Dog Sledding in the Arctic

We were picked up at a hotel in town at 6:30pm by the dog sledding company's van and driven for about 20-25 minutes into the wilderness and away from city lights to the base camp. There, we were given a set of equipment that included a snow suit, snow boots, a hat, and gloves. Even though we already had our own warm clothing, taking this provided outfit was a good choice as we would be petting and playing with hundreds of smelly dogs.

Once we were suited up, we went out to the dog lot where 300 dogs have their raised wooden huts to sleep in. The dogs are Alaskan huskies, where are a mix of different breeds; that is why all the dogs vary in looks, some with blue eyes and white fur, others with brown eyes and black coats. Unlike Siberian huskies, Alaskan huskies are better built for dog sledding. Their huts are set up in rows that represent a team. In the back are the large males, who are the "wheels" of the team. They are biggest and strongest and take most of the weight from the sled. In the middle are the youngest dogs, who have the most energy and are the motivators. They bark and are very spirited, and they are usually girls. Lastly the dogs in the front are the leaders, who are clever and can understand and obey the musher's directions. They are also females, and they are purposefully put in front of the males to make them chase the girls.

Villmarkssenter also has a VIP section where the MVP dogs are housed. These dogs belong to the professional musher Tove Sørensen who also owns the center. Sørensen is known first because she is a woman, and female mushers are uncommon. Second, she has raced in the Finnmark Race several times and in the Iditarod, which usually takes 9-15 days and is the longest and most well known dog sledding race in the world. Our guide informed us that the race runs on "dog time," so once they have rested enough, it is time begin the next leg, and sometimes the dogs need as little as 10 minutes. While they sleep, the musher checks each dog's paws to make sure there are no injuries. The dogs are even conditioned to sleep with their paws sticking out because they know they will be checked. If a dog is injured, it is not allowed to be switched out. The musher must continue to run without the dog or withdraw from the race.

Along with the 300 adult dogs, there are also puppies! Almost as soon as they are born, they are introduced to tourists because they must learn to be around people. The dogs are all very well-behaved because of this. They never bite out of aggression (but might playfully steal your glove or camera). One puppy grabbed one of Kyle's gloves and took it into the puppy house, and our poor guide had to try and get it back. "Ok, first one who gives me the glove gets a sausage!" he said.

At first you might think that the dogs are not well taken care of because they are out in the cold all night and day and some look a little on the thin side, but our guide assures us that they are perfectly fine. First, it is forbidden for any employee to beat the dogs. Second, they are born outside and live their whole lives outdoors, so they are used to it. The breed is built for being in the snow. Lastly, the dogs work very hard throughout the winter pulling the sleds, which they enjoy very much ( I could tell!), and during the summer they rest and grow fat. Besides, Tove works with these dogs their whole lives, so she knows them all very well and they are truly her best friends, so they must always be kept in top shape. They even have a retirement plan for the dogs; once they are too old to race they are taken home by Tove or by the many guides where they get to lay on the couch inside and eat treats for the rest of their lives. Also, the center does not sell any of their dogs, so there is no chance that a dog will be given away to a bad owner. 

Finally it was time to say good night and go to sleep in our Sami tent. However, all night the dogs were howling at each other! When you have 300 dogs together, of course it is going to be noisy.

The next morning we were served breakfast in the larger Sami tent:

Then it was finally time for dog sledding!

It seems like as soon as the sleds and harnesses are brought out, the entire dog lot gets excited. I think they were even more excited than me! 

The route took about 30-45 minutes, but of course time flies when you're having fun. We went through pristine powder, and I sat in the sled for the first half to take pictures and videos. The dogs need no motivation at all from us humans; they are incredibly happy to be out running, as their deafening barks attested. Halfway out we switched, and I stood behind the sled to steer. The trip alternated between moments of serenity as the team kept a steady pace over smooth terrain to sheer exhilaration (and even a little bit of fear) as the sled would lean off balance at times, and should the sled tip over the dogs were sure to just keep running unless you yell "STOOOOPPP!" But luckily all the sleds stayed upright. 

Once we got back to the base camp the dogs did not seem tired at all. As we were leaving the sled, all the teams were barking just as much as when we left off.

We're leaving Norway in under a week, and we saved the best adventure for last. Kyle has been missing his dogs throughout this whole semester, so it was nice to just be around dogs again even if they weren't ours. It was truly a trip of a lifetime! 

The Aurora Borealis

The Northern Lights are called "Nordlys" in Norwegian, and Kyle and I saw them on our recent trip to Tromsø! Tromsø is located within the Arctic Circle and usually has a mild climate, which makes it a popular place for tourists to go and see the Northern Lights. Throughout our stay here in Norway, we have been checking this website that forecasts aurora activity: http://www.gi.alaska.edu/AuroraForecast/Europe/2013/12/11. The forecast is on a scale of 0 to 9, 0 being no activity (which, according to our guide, never happens) and 9 being the entire planet can view the aurora, which also never happens. The night we went was a 2, which discouraged us, but once we arrived to Villmarkssenter (where we would be staying for the night), our guide told us that he has seen beautiful light displays on nights that were level 2.

