Kva ho Ragnhild Rostrup driv på med

A Ladybird wanted to say hello to the black and white jing-jang ladybird on my ring. Haha. Nature is strange.  Look at my hands, I promise you that it it the CAMERA that makes them look so .....old! Shit! Oh well, I am going to be 30 (!!!) in April. oh my God!

Here's a picture of my mum :) and I in the garden in Hardanger.  Mmmmm nice mum!  Nothing is better than sitting in the garden days on end with my mum!

And this is a HusetHansOla, an empty house on Ingunn's property, but ....Hm.... it lies in the shadow, has asbestos roof and is falling apart. But very nice, you know. kind of idyllic as well. oh... I don't know what to do!!

Did not catch anything by the way...  But just sitting on the reindeerskin and drinking beer in the setting sun is just as nice as catching fish.

And then I made it to Sogn og Fjordane where I dressed up my friend in traditional sami costume. He totally took off and became a different person. running about and shouting like he was possessed. Quite fascinating! Perhaps he was a Same in a previous life? I bought the costume in a wooden same hut (gamme) from an old man who first told me that the costume was not for sale because it used to belong to his diseased father from Kautokeino.  But he made a phonecall (to God??) and he said I could buy it after all. He suggested a skyhigh price, but then went lower and lower without me having to say anything.  He probably understood I was a poor hitchiker and I believe he really wanted me to buy the costume.  Perhaps he reconed I would suit it and take care of it. I bought it anyway for the same value as 4 crochet hats. (HAHA!) Yes!

This is a village called Gryllefjord in Northern Norway where the tourist guides wears high heels, small dresses and expose their cleavage to the world. But anyway, does this not look a little bit like Iceland?

I have been spending the summer in this amazing place above called Hamningberg on the northeast corner of Norway. This place is a paradice (for people who don't need internet, mobile phone, TV and shops to survive). for three weeks there were white whales swimming all the way into the bay, around 50 of them whilst the reindeer were cooling off on the beach. Lovely.

I met all the fantastic people from last year as well as a few very interesting new friends.  One 60 year old Norwegian vagabond who travels around on his ancient motorbike all over the world and has experienced SO much. I am fascinated! We will probably meet up in China in May I think. He is going to drive through russia, wow.

Yes, and I have been to many ethnic festivals and they were just as good as last year. here's my favourite picture I took from inside a Lavvo at the Riddu Riddu festival in Troms:

I am in Tromsø now, having just strarted hitchiking all the way down to Hardanger again. I am going to stop by quite a few islands on the way down the coast. Today I am heading to Vannøya in the sunshine and pitching my ruined tent there.  That drunk idiot that threw himself onto my tent at a festival has totally ruined it. I hope he goes bald overnight. haha Anyway, must dash. The cars are waiting (I'm sure)

Yes, and I am heading to Scotland the 21st of August and then to Iceland 25th of August to slaughter sheep again.

I spend so much time NOT sitting in front of a computer, so I am considering taking a break from my blogging until the midnight sun does not shine anymore.  There are so many great things to do here in Northern Norway and I feel like I am missing out on things by spending time in front of this little grey box.

I will keep on enjoying my summer and I will be back when I feel like it!  Have a superb summer! 

OK I have not written for a while, but at the moment I am living in a place called Hamningberg without Internet connection and almost without mobile signal as well. It's quite relaxing that way.  Last weekend was amazing, I travelled to the Skiippagurra Music Festival where I had the best weekend so far this year I think.  I met up with some of the fantastic people I know here in Finnmark, put flowers in my hair and drank loads of beer.  I played my flutes and taught the northern norway people good old Hardanger folk songs. I went skinnydipping in the Tana river with good friends, took a nap amongst the flowers in the forest and used my wooden drinking vessel to share red wine with the festival goers.

During the whole festival I was grinning from ear to ear apart from when a drunken man decided to lie down on my tent and he fucking broke it!!! BASTARD!  Before we could catch him, he went to lie down on top of another tent and he broke that too!  Jesus! well, I tried to fix it, but in my drunken state it was not a good result. Fortunately it did not rain.

The festival lasted from Friday to Saturday and the sun shone 24 hours. Here's a picture of the midnight sun from where I had a quiet moment to myself with my beer by the Tana river.

The great band Hedningarna was the highlight of the music. They rocked! One guy said that this festival beat the pants of Roskilde Festival in Denmark and I can really believe it.  This is an intimate festival on the sand deposits of the Tana river and is only for 3000 people. absolutely bloody perfect.  In a week I am going to the Riddu Riddu festival to enjoy myself just as much. There are more picture from the Skiippagurra festival here.

