Svartediket - an attempted review

Last night I finally got around to seeing Svartediket at Den Nationale Scene.

The play focuses on Svartediket, a lake which is still the main source of drinking water for the citizens of Bergen. The lake is said to have been a popular spot for getting rid of unwanted babies, dumping the bodies of murdered/executed people and committing suicide in the late 1700s, and when over 1000 people became sick in 2006 because of the water they were drinking, the local authorities desperately tried to cover up the fact that the bacteria responsible for the illness was caused by decaying corpses. The idea that the citizens of Bergen have for a long time been ‘drinking the dead’ was the main inspiration behind the play.

Svartediket

It was a fantastic production, and very interesting indeed, and I would strongly recommend seeing it (to anyone who understands Norwegian).

Sigurd Sele as Deinar Deinaren


Stian Isaksen as Massken

The play first came to my attention some months ago, I will admit, because a musician I like was cast. Kristian Espedal (a.k.a. Gaahl, of Gorgoroth, Trelldom and Wardruna fame) played the role of the Norse God Heimdall. However, if there was a weak point in the play, it was probably him. I can understand that in playing a Norse God one might want to convey a sense of dignity and appear somewhat restrained, but if he’d been much stiffer he’d have fallen over backwards.

Gaahl as Heimdall

Den Nationale Scene, where the play is currently being performed

Klubb Fantoft

As mentioned before, I managed to land myself a wee job at Klubb Fantoft, and on Friday I had my first shift. It was a long night because we had to be there early to set everything up, and of course we were there quite a while afterwards cleaning up the mess (and drinking beer that was otherwise going to be thrown away, but that's another story).

Me in my funky Klubb Fantoft tshirt

I was supposed to be doing shift leader training, but the guy was going through everything so quickly that I'm really not sure I could do it yet. Thankfully I have another couple shifts with someone else in charge first. Anyhow, it was quite fun when the punters started coming in, and I even served a few actual Norwegians - gasp! You don't see many of those around Fantoft.

The games room at Klubb Fantoft. I couldn't really find a decent photo of the main bar area. Perhaps I'll have to do another video tour ;)

Everything went swimmingly until 2.30am when we had to throw everyone out, and a few big Russian guys took it upon themselves to start fighting outside, even producing hammers and a crowbar from somewhere. At that point there was a huge amount of panicking and police-calling. It has to be said that I'm hard to phase, because I couldn't even get that worked-up when the bar manager had to fight to stop some other students from joining in with the fighting. I can't quite decide if that's a good or bad trait when you're working in a club (calm in a crisis - no?). He, on the other hand, was really quite shaken by the whole ordeal. It would appear that Norwegians don't much go in for bashing each others' brains in. That's nice.

Varg Veum

On Thursday evening we went to a film premier, as you do.

It was the premier for the new Varg Veum film, Skriften På Veggen, which is the seventh installment in a series of films based on the books written by Gunnar Staalesen (three of which have been translated to English - have any of you read them?).

Having never been to a film premier before, I found it all rather exciting in a very humble sort of way. It was lovely really - the audience were all given cups of fish soup to ward off the cold, and the people involved with making the film wandered freely through the crowd and seemed quite chuffed with the whole affair.

Author of the Varg Veum books, Gunnar Staalesen (right), telling us all about his involvement with the project

Lead actor Trond Espen Seim (right). We were mostly there because my friends want to jump his bones XD

On the way back to the tram after the premier, we stopped by the Garage, a rock club where they're currently hosting the Hole In The Sky festival, a 5-day death metal-ish festival that I didn't fancy, but we thought it'd be fun to check out the crowd.

Us outside the Garage (dunno why I look so bewildered!), and you can just see Gunnar Sauermann from Metal Hammer Germany above Sara's head - exciting stuff! I'll have to read his review when he writes it :)

All hail Liverpool!

It's Tuesday, and I'm knackered. I got up at stupid o'clock today to put on my laundry when there might actually be a free machine, and then spent two hours reading and re-reading an article for Icelandic, which was of course in Swedish.

When we all piled into the classroom later on, the lecturer got straight down to the business of getting us all to speak Icelandic. It all started out rather horrifically, but at least we were all equally bad at it. Later it occurred to me that there was something distinctly Liverpudlian about the way he was pronouncing some words, and amusingly enough, I suddenly got a lot better at it.