We walked a bit down a path that led to a campfire and sat on reindeer skins in the snow. Our guide told us about the folklore surrounding the Northern Lights. During Scandinavia's witch-burning times, the people used to believe that the lights were the spirits of the witches they had killed, and so they actually feared the auroras. People also used to believe that when women died as virgins, the lights are the girls flouncing their skirts to make all the men below on Earth sorry that they had never been with them.

This was around 7pm, and the sky was mostly clear. There was still a bit of light pollution from town, and that early in the night is not ideal for viewing the aurora. There was only a faint glow of green in the sky, and it seemed like the other group members were quite disappointed. Kyle and I were the only ones staying the night, so we weren't too worried because we planned to stay up all night to see them; 3am is the optimal viewing time.

We were a bit concerned when we learned that we were the only people staying the night; is there a reason why it is not so popular? But our guide assured us that it was only because we were staying on a Monday night, as on weekends the two communal tents are full with tourists. The tents are modeled after the culture of the Sami people, who are the indigenous people of Scandinavia.

We were shown our private tent which was covered in reindeer skins and heated by a small furnace. It also had windows which let us check on the skies throughout the night without having to go out into the cold. They had set out trays with tea, coffee, and snacks and lit the tent with candles. Very cozy and romantic, our Sami tent for two! Usually a private tent costs extra, but we were lucky to be the only ones there and have the privacy for free. It certainly was a better experience than heading back to a hotel in town before it was even late enough to see the lights.

We were given dinner (reindeer stew for Kyle and couscous and vegetables for me, followed by tea, coffee, and homemade Norwegian chocolate cake) in a larger Sami tent which housed wooden tables and seal skin covered seats. Visitors could also roast sausages by the indoor fire, and our guide made sure that everyone had enough food and drink.

After the other visitors had left, our guide told us that we were allowed to come and go as we pleased. He gave us snow shoes and headlamps and we grabbed some reindeer skins and trekked out into a snow-covered field away from the camp. We laid on our backs and watched the lights grow and recede. One grew larger and larger until it streaked across the sky right above us, although it was still very faint:

I was pleasantly surprised to see these lights at about 10 pm because I thought we would have to stay up all night to see them. We had also checked the weather forecast before we left Oslo, and it looked like the sky would be completely cloudy from 6 pm until morning. If you plan to look for the Northern Lights, you must know that even if there are all the lights there can be, you won't see any if there are clouds in your way. Luckily for us though, it was only partly cloudy for the first half of the night.

The day we visited, the sunrise was at 11:30am and sunset was at 12:17pm, so barely more than 45 minutes of sunlight. During the wintertime in Tromsø there is so little daylight that you can potentially see the lights at any time, if there is a high forecast level of course. Our guide said that he has seen them at 6pm in August, so it is possible to even seen them in the daylight as well.

I would have been disappointed at how faint they were, but I had not expected to see them at all so I was actually quite pleased. Next we should head south of New Zealand to see the Aurora Australis!

We've Got Some Catching Up To Do

It's my last week and a half here in Oslo, and I thought I would share some updates with you all!

First, I took my Norwegian final back in November and I passed with flying colors! Congratulations to me, I can now speak perfect elementary Norwegian! I also just took my Fiction and Film final this morning, and I think it went well. And lastly, I just turned in my final paper for philosophy mere minutes ago, so now I can update this blog finally!

That's a perfect opportunity to inform you all about the exam system here at UiO. It is incredibly daunting that the grade for the course is based entirely on the final exam. Whereas at UCSB there are multiple assignments and thus multiple opportunities to feel out what the professor or TA likes or doesn't like as well as chances to improve your work throughout the course of the class, here you really don't have the slightest idea of what your grade will be going into the final. That's why it is crucial to ask questions from your professors about the finals, and I think that helped me on my English final. But aside from that, you just have to hope that you studied enough of relevant material for the exam and try to use up the whole 4 hours so you can do a thorough job. I get the sense that professors understand that this kind of exam system is challenging; my English professor assured us multiple times that we have nothing to worry about.

I have also been working as an editor for themoose.no, an exclusively English-language online magazine here that caters to an international student audience. I am the editor for the culture section, and you can read articles here: http://themoose.no/category/culture-creativity/. It is my first editing job, but I've learned a lot about the editing world and it is a good preparation for the professional editing minor at UCSB, into which I have recently been accepted.

