Episode 5- Stranda

     We all pile in the bus again for another week's adventure.  We have plotted on maps where we think our ancestors were from and there are a few of us from Trondheim and above.  We speculate that if we were going that far, we would fly, so we must be going somewhere else.  I am a bit disappointed.  I have found Namdalsteid on a map and put a red mark around the town.  The map has no topographical markings and I wonder if the area has mountains or rolling hills?  I know there had been a farm named Staven or AAgaard and wonder if it was still there.  I wonder how I would feel seeing the land where my grandmother had lived?  Alf got choked up telling us about the sign saying Herigstad, but then he cries easily.  I'm a harder nut.
    It is interesting though, how much I have been thinking of my grandmother.  Growing up, I honestly didn't think much of her. My mother was an orphan and that was, from a child's point of view, actually pretty cool to tell people. She had a few stories of her mother, but nothing of Norway.  All the stories I ever heard about my mother's growing up revolved around China, which makes sense - that is where she was born and lived until they returned to the USA, just before her parents died.
     My mother has always been a person who does not look back much and so, neither did I.  My grandmother, Petra was just a name and a few pictures; who needs another generation?  Then I had children and my mother became their grandmother and is such an important influence in their lives that I began to realize what I never had - a grandmother. A woman who left Norway when she was 26, then went to China, had 5 children and ran a school, must have been quite a character. Traveling through this gorgeous countryside, I tried to imagine Petra living here.  I built a picture in my mind of a bucolic life, hard, but lovely, and wondered why she had left.
     The bus follows the same route north and west - past Lillhammer towards Lom.  It almost feels like we are experiencing a Norwegian version of Ground Hog Day until, passing the Stave church again, we take a different road out of Lom.  I check the map - we are heading north! Isolated, cut off from our daily lives and our immediate families, the idea of a Norwegian family, a family that we did not know, but is waiting for us, has begun to take on increased significance. It looks on the map that we are heading towards More og Romstal - which is where Stephanie said her family was from. Is there an envelope that she will not receive? Its really too bad any of us have to be eliminated...
      The drive takes 10 hours!!  It only takes 13 hours to fly to China!!! I can't believe I am doing this!
 We go off on small roads, past farms and fields.  At one farm a group has gathered and they are wearing bunads!!!  Is it a wedding or other special celebration or do people just wear bunads here?  We go through some tunnels and some of the gang try to hold their breath.  It is too long.  These tunnels make me uncomfortable. Its silly as I go through tunnels in Portland all the time, but here - - there are too many and too long and they just feel - wrong.  I think of oil paying to cut through rock - a time warped geological rock/paper/scissors. Maybe I had some romantic ideal of Norway and have to let it go.

      Soon after the tunnel, we skirt the edge of a steep slope and look out over water - a fjord.  The view is gorgeous! Classic snow topped mountains dropping steeply down to water.  Following the fjord we wind our way down to the town of Stranda where we stop at the (the one and only) hotel. We are home for Episode 5.
     After checking in our rooms, a few of us put on suits and jump in the fjord.  I've been in colder water, but not by much.  That tingly feeling,  euphemistically referred to as "bracing" or "refreshing."  is really all your nerve endings and your peripheral tissue going into shock. Damm, it felt good!  Especially when followed by a swim in a warm pool!