Spent Yuletide and New Years in Oslo this year with family and friends. Was nice to be back for an extended period of time seeing everyone. The first few days in Oslo was particularly nice as many days of frost had caused all trees to be covered in frost, creating a very scenic experience. Unfortunately the temperature jumped above zero the day before christmas eve and stayed in the single plus digits until the day before I left.
Always nice to fill up with Norwegian yuletide foods like roasted ham, cooked dried smoked lamb and moose casserole. Only cloud somewhat hanging over the celebration this year was the fact that my mother is going in for brain surgery at the end of February. While it is supposedly a relatively routine operation, the fact that they are going into her brain makes it a bit worrisome nonetheless. Might end up taking a few days back in Norway in February to be there for moral support.
Had Jan and Jaime visit Norway for a few days around New Years Eve, had a good time and while the New Years Party was quite low key, it was pleasant and fun. Also since the current Norwegian government believes that anything that people find entertaining and fun should be banned, as some people being happier than others go against their philosophy of equality (and its always easier to make everyone equally unhappy), there was a lot of fireworks on New Years Eve due to this being the last New Years Eve where private airborne fireworks is allowed.
Managed to get a flu a couple of days before my return to Cambridge and due to the plane needing to get de-iced I got delayed with about and hour and a half at least when flying out. Stumbled into the house at 3am this morning, hating the world (and Ryan Air in particular) due to my flue and the long journey.
Brought quite a bit of food from Norway, so I be hosting some dinner parties serving fermented fish, reindeer steak, minced moose and whale meatcakes in the coming weeks.
It’s sad to see that it’s still ok in Norway to kill whales for food. Can’t you just use fake whale meat or some other fish for your meatcakes and leave these endangered species alone? I read that killing whales is part of your culture and the reason why Norwegians are more than reluctant to stop killing whales. It’s disappointing that the risk of extinction does not even dent that. What do you tell your grandchildren when they are gone? Here’s a picture. Can’t show you the real thing cause we ate them all? In my culture killing whales is totally unacceptable and the kill-method considered atrocious. Quite an eyeopener that our two countries separated by only a few thousand kilometers can be sooo far apart.
Two interesting articles about this topic:
http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article1376980.ece
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/6695885.stm
The dilemma the BBC News guy faced is quite interesting. Would you have eaten the dogs, horses or blended frogs? How would you react to a nation insisting on killing the last Siberian tigers so they can make Siberian tiger meatcakes? Food for thought :p
There are a couple of important issues here. First of all Norway only hunt sperm whale which is not on the endangered animals list. So while anti-whaling activists tries to blur the issue by showing images of the great blue and orca’s, the fact is Norway has probably the best wildlife management policies in Europe. Unlike the rest of Europe for instance we have managed to get normal fishing under control and are not overfishing like the EU is for instance. So instead of pretending to be on the moral high ground for opposing whaling I don’t think anyone from Europe who are fishing their oceans black (and through that destroying the ecosystem all whales depend on) really has much of a claim here.
As a sidenote I remember eating a lot of salami made from horse meat as a kid, but I haven’t seen it for a while. Think nobody breeds horses for food anymore due to lack of demand and not being very cost effective compared to cows.
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