Kyle and I have also done a bit more exploring while we wait for the snow to arrive. We always feel like we have seen everything we wanted to see in Oslo, but we always discover new adventures on our outings. Because of the few daylight hours now, we make a point to leave the apartment as much as we can so that we don't just sit inside all the time. A few weeks ago, we went to the market at Blå, which is in the very hip and fashionable Grünerløkka area of Oslo. Here is some graffiti from the area: 

 I of course found a kitty along the way:

Regarding the weather, it has only snowed on three separate days and not enough for it to accumulate on the ground. This has really disappointed me; I was looking forward to living somewhere where it snows and going sledding. I guess studying abroad here for spring quarter would have been a better choice for that. Instead, we have gotten "freezing fog," which looks like this: 

and leaves this on everything:

So while it is incredibly cold here, there have not been any snow storms and so all we have are ice crystals. 

The cold has also made the lakes freeze over, and Kyle and I stumbled upon this frozen lake a week ago:

Of course you should always be cautious on ice like this, so we didn't venture too far out.

It is, however, supposed to snow up to 5 inches tomorrow, so even though the weather has played with my heart too many times offering me empty promises of snow, I am still excited!

Birkeland's Terrella and Hot Air Balloon Baskets: A Review of the Norsk Teknisk Museum

I recently attended a guided group tour at the Norsk Teknisk Museum and was given an insight of the history of Norwegian science and technology.

The tour began with a well-organized and detailed exhibit featuring the life work of Kristian Birkeland, a Norwegian scientist who was the first to accurately explain the Aurora Borealis, making him such an important figure in Norwegian history that he is featured on the 200 Norwegian Krone note.

His terrella, Birkeland’s invention to artificially recreate the Northern Lights with electricity, is on display at the museum. It consists of a magnetized orb over which Birkeland sent cathode waves. These waves produced a glow around the poles of the terrella, simulating the Northern Lights. According to the tour guide, Birkeland’s only inaccuracy was that he believed that the color of the lights was produced by atmospheric gases lit afire by solar rays, which were then attracted to the magnetic poles of the Earth. Birkeland’s research was conducted in the early 1900s, several decades before scientists began to research and understand particle physics, so he could not correctly explain the Northern Lights on the atomic level. To learn more about the Northern Lights, we have a complementary article up on the science behind the aurora borealis.

This section of the tour was especially interesting to me because it has always been a goal of mine to see the Northern Lights. The idea that they can be simulated on a much smaller scale is astounding, and being able to see the machine that accomplished this is worth a trip to the museum in itself alone. Of course, the machine is not running; our tour guide informed the group that the machine took an incredible amount of energy to run and was quite dangerous when in use.

The tour continued with an exhibition of a perfectly preserved workshop from the Industrial Revolution Era. Every detail, down to the small, rusty washers and cans of grease, are exactly as they were when the workshop was still in use. The detailed transposition of this workplace from its original site to its current location in the museum is certainly impressive and gives an authentic observation into the Industrial Revolution, but the disorganized clutter of a greasy workshop is a niche exhibition that I assume would only appeal to a few visitors.

Next the tour guide gave information about the many aircrafts housed on the museum’s top floor. One commercial airplane still has cigarettes in the ashtrays from its last passengers. There are also the original baskets from the hot air balloons that made an accidental journey by storm from Paris to Norway during the Siege of Paris in the 1870s, carrying post and carrier pigeons as a solution to the communication blockade.

The museum also has a section on the history of medicine in Norway. One highlight is the perfectly preserved female mummy who died during the Oslo cholera outbreak of the 1850s. The woman was buried in clay, which, combined with the cholera’s draining effect on the bodily fluids, naturally mummified the body. This kind of preservation was more interesting to me than the workshop because it was uncommon and rare; you might come across many workshops (albeit not perfectly preserved from the Industrial Revolution), but it is unusual to find a naturally mummified body anywhere, especially in Norway.

In addition to the informational displays, the museum also contains interactive exhibits that are especially fun for children. Young visitors can learn about energy conservation, music production, and much more. On my visit, many of these exhibits were out of order, perhaps signifying a lack of upkeep at the museum. The activities that were working, however, were quite entertaining even for adults. One included using an air blower to direct a beach ball through a hoop in the air, and another allowed visitors to speak to each other via concave walls on opposite ends of the room.

As a university student, I would not say that this museum is the most exciting thing to do in Oslo; I think it is more suited for families with young children, or for individuals who have a particular interest in the history of Norwegian science and technology. It does, however, have a commendable range of subjects and comprehensive information on each, and the guided tour was indispensable for the extra knowledge and insight you get.

The museum can be reached by taking tram 11 or 12 or bus 54 to Kjelsås. It is opened Tuesday-Friday 9am-4pm, Saturday and Sunday 11am-6pm. Prices are 90 NOK for adults, 50 NOK for children, students, and seniors, and 220 NOK for families. The museum has information in English as well as Norwegian, so it is not a problem if you do not speak Norwegian. More information can be found at their website, www.tekniskmuseum.no.

(This article was original published by The Moose, an online magazine for which I am an editor. The article can be found here: http://themoose.no/2013/12/03/a-review-of-the-norsk-teknisk-museum/)