Europe @ 2.4 km/h (9 page)

Unable to afford a cabin but desperate for sleep, I ask whether there is anywhere I could steal a few hours before our 4 am arrival in Bodø. The captain breaks his own ship’s rules by letting me kip in the hospital quarters. (Maybe the brig was full. I didn’t like to ask.)

169 km

Norway’s reputation as an outward-looking country is reinforced by a diverse social mix (although, as we have seen, immigration is a hot item on the political agenda here as elsewhere). In the capital, Oslo, Iraqis constitute the largest non-Nordic community. Here, 1000 km to the north in Bodø, it is an Iraqi who cuts my hair. Sharan, who speaks excellent English, sees the continued occupation of his native land in colonial and oil money terms. Surely he regards Norway as a land of opportunity, a paradise on earth?

‘Oh no,’ he sets me straight. ‘Most of the year it is cold and dark. And Norwegian women are busy and self-opinionated.’

I brace myself to pay the advertised price — equivalent to A$37 — but he insists this one’s for free. What unbelievable generosity.

173-175 km

It’s almost impossible to find a place to stay in Trondheim, booked out by Goths (Ostro-, Visi- and musical) here for Ozzie Osbourne’s tour date. For the second time in a week the visit of a famous person has taken over a town on my itinerary. (And Archbishop emeritus Tutu doesn’t even sing!) Must I check the Rolling Stones website to ensure there is no clash? On a hunch I do, only to see that we will be in Hamburg — a week apart. Time is on my side … but only just.

179-181 km

In Adelaide back in April 2007 I met Kolbein Lyng at a disability conference where we were the guest speakers. Upon learning of my impending visit to his country he did not hesitate. ‘You must visit me and let me take you fishing.’

And so at Andalsnes this warm June day he is there to greet me at the station — with his broad smile and booming voice. Accompanied by his partner, Sue O’Neill — an associate professor from Sydney University newly relocated to Molde, on Norway’s central-west coast — he plays host on a sightseeing tour that takes in Trollwall (Trolleveggen in Norwegian), a beetling cliff face famous throughout Scandinavia.

Late in the afternoon we drive 12 km the other side of Molde, to a spot above the boat landing at Fraenafjord. After carefully helping me into his 15 foot runabout, the professor rows me across the pond to the isle of Svansholmen where 45 years ago his father built a cabin.

Spoken Norwegian sounds like snowmelt. The language is babbling, playful, almost fey. And I have already taken to asking Norwegians what they think of their neighbours the Swedes. At this juncture Norwegians cease to be babbling, playful and fey. Even those who acknowledge that as a people they are inclined to be rulebound say that, in general, Swedes are even more so. According to the professor, his people sometimes say of themselves, ‘Inside every Norwegian there is a German’. (He doesn’t say whether this homunculus is struggling to get out — or to inhabit a Swede.)

We set out after breakfast on Sunday morning. Having again helped me into the rowboat at one end, Kolbein takes up his position at the other. Sue waves us off. I let Kolbein row — pure laziness on my part.

We both agree that I should have first go at trying to lure a fish to the rod, even though I have warned him that my uselessness at this task is one of my principal disabilities.

For half an hour the fish of Fraenafjord lie low. Just as I am about to give up there is a tug on the line. Unfortunately you gain no points for reeling in a tenacious tuft of seaweed. Kolbein disentangles the kelp and returns the rod to me. But my heart has gone out of the fight. As I lay down the line, he revs up the outboard. We round a cape of dazzling green and head into the next, wider fjord. There, another twenty minutes on, the miracle takes place. The effects of that second cup of tea I had for breakfast are beginning to make themselves felt in an insistent bladder, so — reaching into my rucksack to fetch my plastic urinal — I announce with all due modesty my intention to use this device and, at the risk of polluting one of Norway’s most pristine waterways, to empty its contents into the deep. Before I can finish my explanation, there is a second pull on the line, and after an impressive contest for mastery Kolbein hauls in a respectable-looking fish, perhaps 30 cm long, which he pronounces to be a cod.

Scarcely has it landed, gasping, on deck when there follows a third pull on the line and up comes a
langerfish
. The next ten minutes bring two more catches — both cod, the latter of them the biggest of today’s haul.

No conventional angler, I can at least lay claim to being part of a successful fishing expedition. And, although Kolbein brought them aboard, I know it was only my threat to contaminate their freshwater supply that induced these elusive creatures to quit their natural element. My contribution isn’t confined to putting the piss back into piscatorial pursuits, it turns out that Kolbein cannot immediately find the gaff he needs to prevent the big fellow from getting away. So I offer the nearest thing to hand, which happens to be my copy of Les Carlyon’s masterwork on the battles of the Western Front, which I’m reading in preparation for Belgium and France.

The cod doesn’t move again, proving nearly 90 years after the guns fell silent that — just as Les wrote —
The Great War
is still creating casualties.

183-185 km

This is the story of how I fell in with Norway’s latter-day Bonnie and Clyde. Per and Tina (not their real names), rather than meeting their deaths in a slow-motion cinematic shootout, have retired from a life of bank robbery to raise a family. Well, that’s their story — and they know where I live so I’m sticking with it. Passing strange, then, that we met outside a bank, eh?

I’d come as quickly as my wheels would carry me from Trondheim Central Station, battling the clock all the way. The train drew in at 2.50 pm but first my luggage needed stowing. It must have been spot on 3.15 when I rolled up to the door of my chosen bank. I knew they all closed at three, but this one had been so friendly just the other day, waiving that discouraging 50 kroner (A$6) transaction fee — and it had an equally ‘friendly’ entrance ramp. Today the tellers glanced up but refused to let me in, citing the late hour. They pointed to the post office opposite, but its only entrance was above a forbidding flight of steps.

