she's been in these Telemark waters since 1882.  Every day, in theory, the boat makes a languorous, ten hour journey - depending on the day, it might be from foothills to seashore or the opposite, from the coast up towards the mountains.  People get on and off with cameras, it's more a tourist operation than transport.

Touristy as it is, the ship's journey is made with all the perfect formality and pageantry that can be afforded a distinguished old dame.  Each lock is taken in stride, with salutes to the men on shore and patient sinking. Watching the ship descend the locks in Ulefoss - there are three chambers, and it takes about forty minutes - is like watching someone regal come slowly down a staircase, attended to on all sides by a busy retinue.  This mechanical process is made very graceful.
The locks are operated by hand, opened and shut by two young men.  First, they close the aft gates.  Then they open the downriver ports, letting all the water drain into the next chamber - this is a loud and frothy happening, accompanied by the slow settling of the boat into the chamber.  Finally, they open the forward gates and the Victoria moves ahead into the next chamber.

The Telemark canal was built in two stages, and - when it was completed in 1982 - was called the "eighth wonder of Europe."  Not only did the waterway service the southern inland, but it also linked east and west Norway, creating a safer and more reliable route between the coasts.  Free from maritime storms and waves, the journey was usually faster than the ocean route.
It's difficult to image now, with Norway's miles of smooth tarmac and whisper-quiet trains, but the canal was a major development in the nineteenth century.  It's not the most mountainous of Norway's regions, but the Telemark landscape is far from flat.  There are also dozens of lakes and rivers.  The water criss-crosses the terrain in long valleys, making overland travel difficult.  Being able to link together these bodies of water was important and arduous.  It took a crew of five hundred men almost five years to blast and dig through the rock, construct the locks and even the falls.

Ulefoss is the last downstream lock stairway before Lake Norsjø, where the going is easy for several miles. The first mate had his jacket off as he stood on the prow, guiding his ship through her descent.  It was raining a little, but the sun was out and it was warm.  He was friendly to us few landlubbers on shore, and even asked one of us to help him secure a line.
After the last gate was opened, the man put his jacket back on - complete with shining epaulets - and gave an exaggerated, stiff-backed salute to the two men who had worked the ratchets and levers.  Once the Victoria was out of sight, these younger men lit cigarettes, got in their cars and zoomed out of the parking lot.

In more peaceful Lunde, about ten minutes drive upriver, the single lock has a tranquil, reedy calm. Much of the Telemark's route is built up with factories, mills and towns.  In Lunde, the canal is nothing but a peaceful waterway.  The water is glass-clear, birds flit along the banks, wooden rowboats are tied up under trees.

Close at hand, with its bottom mired in muck and its steam pipe listing to one side, sits one of Norway's oldest construction machines, the frog-green "Mudder'n'."  The name, almost too predictably, means "muddy."  A steam dredge bought in 1890, the canal's snaggle-toothed workhorse was used for decades to keep the lock channels deep enough and to free up detritus washed in during floods.  It's been fixed up a little, but the deck is littered with leaves and the gears are rusted.  Compared with the canal boats, it has received very little love.

We found nothing in Lunde except a shuttered cafe and a parking lot.  In September, the canal traffic is starting to cool off.  The farms close to the water had tightly wrapped bales of hay and grain combines parked in the fields - a few late season roses bloomed in someone's garden.  We felt alone there, by the banks of the Telemark.  It was funny to imagine the canal's heyday, when it represented progress and new horizons.  We realized, looking at the map, that we'd already crossed over it a few times, without even realizing it.

In Abandoned Factories and Red Barns, a Capital of Culture

Vestfossen Cellulose Paper Factory declared bankruptcy in 1967 and was closed for good by 1973.  The town of Vestfossen was hit hard by the industrial crisis around this time, when petroleum had just been discovered off Norway's coast and was pumped straight into the economy - washing out almost all other industry in its gush.  Vestfossen lost its identity when this and other factories closed... but found a new one when they reopened.  In 2003, Vestfossen Cellulose was rebirthed as Vestfossen Kunstlaboritorium.  Other art spaces soon followed and the small town is now an unlikely art lover's mecca, a cultural capital in the middle of nowhere.

