The blue hour

The Blue Hour comes at the twilight between afternoon and night.
It`s bathing everything in blue.
The snow. The fjord. Some rocks who is staring out to the sea.
And a car on his way, carrying a man home for the weekend, in the Blue Country.

Skiing in minus 15 Celsius

To go cross country skiing into the mountains north of Vadsø gives a special kind of therapy. Even in minus 15 degreesCelsiuss.
The rhythmic sound of skis on the snow. The cold air. The flat and calm landscape. And ofcourse all thecolorss.
Well, it might be that I`m a bit stressed too. To keep up the tempo, even if the body is not what it was. I notice it most of all when my son leaves me in a pace I cannot follow. He finnish the "race" half an hour quicker than me.
But most of all it is a therapy, after all.

The afternoon sun gave a little more push in my back. The terrain changed into white birch forest in the valleys.

The best of all is normally the ski cabin, more than one mile into the mountain. To sit by the fireside. Buy some coffee and waffles. Chat with other skiers.
Well,..Thiss also make me a little blit stressed. Cause when the other skiers is sitting at the wall, watching the others coming, you just have to speed up again.
But this time I got away with it. As usual I was late. The ski cabin was closed before I came up.

So, all I could do was to turn back. To see valley Thomaselvdalen. Made by a river that cuts the flat mountain into two. Made it more exciting. And to see the fjord. Which is always exciting.
It started to get dark. I rushed down the last hills, seeing not too much.
Down by the ski-stadium my son had been waiting for half an hour again. But he agreed to take a picture of a tired, happy and well dressed cross country skier.

...and here is a video that tells you about the journey (the camera is quite unsteady, because of the skiing...)

And now: Some music and comercials...

The musical group Daap has made some demos of their music and put them on their netpage.
The group plays a mix of rock, old, Nordic hymns and folk music, Congolesian rhythms and songs and worldmusic.
The group is from Vadsø, in northeastern, Arctic Norway.
Throughout the history, the town has been housing the indigenous Saami people, Norwegian officials, Finnish immigrants and Russian traders.
Right now there is about 50 different nationalities and cultures in the small town. Among them, refugees from all over the world.
So, Daap wants to reflect both the history and the culture today in their music.
The demosongs are the Gregorian and Finnish hymn "Jesus Christus Uhriks Meille" and the Norwegian hymn and folktune "Overmåte full av nåde".
Soon there will be a cd.