End of the Arctic

We're done up north. Last night we had a coffee and met a professor of Literature from Tromso University. He talked to us about the second world war, Shakespeare and the darkness of winter. He was a bit drunk, but very friendly.
Today we played two shows to a great audience in Tromso and now we're off. We dropped off all of our gear at the cargo place, and even though the guys there were very nice and helpful, I still don't trust cargo. But we'll find out in two weeks what the state of things is. We borrowed guitars in every venue this week, so we're sending back the broken guitar. If they break it more, it won't make a difference, as long as they don't break anything else.
We're travelling back on three different flights, like the royal family. Bob and David went immediately after the show, Liz and Alex left at 4.30pm, and Kjell and I are on the 6.30pm flight.
I will be going via Oslo to pick up the set for Everything Falls Apart and will be taking the Color Magic ferry from Oslo to Kiel on Sunday. Last time I got into a fight on that ferry, and I'm hoping I won't have to kick someone this time.
Next week will be a mad one. We'll be in Horn (Austria) for two shows on Thursday, then we're off to Prague where we'll have a company meeting with nearly everyone of NIE there. After that (on Monday), we're playing in Prague in La Fabrika, Tuesday we drive to Jindrichuv Hradec to play a show there on Wednesday. On the days we're not playing, we'll be setting up.

Paris of the North (?)

When I woke up this morning the mountaintops around the hotel were covered in snow. It must have been snowing all through the night up there.


After we played two fun shows in Norkjosbotn (which also has the easier and shorter name Vollan), we headed for Tromso. This is our last destination on this tour, as as far north as we will go this time. We're quite keen on coming back and going further: Finnmark and Svalbard are our aim.

The drive up north was amazingly beautiful. We all snapped away and I took some road trip films so you can have an idea of what it's like to be in the van with us.

Tromso is called the Paris of the North. I'm having a hard time understanding why. It's a nice town, but Paris?


The modern looking triangular building is the cathedral. On the mountain behind the white tall thing (is it a lookout post?) is a cable car. We wanted to go up but when we got there the rain was coming in fast and the entire valley was getting covered in clouds, so we'd miss out on the view and it wouldn't be worth the 100NOK. Kjell and I have time tomorrow, so if the weather is better we might try again.




After we arrived and checked in, we all went shopping together. NIE goes H&M...

The end of the world according to Randy

Today we are sleeping in a place that is almost as north as you could get.
But before I get to that bit, first a bit more about the shows we've been playing.

Yesterday we played in Salangen Kulturhus. The shows were fun, but the first one started a bit ominously. One of the kids (I've been reluctant to call them kids because teenagers aren't really kids anymore - but in this case I think I have a right to call them kids) walked in wearing a full face Bush mask with his hood pulled over his head. He was gesturing wildly, apparently thinking he was hilariously funny.
Initially it freaked me out a bit, because I couldn't see him very well and at first I didn't see it was a rubber mask.
But it had all signs of becoming one of those dreadful schools shows.

We were wrong though, it was great fun and they were all really into it.

After the second show we packed up and the man from the theatre opened the curtains. What a view...


After the show we went back to our strange hotel in the even stranger Bardu and decided to give Bardu another chance and drive around it a little bit. There wasn't that much more to Bardu: more army bases, a closed alpine centre, a closed motorsport centre, and more tanks.

So we returned to the smelly hotel.
And drove past it so Alex could show us where he'd been jogging the day before and where he got stopped by men with guns. One the way there we found some tanks.


They were part of a museum - it's not as if we'd scaled fences of army property.

In the evening we played poker. I lost (again). During the game we could hear gunshots in the forest at the other side of the road. Army practice.

This morning as we arrived at the sports hall of Bardu to play there, we heard more shooting.

After Bardu we drove up north. So far north in fact, that Randy (our GPS) decided we were approaching the end of the world. There seems to be no North Pole according to Randy. It all just stops about 150km north of here, in the Arctic Sea.



This is our hotel in Nordkjosbotn. It's a very friendly and non-smelly place, that serves fantastic food.







I just got back from playing pool with Liz. I lost. A pattern seems to be evolving... But I don't really mind.

The Arctic Circle

We are currently in Bardu, which is a little bit like Twin Peaks.