This is our camp the day after the night before.... Still happily boozing away. yeah.

I have started my journey to the Skiippagurra festival in Finnmark, I have made it to Sognefjorden and I am continuing today, hoping to make it quite far. Happy happy days. All you have to do is SMILE! and people pick you up no bother.

and.......YEAH!!! I made it to Finnmark after 2400km of hitch hiking. Yes what fun. On my way there, I visited a friend of mine in the idyllic village Solvorn by one of the stunning fjords in Norway. This particular friend changed his surname to Eplet (the apple) after realizing that he actually spends most of his time making apple juice.  Personally I think he only wanted Macintosh to sponsor him with a swish Apple laptop, hahaha.  Perhaps I will change my surname to Microsoft. And I might get something nice from that wealthy guy in America. Anyway, go and visit this interesting apple guy who runs a fantastic apple hostel with home made juice Check it out!

And after getting a lift over the Sognefjell with a hungarian family in a shitty car, I met a truck driver near Trondheim who was going to Tromsø, but had to load in Oslo first! Well, I regret it now, but I said yes and went all the way down to Oslo and we got delayed and shit. Had to spend 48 hours in a truck with this strange looking weird guy. Long white hair and beard. Hm, another marriage proposal, which I refused. And after a couple of nasty overtaking trucks attempts, I left him in Mo i Rana. He asked if I would miss him. Ragnhild doesn't answer stupid questions like that! Of course I won't miss him! Hm, imagine 48 hours of deep conversations about love, loving yourself, relationships and stuff, I was pretty happy to leave!

I celebrated midsummer night with a nice guy in Ulvsvåg. We drank beer in his car and chucked branches on a fire which all the people had left many hours ago. I don't understand. Why don't people stay out all night? We managed to lift a huge tree root which we named "the root to all evil". We felt we saved the world when we chucked it on the bonfire (you can see it above). And almost died laughing as we sang "Gubben og gamla dei låg og dro..."!!  I fell asleep in the boot of the car amongst oil containers and beer bottles. nice.

The last day I hitch hiked 1200km! And ended up in Tana bru where the guy I was catching a lift with invited me along to his friends house where I got fresh salmon, champagne, beer, salad, potatoes and a comfortable bed to sleep in. Yes! The next day, the 5 norwegian/finnish kids in the family wanted me to see their puppies:

I have arrived in Vardø and have visited my dear friend Ingunn and her newborn son (a week old!). I changed a nappy for the first time in my life. And it was not so bad. Ingunn said I was good at it. Yeah!  I am happy for her, myself and the whole world seems like it is going to explode with positive energy and happiness, yeeeeaaah!! (.....and NO, I don't do drugs)

Yep, My friend from Alaska is hanging around Bergen for a week, we met up and it was great to see the sailboat again and chat about our experiences since we last met up 3 years ago.  But now I really need to start thinking about heading up north to the renowned Skiippagurra music festival 1-3 July.

I have decided to hithchike from Hardanger to Finnmark, some 1600km.  And I hope I won't spend more than 200NOK. hahaha, that's not possible I hear you say, but you never know. Stranger things have happened.  I will try to make it in a week or so, starting on Sunday.  The festival will not wait for me. I have been in southern Norway for ages now and I can feel a calling from the north. Yes, once again, my blood will boil with the anticipation and rush of travelling and not knowing where I might end up.  I am looking forward to sleeping in my tent again and this time I am joined by my lovely Concertina accordion. sweet!

I can thoroughly recommend this festival, check: SKIIPPAGURRA

Perhaps my destiny is to become a farmer, well at least I enjoyed the green grass. Here's another picture of the time at the farm: I am returning there tomorrow to be covered in grass once more, ahhh. lovely.

Look at these greeeeeeeeeeeeat friends of mine in my hometown:

The aluminium head woman had just been "henna'ed" by me. We dyed her hair bright red. yeah! And she did really well at the pub quiz with the aluminium head cover. our neighbouring teams suspected that there was a radio transmitter inside.  Hahaha. They will never know. Well, we won the quiz anyway.

And here's my lovely and swish friend whom I've known since I was 14. We were just weird when we were younger. Amazingly we grew up to be not very weird at all. Thank God!

Sometimes I wish I had a house!!! I want a kitten! But not as frightened looking as this one.. hahaha!

I have added more pictures here

I am home and I don't seem to be able to leave my beautiful village.  Just look at it. What kind of a person would not want to stay here:

Apple blossoms and sunshine (not all the time of course).  I have been hitchiking around the place as usual. Went to Sognefjorden again to help getting the grass down into the silage container. Working with a pitch fork and feeling strong. More and more grass was cut and brought into the building where we were working. Green grass, shitloads of it.  I don't mind green grass, but I do mind wet green grass. Because by noon it had started raining and the grass was SOOOO heavy.