So I waited, and waited, my annoyance increasing by the minute. It was then that Per and Tina pitched up. ‘Banks are real shits’ were Per’s first words to me. At that point, I couldn’t agree more. Then Per announced he that had an idea. ‘What, we should break in?’ I joked. No, he said with great earnestness, why didn’t I write a sign demanding entrance and pointing out that, as I’d told him, I had only 74 kroner (A$8) of the folding stuff in my possession?

So I penned a heartfelt plea which Per translated into Norwegian and pressed against the windowpane. More than one teller looked up and read it — and looked down and continued tallying.
⁶

Per and Tina, whose blue tattooed neck was quite riveting close up, now made the most generous of offers, ‘Why don’t you stay with us for the night?’ After a rapid self-consultation — Well, my locked bags are at the station, safe till tomorrow, so what have I got to lose? — I agreed.

At his car, parked nearby, I was introduced to their rather sullen eight-year-old daughter, and ten minutes later, after a successful raid on Burger King, Per let me into the secret of his hostility towards Norway’s banks. My innocent query as to what he did for a living elicited the answer, ‘I am a gangster’. And then, amending himself to include his life partner, ‘
We
are gangsters’.

While I was pondering what exactly I had got myself into, Per gunned the engine and we roared north out of Trondheim, our destination — and this is the hardest part of the story to believe, but a world atlas will confirm it’s not made up — a town on the highway and rail line east to Sweden, 30 km from the coast, called Hell.

These days my passport has a visa stamp from Hell — issued by a petrol station, it’s one of the only visas you can get in Western Europe these days — and there is even, appropriately enough, a chapter of the Coffin Cheaters’ motorbike gang on a hilltop outside the town.

Per and Tina live in a country villa 6 km from Hell. Built in 1876, it is one of a row on the edge of a farmed field. Only upon entering the house did my doubts about their story vanish. There, in the parlour and again in the living room, were more clocks — some of them quite ornate pieces — than one dwelling could ever need. Clearly, they were a serious couple of ‘collectors’ and all I can say to anyone who doubts that their timepieces were ill-gotten gains is that if you’d spent 24 hours with Per and Tina you’d be as certain as I am that they were stolen goods.

Per — who looked a dead ringer for Angry Andersen — told me he and Tina had both done prison time. She would go in and he would come out; he would go in and she would come out (I started to picture them as a pair of cuckoos) but now they had gone straight because, tattooed Tina told me, ‘we don’t want our daughter’s future to be affected’. Per said he now worked on an oil rig — four weeks on, four weeks off — while Tina was settling down to life as a rural housewife, not exactly living in Hell but only five minutes’ drive away.

Keeping my rucksack close by at all times, I used it as a pillow when asleep on their sofa, and on being deposited back at Trondheim Station next day I was relieved, but — whew! — only of my fears.

186-188 km

To Hell and back, then, and from Trondheim back to Hell, and on to Sweden. Outsiders have spoken of the Swedes being reticent, private and humourless. The first two of these I am primed for, but the notion of a humourless people strikes me as most unlikely. At last my European quest has found an object: for the next few days I will turn sleuth, ferreting out the Swedish sense of humour wherever it may lurk.

On my first full day in the country you might say I sniff success. Looking for a glue to put together one of my diaries which is falling apart, I ask at a supermarket in the ski resort of Åre where a helpful sales assistant recommends an iconic Swedish brand, Karlsons Universalkallister (‘stronger than Araldite’, he informs me) and then adds, mysteriously, ‘You will know it because of the red donkey’.

Donkey. Glue. Hmm. Having located it, I see the picture of a braying red ass. Swedish is a difficult language for a foreigner so the assistant translates the writing on the tube. ‘The donkey is quoted as saying, “Everyone’s using Karlsons Kallister except for me, but that’s why I’m a donkey.”’ Does this tickle the funny bone of a wheelchair user in a Swedish supermarket? Oh no, far better than that. It leaves me rolling in the aisles.

189 km

A Swedish restaurateur from Åre gives me more insight this morning into how the Swedes see themselves, assuring me, ‘We Swedish people are mellow’. This must be the other side of the mirror in which Sweden’s neighbours — when they look this way — mistake ‘mellow’ for ‘withdrawn’ or ‘secretive’.

191-196 km

Everyone has heard of Loch Ness, where since 1933 sightings have been reported and a thriving tourist trade has grown up around a certain creature of the deep. But outside Sweden, I dare say, few have heard of Storsjöodjuret, another lacustrine monster whose existence that has been the subject of fierce debate among its human neighbours — and for far longer than Nessie, indeed all the way back to 1635. Forget the Swedish sense of humour, I tell myself: here is a far worthier quest — something of which people claim to have unmistakable evidence. And, who knows but that the monster itself may have a Swedish sense of humour?

The town of Östersund clings to Lake Storsjön (rhyming with ‘distortion’). As I head round the lake towards my hostel, I see a park bench with a plaque attached, declaring it to be a ‘monster-spotting platform’ or, more formally, ‘an observation station funded by the European Development Fund’.

On a bridge over the lake I meet Mats Malmqvist, 52, a municipal official and confirmed sceptic. When I ask whether he believes in the monster’s existence, he gives me an eloquent thumbs-down.

The Swedish authorities — living up to their nation’s reputation for sobriety rather than playfulness — have quite rightly placed the monster under a protection order, and it seems to be working. To date, no reports have been received of anyone injuring or killing a monster in Lake Storsjön (or anywhere else in the country, come to that).