Later, I trotted along to a meeting for people who wanted to work at one of the student bars, a meeting during which my hand seemed to develop a mind of its own and leapt enthusiastically into the air when they said they needed shift leaders. There I was, just wanting a wee job manning the bar one night a week or so, and instead I’m heading a team of bar staff, and I’m partly responsible for the weekly pub quiz. Eh, whoops.

Anyhoo, hoping to upload some new photos tomorrow evening, when I’m free from the clutches of Nordic linguistics... until then, vi sees!

The Fish Market

Getting out of Icelandic a lot earlier than I had initially thought we would, we did what all normal people do when they’ve got a bit of free time and went to look at dead fish and scarily alive crabs. Bergen has a brilliant fish market that I could spend insane amounts of time wandering around.

Or for those who fancy trying/forking out for something a bit different:

Rudolf, anyone?

We also took the time to look at some animals of the more feathered persuasion, wondering what kind of bird the little one below is. I think we finally decided it was a sparrow, but I’m useless at identifying birds. They're very sweet though, and there’s tonnes of them here.

Introductory programme frolicks

Everyone was invited to the semester-opening ceremony in Muséplass. A lot of important people spoke, including the rector, the mayor and the minister of education and research. It was a great day for it, and not even the scaffolding on the museum could dampen anyone’s spirits as we all slapped on suncream and waited for things to get started.

The rector giving his speech.

The university’s done a good job of arranging lots of interesting things for the new students to get involved with – international and Norwegian – and today I wandered along to a ‘meet the locals’ session which involved the welfare service telling us all the ins and out of living in Norway, such as this delightful titbit:

If you smile at a Norwegian in the street, the Norwegian will assume..
(a) that you are drunk.
(b) that you are insane.
(c) that you are American.
(d) all of the above.

Sociable sorts, these Norwegians, as you can probably tell :)

They made us dance to some Norwegian pop number or another (I kid you not, but seeing as everyone joined in it was actually quite entertaining), and then plucked four volunteers - one from each of America, Europe, Africa and Asia - to sample typical Norwegian delicacies including cod liver oil (and none of this capsule nonsense - æsj!), mackerel in tomato sauce and brunost (a kind of brown, sweet cheese).

l-r: Africa, Asia, Europe and America

And it was such a nice day that I took these photos on my way back down to the tram.

Johanneskirken next to the Humanities building at UiB

Festplassen, cooking merrily in the afternoon sun (I saw Satyricon here last summer!)

Be very, very afraid!

Perhaps the only person that might appreciate the madness of this is Lynne, who knows what he's like, but oh my God, Norway had better brace itself.

The insanity begins here: Ah! Så det er SÅNN det er!

Fløibanen

I had some free time today in between orientation lectures, so I took a trip up the side of Mount Fløyen on Fløibanen (a furnicular). The view from the top was absolutely amazing. I actually don't think the video does it justice. If you ever visit Bergen you'll just have to go and look for youselves ;)

The View

The viewing platform at the top of Fløibanen, and the view of course.

I met Lonnie and Nino up on the viewing platform, and we went for a walk in the forest nearby, where we happily stumbled over a troll-themed area for children. Paying no heed to the 'for children' part, we got stuck right in.

We managed to be at the front of the queue for the ride back down, which meant we got the best seats:

Video tour of accommodation

I'm told the video below wasn't working because it was set to private, but I've changed the settings now so you ought to be able to see it.

Svartediket - the world's first black metal musical

I was wandering around the town centre today (looking for an internet cafe where I might actually be able to print stuff), and I saw this:



I'm very excited about going to see it. It's either going to be really interesting, or completely hilarious. I'll have to keep myself in check if it is hilarious, because I don't think that's what they're aiming for.

Visiting Fantoft Stavkirke

Seeing as we live almost nextdoor to it and the weather was beautiful, we thought it would be nice to go and visit Fantoft Stavkirke.


l-r: me, Lonnie and Sara on the steps of Fantoft Stavkirke

This place makes me a bit angry, because the church (originally built in Fortun around 1150 and later moved to the current site) had to be entirely reconstructed after the bonehead brigade a.k.a. the main players in the early anti-Christian black metal scene burnt it down in 1992. Tossers.









Was a lovely afternoon though, and we got to see a wedding party leaving the church before we went in - it would be a pretty special place to get married.

My room at Fantoft Studentboliger :)

Here's a view of Fantoft Studentboliger from up the road a bit. The building with the arrow is the one I live in.