‘I’ll be away’ is starting to be a pain.  I’m organising a festival at the moment and to make a festival happen you need people, lots of people.  However, this time of year is the ‘I’ll be away’ season.  Spain, Brazil, Thailand, Africa, Sweden and France are just some of the places my friends, family [...]

A Norwegian Christmas is filled with many celebrations and traditions, old and new. As the snow falls, the white landscape is the first sign of Christmas and Norway starts to prepare for their long season of juletid.
November
As the snow comes, Norway enters the Christmas season early with a series of Christmas parties. Work, clubs, schools [...]

Plane landing in Tromsø at sunset
Living in Europe, it doesn’t take long to get anywhere.  Even being so far north, we get to enjoy weekend trips to Venice, Prague, Athens and Budapest.  Flights from Oslo to London are just two hours.  From Arctic Tromsø to London it is only a three flight.  We sure have [...]

It would seem that Halloween is a new celebration in Norway since trick-or-treating has only become popular in the last ten years. However, this holiday has a long tradition in Norway that started in medieval times. In the 10th century A.D. the Catholic Church had become established among the pagan Norsemen under the iron fist [...]