The Bridge, the ferry: getting from island to mainland

Moving on from winter. Let´s discuss, what next popped into my mind, as we (in the last post) were on our way in dead of winter time, me very pregnant, on our way to the airport!

We have to cross the bridge.

But, wait, did you know the bridge was only recently built, and just finished being paid for, with tolls. The toll has now been removed. Before so, people still chose to mostly continue to take the ferry back and forth.

There is still a ferry but it is just for people. I took it today:

PHOTO of ferry

But before there was a choice, when there was no bridge, the only way to get off the island to anywhere else was if you had your own private boat, or take the ferry. At that time it was for people and cars, and more people used it, so it was much much larger, and there were more than one ferry. Now the ferry is smaller, just for people, and they (the ferry company) tried to stop ferrying people back and forth, as they said it was not profitable. They lost! They did get a lightened schedule, less runs, and now do not run also on the weekends, or late. They pretty much ferry from about 5am til about 7pm I think (it´s been a while since I went that early or late now they changed their schedules so, as I´m always assuming they have stopped or haven´t started up yet, so take the bus).

I do take the ferry still, instead of the bus. Usually take it a few times a week, or anytime the weather is great, and I see it from the bus connection. Today, when I took it the weather was sunny but raining, and windy and cold, but still as always wow, what amazing panoramic views the entire way. Sometimes I ride it back and forth twice then back, before I step off on the mainland, just to enjoy the weather and or views! There is an open deck uptop with chairs, and the under deck is enclosed and heated, with baby changing areas, 2-3 WCs (tiny one room toilets with sink). Lots of seating, main floor, with drop down trays for eating or reading newspapers, tables, and places for your things, and tvs, internet, etc.


BOATS

People always had boats here, and many still do. THAT is why they could build a house nearly anywhere, even on a bit of a skerry sized island, or what seems today a very obscure random place. Norway´s coastline is along 3/4 of the country by looks. By actual measurements, there is enough coastline, counting all the coastline it would take to cover to cover all the coasts and tiny islands and archipelagos, to go round the world twice or more! That´s a hellofalota water, and you had to have a boat to survive or get anywhere here for most of this land´s time with having people on it! The Vikings were so well-learned at boat building the techniques still survive today! (That´s another post!)

So when you see a charmingly quaint tiny red wood box of a house along any obscure out of the way random place on a random out of the way obscure island, you know why, and you know HOW. Boats.

In my vast home library of books, I´ve a Norwegian version of a the American story Little House on the Prairie. It´s called, aptly, Little House on the Fjord. It´s a story of the typical life back then. A farming family, living in a wooden farm house, on a tiny obscure island, with their boats for getting back and forth from other areas for what they needed or could afford. They ferried their sheep back and forth over the fjord, even in bad weather. They learned from a young age how to ferry themselves by hand, by rowing, or sometimes with the luxury of a type of sorta-motorized thing, in the boat even by themselves in emergencies, back and forth, such as when one of the adults got sick with something really bad. I can´t recall, but can write about it later, when I get the book out of the kids room and re read it.

The point is those charming houses are not just places they lived on off-season, the point is those were REAL HOMES, not just for looks, or in good weather. That is where real families lived, and sometimes died early as kids! Those are real homes, not just for show for newbies and tourists who come from somewhere apparently with no imagination or realization that everyone in the past, or even now, live like everyone else do.

The old green house off our property which is in our family now, used to owned by a lady who died long before I arrived and set foot for the first time here. I still think of it, and call it her house. What a life. I feel privileged to have been told her story, when I specifically always asked til I was told, as I was always interested in the history of the house and family who owned it before.

She was married. Oh wait. First the house. A main box of a house with a few tiny rooms built on, with a tiny attic room above they shared off a dangerously steep tiny narrow stair. She and her husband had one room. And shared it with their only child, a daughter, who died when young of what is now something we can vaccinate for. She apparently was a lovely wonderful little girl, most dearly loved by her parents and all who met her. Sad she died, but I can see why. The house was cold with hardly any insulation, as was usual, they bundled up. It was a cabin with no running water, just a well outside as now. No toilet, an outhouse area. They had finally gotten actual bathroom with a shower but no toilet, and with a sink, years after their girl died, as bathrooms were not usual back then. Even til the lady died, she only had a luxury of a nice bucket in a tiny closet, a literal water closet if ever I saw! Her husband died before her, and she was by herself for ages. She had the absolutely most beautiful garden, going by all the various bulbs and wild things I´ve found, and seen underneath what had overgrown it since her death. She loved gardening. She was a very enjoyable amiable friendly woman. Our family fondly remember her from their childhood. From the second I saw the delapidated weathered run down cabin, I´d wanted it, as I thought it was so charming and beautiful, and I´d wanted to know about the previous family there, long since all dead.

So I feel privileged to have now even a little bit, brought a little of her life and her family back to live, to others, as she seemed like a wonderful woman, wife and mother, neighbor, who had a typically difficult, physically and otherwise, life. Carrying water in from the well, such as my American great grands and grandmas did, and even my mom when a little girl. Doing all the laundry by hand, walking down a tiny muddy or icy forested path, which I love and find charming and picturesque and fairytale like now, but can imagine how hard it must have been to actually have had that path as the means for walking/getting back and forth every single thing brought into or out of that house! I think she gave birth in that house, but she died because one bitter icy winter she fell on the back step, breaking her hip. She died not soon after that, from the exhaustion and wear it takes on an elderly lady whose bones and body and mind have already been through a lifetime and then of difficulty and hardship just getting the ordinary every day stuff like getting food and water, and making beds, having a child, and walking into town and back carrying everything including when pregnant or with a newborn, young child. In all weather, no matter what weather, no matter if she was probably ill or didn´t feel like it. It had to be done. It wasn´t gonna get done by thinking or hoping, wishing or praying. She had to do it. Especially once her husband died.

What a lady, I´d have liked to have known her to ask her her own story. Ask her of her garden, ask her of her life. Tell her how lovely the yellow poppies that still come up that she planted are. Tell her how lovely the views out that 2nd door of 3 doors to the tiny house is, and how I had always stood in her kitchen with that door open, looking at that hill covered in birch and heathers, lingonberries and blueberries, and wondered if she ever had the luxury of also enjoying those views--she loved to garden so I am guessing yes. Anyway, so she is never far from my mind, her family, her daughter, when I am at that what I call The Green house. When we first bough the house, I took old piece of handmade crocheted lace curtain out, and I have it beside me now as I type actually--it´s lining one of my baskets. A picnic basket, with one side for wine bottles, the other for the picnic foods which has a flip top basket top. That is currently where the lace curtain is now (it´s thick crewel like size, and overall only about a foot by a foot, as the window it was for was very tiny). So now what was in her kitchen, something she made, is in my house too, and it reminds me of her, a woman I never met but think fondly of:)



PHOTOS