We all met yesterday at Oslo Gardermoen, and waited anxiously for David's arrival. He was on a very tight schedule, and it started to look like he wasn't going to make it. As soon as we found out he'd landed (with 40 minutes to go until our next flight), the Mobergs got into Action Hero mode. Iva ran off to check him in at the self-service machine, Kjell phoned him to tell him what was going on, and the rest of us went through security hoping for the best and denying a possible problem. As David came upstairs (from the downstairs arrivals area), Iva gave him his luggage tag and sent him off to the security check shouting: 'ONE MINUTE!' That was how much time he had to get on the plane.
So he made it and we all set off to Harstad.

When we arrived in Harstad it didn't really look very different from other places I'd been to in Norway, so I was a little bit disappointed. But only a little bit, as I was (and still am) ridiculously excited about being in the arctic circle. Even though I've travelled to a lot of places (with various degrees of bizarreness), going to places I've never been to before still thrills me.
So we got into our rental car (which had all of our set and our lighting equipment tightly packed inside it) and started driving. To Harstad city. We were booked into a hotel on the fjord, which was quite classy in a tacky way.


After dinner we went for a walk to look around the town. The thought on everyone's mind was that very soon winter will kick in here, which means a lot of snow and darkness. Right now it is still light until about 8.30pm. But days are getting shorter and for the people up here total darkness will set in a few months from now.
It must be hard to live here. I can't even begin to imagine how it would be, and I don't think I'd be tempted to find out.


But it is beautiful. Stunning.
Kjell, David and I saw something in the water. 4 somethings. It could have been porpoises, or seals, or whales maybe. But they swam off to fast and we didn't get a good look. We tried to make them come back; Kjell and David gave their best porpoise impressions to call them back, but it didn't work.


This morning was an early one. We set off at 7.30 to go to a school in Skanland. That's where not such good news awaited us.


We opened our flightcases and the first thing Kjell noticed was a rattle in our streetlight. It had never rattled before. We opened it up and the ballast had come loose. Clearly it had had a rough journey. Next thing was the accordion. So Dave started operating it and managed to fix it. The third thing though, was Alex' guitar. Broken. Cargo had snapped its neck.
How I wished the set had stayed with me. But there's not enough time for me to drive it back to the UK for the tour there, so that was not an option. Maybe one day someone will prove to me that there is solace in freight, and that it can be trusted, but right now freight and cargo are not my friends.
We found solutions to everything and got ready for the show. 80 teenagers from Skanland came to watch us. It was very different from playing in Edinburgh, but it was great fun.
Afterwards we were invited to have lunch with some of the students who had helped us set everything up. They'd been a great help and it was very nice talking to them. We asked them what it was like to live here, and when the snow would come. Soon, they said. And the darkness would follow soon after.
They uttered their surprise at the south (Oslo), where it was light on Christmas day, where they heard people even mowed their lawns on Christmas, that's how warm and light it was there.
You could contest this statement, but in all honesty, I've been in Oslo just before Christmas when the snow hadn't come yet, there was only relentless rain. Not ideal for lawn-mowing, but I'd argue that the Skanland students were only exaggerating a little bit.


We headed off, we had a two hour drive ahead of us. Direction north-east. We stopped along the way to admire the view, and to look at WWII sites of the Battle of Narvik. I did a 360.

This is our rental car. We called it Spanky. It was Alex' idea - he got it from a television programme he watched where a tour guide was called Spanky. The GPS is called Randy. That was Kjell's idea. There are two more GPS's in the company: one is called Judy, the other is called Emily. I spend most of my time with Emily.


This is where we are now: 1001km from Kirkenes. Kirkenes is the end of Norway.


After two hours of driving we entered proper army territory. With Bardu in the midst of it. Bardu is a small town that currently has a big hole as its main drag. Roadworks. There are soldiers in camouflage jackets, a few shops and a bowling alley.
So bowling is what we did. And I lost spectacularly. My pink ball did not bring me any luck. But I had a great time.

North North North

And we're off again. To Tromso. It's as far north as I've ever been.
People often ask us how we work, with everyone living in different countries. Well, this is how:

(Click on the animation to go to full screen).