Gavin and Allison Fall Down is a recurring series where we try Norwegian winter sports and recount our shortcomings for your amusement. This week: Short Track Speed Skating. Previous editions: curling, ski jumping, bobsledding, cross country skiing, dogsledding Every week on the way to our curling matches,[1] we walked past the outdoor speed skating oval at the ice sports complex, and […]

Gavin and Allison Fall Down is a recurring series where we try Norwegian winter sports and recount our shortcomings for your amusement. This week: Dogsledding. Previous editions: curling, ski jumping, bobsledding, cross country skiing The big attraction for us to Svalbard (click here for the intro-to-Svalbard post) was a 24-hour “mini-expedition” on dogsleds as put together by Svalbard Husky (an “expedition” is […]

Svalbard! Svalbard is a Norwegian archipelago found at 78°N, halfway between Oslo and the North Pole.  It is cold, rocky, desolate, and populated with more polar bears than people.  It is home to 2,600 inhabitants, 2,100 of which live in Longyearbyen, the administrative center and the world’s northernmost settlement of more than 100 people.  Very rarely […]

Many months ago, in early autumn, we were afraid of the winter.  Self-deprecating Norwegians were worried about us — surely, we would find Trondheim cold, dark, wet, and depressing, and we would absolutely need to get away in February to somewhere warm and sunny.  This turned out to not be true; we’re loving the winter, and […]

This blog post comes on request from my college roommate Susan Bean, who sent the following inquiry: Hello friend!! So I got a fascinating question yesterday from [another friend]. Apparently she heard recently from a friend that in Scandinavian countries it is normal to leave babies outside in the winter for naptime because the cold […]

The Winter Olympics, which are awesome, open a week from tomorrow.  Most of the time, NBC focuses on sports that have tricks and judges, like figure skating.  This is unfortunate, because figure skating is some repetitive and boring nonsense.  Snowboarding’s even worse, in that it’s repetitive and boring, but also trying really hard to be […]

This month was marked by a visit from our friend Craig, who is a senior in college and was earning college credit for spending his university’s January term traveling around Scandinavia with us. We first met Craig when he was a freshman at the US Naval Academy, and we were assigned to be his sponsor […]

Norway has recently been in the news as a suitable source of future American citizens. We agree that Norway is pretty awesome. But like anything, there are parts of it that are great and parts of it that are garbage.  With love, respect, and (most of all) irrational jingoism, here’s an accounting of the latter. […]

This is Part II of our Christmas adventure. Part I can be found here. When we left off, my parents, Gavin, and I had met up with Andrew in Kiruna, Sweden and were preparing for our excursion to the world-famous Icehotel in Jukkasjärvi, 20 minutes east by taxi. Jukkasjärvi has apparently always been a tourist […]