67.2804° N, 14.4049° E
On hags, dogs and maelstroms.
I am in Bodø. The Arctic Circle is south of me and that is not a sentence I have ever written before because it has never happened before. Even so, I came to Bodø (pronounced Buda) and was disappointed. It’s not the most beautiful city in itself because the Luftwaffe obliterated it and it was built back practical — they have heated pavements! — but, well, ugly. But stand in Bodø and look around, if the weather allows, and nothing is ugly because there is water and there are mountains. None of which I have encountered as the weather has either been overcast and drizzly, overcast and not drizzly or overcast and snowing and driving hail and bloody freezing. None of this has been conducive to tramping up mountains or getting into boats. The closest I have come to nature is peering out of the windows of the half dozen buses I’ve taken since I’ve been here. Usually the number 2 to the University, as I came here to attend a kick-off meeting about a project to highlight the best places to put Marine Protected Areas to best protect diversity. I emerged from that meeting thinking, my head is exploding with all the science (as it was mostly about data) but also, it’s great that so many clever people are putting their heads together to fix a problem. But also, why wasn’t this being done 30 years ago? I think lay people think scientists have far more answers and are far better connected and advanced than they actually are. If you are a scientist and want to shout at me for that, fill your boots in the comments below.
So me and the number 2 are very familiar with each other. Like everything I’ve so far encountered in Norway, it works. It should do, as this country is so goddamn expensive the pavements should be furry and gold plated alternately, as well as being heated. I have researched why sandwiches cost £10 here and coffees are at least £5, even — astonishingly — a sachet of instant decaf coffee that I bought yesterday at the otherwise impressive Jektsfartmuseum. £5 for a sachet! I have to think that Norway is actually Oz and there’s a little man behind a curtain laughing his head off at the dumb foreigners falling for it.
So Norway is expensive because wages are high and food is dear and taxes are high, due to the oil and gas industry raising salaries, and the government subsidising farmers to a stupid extent. All that I understand. But can’t they just reduce salaries, taxes and subsidies, reduce everything but equally and down to the next level, so that the country is then actually affordable for foreigners?
And that is why I am not in government. “Let’s just reduce salaries!”
Today was exciting, because I got a different bus. Yesterday at the science meeting, I was sitting next to three people who were introduced as local divers. Not only that but they ran a dive centre at Saltstraumen, where the world’s strongest maelstrom is. I love divers. Or, I love most divers. Not the underwater hunters who shoot tuna in the head or, in Saltstraumen, dive with a knife and stab wolf-fish. The other divers, who wouldn’t do that and who are the best sentinels we have about what is happening to the sea, because what is happening to the sea is not just the plastic or the noise or the pollution. It is the litter and the hunting. I will write about Saltstraumen and Frederic and Borghild who run Nord&NE dive centre, at a later date, because we talked for hours about what they see underwater, and why they think there is too much sport fishing, because they see the lines and hooks littering the seabed and the rocks (the strength of the currents pushing through Saltstraumen mean fishermen lose their equipment all the time. And they don’t fetch it back). When we had finished talking, Borghild offered to accompany me to The Bridge to look at the maelstroms, because it was the best time to see them. But it was also fiercely snow-raining (the kind which isn’t sure which it is but only that it wants to hit your face as hard as possible no matter how tight your hood), so I declined a ten-minute walk and accepted a lift. We walked down to under The Bridge (the national road 17) and watched the water. And this is what the water did:
Every sixth hour, 400 million m3 of water forces its way through the 3 km long and 150 m wide strait at speeds of up to 20 knots. This forms mighty whirlpools up to 10 m in diameter and 4-5 m deep.
(From VisitBodo.no)
The current has been recorded at 20 knots. That is faster than the container ship I travelled on was ever allowed to travel (they were supposed to stay at 14 knots but 18 was the limit).
It’s impressive. It was bloody freezing. The video is that long because had it been any longer my finger would have fallen off. I was standing watching the water four hours ago and my core temperature has only just come back to normal. But my goodness, the power of it.
This week, I wrote an op-ed — they called it a “guest essay” — for the New York Times. They called it The Price of Risk and they edited it carefully and I think very nicely. But someone in the art department chose this photo to illustrate it:
This is actually baffling, as my piece was all about how you prepare yourself properly to go into the wild. That means full waterproofs, not a white frock and hob-nailed boots. Also, I’m guessing the image was meant to convey the joy of being outside, but it could also be a woman being hunted.
