Two months in Sykkylven

27.07.2009

After a couple of weeks in Olso when we first arrived, we travelled back to Sunny Sunnmøre and the town of Sykkylven. This is the town where Rannveig grew up. The region of Sunnmøre is known in Norway to be full of the 'frugal' type. We call them tight arses.. I will get back to this later.

The region itself is one of the most picturesque in Norway. The mountains rise out of the ground and tower into the clouds. The fjords are often hundreds of metres deep and can be quite wide too. For this reason, there is a significant amount of ferry travel required. (Q: How do you build a bridge if you can't get to the sea floor? A: make floating tunnels - it's happening). So travelling on ferries is fun initially but you soon get bored of it and it's extremely slow. And it obviously costs money, so you can rack up the expenses pretty quick too.

Sykkylven, It's a furniture town through and through. The town has about 8000 residents and probably over half of them work in the furniture factories or some sort of furniture related profession.. Even their high schools have ridiculously awesome facilities - with most of the older factory machinery getting passed down to the Art/Tech departments of the high schools. Sadly, almost none of the kids are interested in furniture (because they are surrounded by it) and so not many students get into it.. Though ironically many of them end up working on the factory floor when they could have been designing and engineering the products instead.. Oh well..

Also, one other furniture related story about this town - they hold the record for the longest Sofa ever built! Originally they built one that was around 65m long. But then for some reason the Polish built one that was 75m long (or similar) the next year. So this year, they planned to get that damn record back from those thieving Polish. So they built a Sofa that was over 800m long and spanned the entire length of the bridge that crosses the Fjord. 800m of sofa. Great! Suffer in your jocks, Polish. But true to their Sunnmøre stereotype, the sofa was then promptly disassembled and sold off as individual 'conventional-sized' sofas. Norwegians: The Practical Recordbreakers.

Enough talk. More photo.

Through the Romsdal valley

This was towards the end of the drive back from Oslo. Although the trip is only around 4-500km it takes around 8 or 9 hours to drive as the speed limit almost never gets above 80 and is often less.

My office

This is where I did a lot of my nerd work.. In a converted basement/bedroom. Nice views of the mountains though!

Climbing Aurenakken

This is a fairly small mountain. Most Norwegians call it a hill. I think it's about 300m. But you get a great view of the city (if our heads aren't in the way).

Climbing Skophornet

Walking up the valley and about to begin our 'bush bash' through the low level trees (on the right). Not many people walk up this mountain so there was no track at all and going was slow..

Climbing Skophornet

You can see the elevated lake. This is one of about 3 lakes up this valley. There are small power stations in a lot of these valleys (where they can tap water from a decent height and use the potential energy to full advantage. Often the whole operation is done within the mountain!

Climbing Skophornet

Take those ridiculous sunglasses off.

Rannveig's dad

This is Olav - he was taking us up the mountain.

Getting near the top

There's obviously still snow. Most of the mountains have a little bot of snow all year. Maybe not this one but this was still early June so there was still plenty. It wasn't cold though. Air temp was around 25 with almost no wind - perfect!

Wait

Pay attention, Paul.

Right near the top

Unlike some of the other mountains in the area, this one wasn't high enough to push past where the glaciers used to be. That's why the top of it is pretty flat.

Suck in that fresh air.

It looks like I'm trying to inhale the mountain. I wasn't.

View from the summit

Looking out towards Ålesund - a larger town of around 30000 people further out on the coast.

On the way back

Perfect day.

On the way back

Catch up.

The bush bashing again

So this is a close up of the 'track'.

Sykkylven from the mountain

100% RUG

This is a great flatbreat. It's not made from rug, or gym mats or any other non-bread ingredients. Rug = Rye. Great use of CMYK.

Me cleaning Rani's mum's bike

This was a winner. Except when I had to ride up the hill to the house whilst severely under the influence. Tough going.

Rani stealing flowers

In the front yard of the house...

Painting the deck

Perfect thing to do in the summer sun.

Painting the deck

Me too.

Salami - Norwegian style

Norwegians eat this at parties. This one you just carved off yourself with a fishing knife. The ingredients: Horse heart, Speck, Pig heart, Moose meat (20%), Pig meat, Cow meat, Salt, Red wine, Blood protien, etc... Vegetarians can struggle here sometimes.

The 'meat' party

From what I can gather, the concept was that everyone brings some meat. The bucket light fitting was a bonus but made for great lighting.

Sykkylven at 1am

This is a shot looking west-ish out to the fjord. It's about 3 weeks after the longest day but still it was very light. It never actually gets dark (though the sun does go below the horizon - not like up in the north where you have sun non stop for 2 months)