The town's industrial space being turned into art space isn't what's so surprising.  Artists have been drawn to the high ceilings, huge windows and low-to-no rental cost of abandoned factories for decades, all around the world.  It's just so wonderfully random that it happened here.  Approaching Vestfossen, you'd be shocked that it was ever an industrial town.  Idyllic farmland stretches in every direction.  We were surprised to find a real center at all, a main street with two grocery chains, a pub, a restaurant, a caffe and bakery - and posters publicizing the newest exhibitions around town.  Above is an installation piece called "Hay Harvesting Contraption." That's not true.  It's just a rake, but once art is on the mind, it's hard to not see everything as a work of it.

Vestfossen Kunstlaboritorium (Art Laboratory) is currently showing pieces from Jack Helgesen's collection.  A number of his other pieces made up the very first show at the Laboratory in 2003, two years after artist Morten Viskum (best known for replacing olives with newborn rats in jars on grocery store shelves across Norway - the Rat/Olive Project) bought the old factory.  It was a big get for the new museum, as Helgesen's collection brought internationally renowned artists' work to the little village of Vestfossen. Around Norway, the Laboratory is now considered one of the very best spaces for showing contemporary art in the country.  It's really hard to beat a four floor space like this.

When we asked a local how many visitors they get and if they'd ever thought about having a hotel here so that more people would maybe come, she looked at us a little blankly.  Then, she realized what we meant. "It is really more for locals.  To raise the quality of life."  We'd just assumed they'd want more tourism.  Who doesn't?  Well, this is Norway, home of the 3rd highest GDP per capita in the world.  It is one of the world's most expensive countries, but Norwegians earn such high wages that their actual cost of living translates to one of the world's lowest.  They're doing that well.  So, while farming communities in, say, America may bring in a traveling theater group or show some local artist's work on the walls of the post office to bring a sense of culture to their village, Vestfossen's borrows a Roy Lichtenstein. 

In a lot of ways, collector Helgesen's story is very much like Vestfossen's itself.  He was an elevator repair man by trade, who collected art as a passion-driven hobby.  When Norway's petroleum boom began, he found himself with more disposable income than he knew what to do with. "A lot of Norwegians did," the woman at the Art Laboratory told us.  "Villages that were more... the poorer jobs, when we were a colony... all of a sudden, people's quality of life was great."  'Quality of life' is a phrase we've heard used a lot here in Vestfossen.  The fact that they consider art such a vital part of that is what makes the place so special.

Fredfoss Kulturpark opened around the same time as the Kunstlaboritorium.  Formerly Fredfoss Uldvarefabrik - a textile factory - it boomed in the early 20th century, recessed, had a World War II spike in business and then shuttered when all the rest of the factories did.  Its closing left nearly 200 workers unemployed.  It has more than made it up to the community ever since.  The Cultural Center has an art therapy workshop open to anyone who would like to work through mental troubles through art.  It also rents out studio space to nearly a dozen artists in residence.   We visited a woodworker named Lars, who crafts beautiful guitars and custom frames from local wood.  "I prefer Norwegian wood," Lars said.  "It is important to use what you have."

One can only imagine that when these big factories were built they were seen as blights on the scenery.  Sure, job creating piles of brick, but piles of brick blocking out views of the beautiful Vestfosselva river and surrounding countryside nonetheless.  Reusing them, revitalizing the space that they take up, makes the buildings themselves kind of like found art.  "Did the Laboratory start a trend? Did it attract artists to the area and then that's why more sprung up?" Again, the answer we received was humble and matter of fact.  "We just saw that we had these buildings - and we had to do something with them."  Use what you have.

What Joran Tone Gjerde had was a family farm, inherited from her father who housed his animals in this red barn.  "I am not in farming, so I did this,"  she told us, while crouching barefoot next to a television with a live goldfish inside.  We crawled over the knitwear covered floor to meet her.  You see, what Joran has done is turn the big red barn into "Sanselåven," Sense Barn, an interactive art exhibition space that allows children (little ones and big, awkward ones) to explore all their senses.  The current installation was brought over from Denmark - a four room world of whimsy that involves such textural wonders as a ceiling completely covered in open umbrellas and a freezer filled with books.   It was as magical as everything else in Vestfossen. Ripe with imagination, fanciful purpose and the notion that everyone deserves art.