It turns out when you publish in the New York Times, your Twitter timeline gets populated with porn, pro-lifers, various "the MSM doesn't cover this" issues and some Chinese mystery (because it was in Chinese but was probably pro-porn, anti-abortion and the MSM doesn’t cover this, but in Chinese). At this point I wanted to link to a really interested piece about exercise and how much it saves the state money etc etc but now I can’t find it. Also, it would be cheeky of me to get up on that pedestal when I’ve done nothing more than walk a mile back from a museum into town, all week.
Hags
I reviewed Victoria’s Smith new book Hags, which is out today. Buy it, it is excellent. And buy it also if you are a man or a dog: it shouldn’t be read just by middle-aged women like me. Especially buy it if you are a woman under 40 because it’s about you.
Animal hero of the week : Bamse
He was a fourteen-stone Saint Bernard, a Norwegian who is buried in Montrose, Scotland. Don’t google bamse because it is Norwegian for teddy bear and you won’t recover.
Tonight I’m taking the overnight train then an obscenely early bus to visit Namsos. I’m going there because it was the scene of a battle involving fishing trawlers, early in the war, before Norway gave up its two-month fight against the Nazis in 1940 (the usual word is “capitulated”), and before King Haakon and other Norwegians left on ships for the UK, where they ran a government in exile throughout the war. Bamse wasn’t in Namsos, but he was on a ship. He was ship’s dog on HMS Thorodd, a coastal patrol vessel, because he was taken onboard by the harbourmaster of the northern Cape island where Bamse lived, when the harbourmaster moved from the harbour to the sea. Bamse was an excellent ship’s dog and much loved. In 1940, the Thorodd was one of 13 Norwegian vessels to flee to the UK. After that, Thorodd was converted to a minesweeper and based at Montrose.
Bamse lifted the morale of the ship's crew, and became well known to the local civilian population. In battle, he would stand on the front gun tower of the boat, and the crew made him a special metal helmet. His acts of heroism included saving a young lieutenant commander who had been attacked by a man wielding a knife by pushing the assailant into the sea, and dragging back to shore a sailor who had fallen overboard. He was also known for breaking up fights amongst his crewmates by putting his paws on their shoulders, calming them down and then leading them back to the ship. One of Bamse's tasks in Scotland was to round up his crew and escort them back to the ship in time for duty or curfew. To do this, he travelled on the local buses unaccompanied, and the crew bought him a bus pass which was attached to his collar. Bamse would wander down to the bus stop at Broughty Ferry Road and take the bus down to Dundee. He would get off at the bus stop near his crew's favourite watering hole, the Bodega Bar, and go in to fetch them. If he could not locate his friends he would take the bus back to base.
That’s from Wikipedia and if it isn’t all true, it should be. Bamse also did a good sideline in lifesaving: in 1942, he was the only member of the ship’s crew to notice a sailor had gone overboard. He first barked to alert the humans, then jumped in after the sailor, who survived by holding onto Bamse’s fur because he couldn’t swim. Bamse could swim (but suffered from seasickness and would often cuddle up to sailors in their cabins for some comfort).
Dr. Willie Jarl Nilsen wrote this lovely account of Bamse’s other lifesaving incident, as it involved Nilsen’s father Lt. Commander Olav August Johan Nilsen.
The Thorodd was lying at Dundee docks. My father had gone on an evening walk along the quayside with Bamse following on, some distance behind him. A man suddenly appeared and attacked my father. His motive was probably robbery, and he closed in to attack my father with a knife. Bamse saw what was happening, and bounded up the quayside to the rescue. Rising up onto his hind legs he used his momentum and his great weight to push the man away from my father. Continuing to push him, Bamse steered the staggering man to the edge of the quay, and propelled him into the water below. What later happened with this man is unknown to me.
My mother has informed me that my father’s life was in real danger, and that he had been saved without doubt by the quick action of Bamse.
Bamse died in 1944. In 2006, he was awarded the PDSA Gold Medal, the highest award for animal bravery. His grave at Montrose is still well-attended, by people who seem to like leaving him bones.
He wasn’t stuffed.