I always try to look at the positive side of things when I am working. I thought about how strong I would become, and how good it was that the temperature was not below 0°C, how nice the grass smells, how good that we were two people working there and I was always trying new throwing techniques. Trying to chuck the grass all the way to the other side of the silage container. Wow, what hard work it is to be a farmer. hm.

In Øystese there is a goldfish lake. Strange, very strange. The lake is full of big golden fish that love nothing more than fresh bread. Yum. And higher up in the mountains there is another smaller lake with smaller goldfish. They seem to thrive in these lakes even though they freeze in the winter. The goldfish just keep on living.

I have been sailing and I love it. Eating winkles (strand snegler) and enjoying the occasional good weather in Norway. I am waiting for the guy from Alaska to turn up so we can travel together to northern norway.

Oh, one funny story: when I was in the festival in the Hebrides, a guy who was very drunk, said a few times that he would like to marry me tomorrow. I was rather sober and said "yeah yeah, right". The following day, I spotted him and walked up to him with an enthusiastic smile, informing him that we were going to marry eachother today. (there was actually a priest on the island) His jaw dropped and he gave me a frightened, paranoid hungover look. I just smiled and gleefuly (nastily) stayed very close to him whilst talking about our future together. Of course without any desire to spend the rest of my days with him. Hahaha Very funny. hahaha.  Silly drunk men.

My friend Robert came and picked me up from the Hardangerfjord in his beautiful yacht. Idyllic. Beer and seafood chowder awaited me aboard the boat.

It actually helps playing the accordion by the roadside and then try to hitchike at the same time. People seem to like accordion music in the Sognefjord. I managed to get a lift from a deserted ferry port just because the people could hear the distant accordion music and thought I was rather strange and unusual to sit and play it by the side of the road. Hahaha They just had to pick me up.

I hitchiked to visit a farmer in Skjolden at the bottom of the Sognefjord. He lived high up on the side of the fjord. I actually met some people south in Norway that said I HAD to go and visit this guy. Hahha So of course I went to visit him. Nice man really engrossed in improving his farm. He even had Scottish Highland cattle! This is the view from his farm

I had forgotten how wet it is here. It is supposed to be summer. My camera is getting better, it's actually the CD with the camera drive that has broken in two. I tried taping it together and putting baking powder on it but of course this did not work. Someone told me that Baking powder can fix broken CDs. I had potato flour, not quite the same, and sure enough, it did not work. ha!

Anyone out there with a fuji finepix camera?

until I get my camera fixed, here's a picture of very young Ragnhild

I am currently living on a sailing boat on an island called Stord. Good fun. I had a mad hitchike around Sognefjorden and met tonnes of nice people.  I don't have interent access here but will try to keep my blog updated.  In a week I will meet up with the Alaska man and sail up the Norwegian coast. My final destination will be Hamningberg next to Vardø (just next to the russian border up north in Norway.)

By the way, I got my bicycle safely back to Norway. But what a exhausting journey! I am happy and well. and I hope all of you are well too. My camera is not happy at the moment. I will stroke it and make it prodice more pictures soon.

I met Einar this summer in a tiipii (Lavvu) outside Polmac where we grilled some food over the open fire and I sold him a woolly hat.  I sent him a card from Iceland like I promised and went to visit him where he lives in Skiippagurra in Northern Norway.  The guy I hitchiked with from Vadsö drove me all the way to Einar's door. The livingroom was nice and warm and Einar told me lots of interesting stories about skiing, hunting, surviving on the hill, carving wood and about reindeer.  He is a very talented wood carver himself and I could not believe it when he wanted to give me lovely handmade drinking vessel.  Wow!!! What a kind man.  He showed me the skis he uses on the hill with very particular bindings, mostly used with reindeer-shoes (skallar). Here's some pics of Einar, laughing Einar and his cool sami-skis. Looking forward to seeing him again.
  

Wow, strange when it gets dark at half past two and then it does not get light again until 8 in the morning.  Beautiful scenery with snow and frost.  I love it.


Feel calm and relaxed today, have not much energy after the busy day yesterday, I decided to hitchike to Vardø from Kirkenes because I had no faith in the ferry, I really thought she would not be able to land in vardø because of the weather.  So I hitchiked 250km instead round the Varangerfjord. it worked well, my layers of skirts kept me warm.  A guy I know from Vardø with a giant dog picked me up.  very lucky.  It took 4 hours on snowy roads and he talked nonstop. But the real annoying thing is that the ferry did make it despite the weather.  ah well, I had a more interesting journey.