Today we had your typical Scandinavian day. We ate hard boiled eggs for breakfast, drank coffee and had Nutella with our biscuits. I look over at Josh drinking tea and ask ‘What do you want to do today?’ He said ‘Hmmm, want to go to Norway?’ Swooning at my husbands romantic and spontaneous thinking I say ‘Yes!’ And then we got in the car and drove to Norway!

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Swedish landscape on the way to Norway.

You see, Norway has a special place in my heart, it’s my motherland. My FamilyTreeDNA test said I was 74% Scandinavian last year. I dig deeper and found my maternal great grandmother came from
Oslo. My father’s side has sprinkled tracks throughout Norway So I was giddy with delight when I found out I’d been accepted at a Residency in Sweden this year, we knew we had to make the trek over the border.

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The terrain started with cows and farms and lakes, and quickly plummeted to 8 degrees Celsius, 46 degrees Fahrenheit, over the Swedish Norwegian pass. The head of my Residency foundation told us people used to meet and trade by horse over that pass. Norwegians brought things to trade from the Atlantic Ocean Swedes has never seen!

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Jonah and Josh had fun throwing snowballs.

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There was an old Sami hut where traditionally you’d commune, warm and sleep, it looked beautiful in the pass.

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Pretty soon we were back 20 degrees warmer towards Norway and saw a huge crane which just wander through fields!

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A few hours later, we were in Norway!

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Jonah missed the border crossing because he was asleep, but Josh was excited to stand in 2 countries at once!

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We were soon in Røyrvik. The first city we saw crossing over the border.

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We decided to first find Norwegian chocolate.
And boy did we.

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Chocolate shop with my new Swedish shoes!

Our favorite was Melkesjokolade, sweet but not to sweet, as the Swedes say it was ‘Lagom’ not to much, not too little, just right!

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Jonah was excited about an electrically shocking blue drink, wow.

In true Scandinavian fashion we got Norwegian hotdogs! I got a regular polish with mustard and ketchup. Josh got a foot long bacon wrapped hotdog! Mine won the taste test I think.

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We appreciated the array of condiments you could put on your hot dog and joked that ‘chili ketchup’ probably is about as mild as you can get up in meat and potato country!

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We wandered the store and think we found troll exterminator?? True lore in northern countries up here!!

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We left the fun store.

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I noticed compared to the Swedish deep brick red that more houses in Norway were a mustard yellow. I will have to follow up on this later and see if this is true.

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And headed back over the border.

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That night we worked on art and relaxation.

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Here’s a teaser from my book, it’s really coming along! Most illustrations are done and I’m already in editing phase in BookWriter. Can you guess what the title might be? 🙂

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The next two posts will be my final posts from Residency. I look forward to sharing them with you and thanks for following along in this adventure!

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