Old houses of different sorts

We have summer! Yay:) As I am not made for lying still out in the sun, I spent yesterday at the open air museum in Oslo, killing two flies in one swat. In English you say 'two birds with one stone'. Never made sense to me, more likely to kill flies with a swat than birds with a stone, right? Anwyay:)

I love the old houses there. They all look different through the seasons. In the summer some of the houses have a full flower meadow on the roof!
This summer they opened another little house on the exhibit - a 'little house' on two floors! I have never seen a two story outhouse before! It makes sense, I guess, since it was made for a five floor apartment building in Oslo.

With some luck you would never have to stand in line, I guess:)

Continuing in the cold....

Still wandering in the cold in the fortified city down east...

This is the oldest house in the whole fortified city, even if it is from the 1671, I think. The first part of the fort were of timber, and burnt down during several of the big fires over the year. This one is bricks!

This one shows the incredible thickness of the walls! These days they have glass in the window slots, but in the old days there would just be holes. I love the metal 'doors' on the windows. I forgot to take a picture of the door, it is so tiny and has the same kind of metal doors, too:)

Though parts of the fort have brick walls around it, most of it is surrounded by what looks like huge mounds of dirt. This is one of the walkways through the 'walls', you can see the frozen moat through the gate. The masonry inside is amazing, like a small old stone cathedral! Too bad it was too dark in there to get a good picture of it.

Oh, and as in all old places - placed on the city square across from the church..... Although in the kind of cold winter weather I would think just being outside would be punishment enough!

Irony of history

Since it is winter, and since it was extremely cold! the other day, I decided that there was nothing better than spending a day walking outside in a coastal city with the frigid wind blowing in from the sea.....brrrr......

It was wicked cold! Here is the first irony. I was visiting an old fortified town down east in Norway, close to the Swedish border. There is a moat around the fort. The water was frozen solid. What is the point with a moat that freezes solid every winter? Just asking...

Norway has a long, long border with Sweden. Since we were a colony under Denmark for about 400 years, there was a necessity of defending ourselves against the Swedes. This fortified city was established around 1567 after the city itself was burnt down. They petition the king to move the city closer to the river and the coast and fortify it, to prevent the Swedes coming in and pillage. And there has been a military presence there until 2003!

The second irony. It has only seen fights once - against the Swedes - and they lost after only a few hours fight. That was in 1814.

Today it is a living city - people live and work here. So they live with cobbled streets like this.

Nice to look at,  but horrors on high heels, not to mention trying to drive down there.

These houses looks like dream houses in the summer. However, visiting in the winter I can't help but think that they might not be so warm in the winter. I grew up in an old house, and before dad redid the whole thing I remember scratching my name in the ice on the inside of the windows. No double glazing at that time!

The entrance to the fort, which today is just for walking through. No room for cars, though they are allowed into the city.

The bridge over the aforementioned moat. Not sure if you can see it, but it has a hoisting mechanism that allows for the middle to be lifted up, to let boats in. Well, today it is just for show, but it is quite an impressive mechanism.

I got more:) Keep you in suspense for a little while.

Wandering in history again

I spent some time in the open air museum yesterday. The weather was incredible. I don't think we have had a fall that has been so consistently sunny and beautiful.



The old Stavechurc is among our oldest wooden church types in Norway, this one is from 1200. First of all, the attention to details are amazing! But secondly, which keeps suprising me, is the decorations. They are not really religious at all. Inside the church they would have a painting from the Bible, but outside, they have all these typical viking decorations.



For me that has always seemed so contradictory. But it does make for an interesting building. The wood is tarred during the summer, giving it a very particular odour when the sun is baking on the sides.

 

The craftmanship is good, too. Look at the roofing slates:)

Another typical old farm building is the foodstorage houses, or larders.



They differ slightly in architecture from valley to valley, but they usually have one thing in common: the last step is alwasy very high.



The reasoning behind that is to keep mice from coming in to the larder. Make sense, doesn't it? But it always looks strange....

History lesson

I am fascinated by the history of crafts - not just the development of it, but the history behind specific pieces or patterns. I think that is what fascinates me with the Dear Jane quilt - knowing that Jane Stickler made this incredible quilt in the middle of a civil war while waiting and hoping for her husband to return safely. The need to keep mind and hands occupied in a time of stress and uncertainty is something I can relate to.

So here is another piece of the history of crafts in Norway:) - a two part story.

A couple of years ago my good friend in Colorado turned 40, and I wanted to give her something that was truly Norwegian. I got a carpenter to make her a typical towel rack from the time when a basin in the kitchen was the only way to get clean. This rack has little hooks on the back to hang the dirty towels, while you in front would hang a decorative 'towel'. This towel served a double duty - it hid the dirty ones and it showed how good a housewife and crafts woman you were. The towels were supposed to always be brightly white and starched, and made by your own hands in whatever line of crafts you preferred - Hardanger, embroidery, crocheted lace on white linen etc.

And! you had to have at least one for each season, preferably also for each holiday. So: winter, spring, summer, fall, easter and christmas.

I made my friend four - one for each season.



The one in the picture is the summer towel, and here comes history lesson part two:)

This pattern was made by a young woman in the late 18.. something, while she spent long summer nights most likely all alone on the summer pastures. In the olden days, the farmers living in the valleys in mid-Norway would send their cattle up into the mountains for summer pastures. Along with them went the young girls, either daughters or hired help, to care for the cattle during the summer, milking and prosessing the milk into butter and cheese. Once in a while they would come up from the farm to pick up what she had made, and bring news and food from the valley. But most of the time, she was alone with the animals the whole long summer.

If she was lucky, the neighbouring summer pasture was not that far away, and she could meet up with other girls, but not always. In some places she could sit outside her little hut and look down on the valley, see the people go to church on Sunday and hear the church bells. There has been written both songs and books about these lonely girls. 

Norway is far up north, which makes for a big change in length of day during the year. The sun comes up late and goes down early in the middle of December, but hardly goes down at all in the middle of the summer. That makes it possible to sit outside and sew even late at night, because the sun is still up around 10 pm. So this specific girl spent some of that time during a summer up in the mountain to design and embroider this pattern. And now a copy hangs in Colorado:-)

oh... and God Morgen means Good Morning in Norwegian!