#fhsliv

Friday 22.1.21 – Saturday 23.1.21

Friday is always a half day; because we have class on 2 out of every 3 Saturday mornings, we get Friday afternoon off. After the normal morning routine, we have another valfag (elective), which for me is Sami fabric crafts. Last semester we made a Luhkka, a Sami hooded cape made out of felted wool, which was incredibly fun. I hadn’t used a sewing machine in over a decade, and at every single stage of making my luhkka something went wrong and I had to do it over again, but that only made the finished product even more satisfying to wear!

I'm unlikely to find a career in either modelling or fashion design but I was wildly happy to have made a wearable garment!

This semester we’re going to be making a leather coffee bag, which I am planning to keep dog treats in, rather than coffee. The materials haven’t arrived yet, however, so today we all bring our various knitting projects, and I also darn a couple of holes in one of my wool tshirts– an occupational hazard of working with dogs is that wool is quite vulnerable to their claws! Spending time in the sewing room reminds me of hanging out in the art classroom all the time in high school, with people working on different projects and a warm, kind teacher available to help with anything, so Friday mornings are one of my favourite times of the week.

After lunch, we have a whole school meeting, where today we are electing the new student council president. Each dormitory has a student representative, one of whom will be president. We vote, then discuss some issues that haven’t been resolved from last semester, and then we’re done for the day, and, in fact, the week.

This weekend is one of our free ones, so with no class in the morning, some of my friends from the dog line and I are heading up to the school’s cabin at Ropelv for the night. We always have the opportunity to go to town on Friday afternoons for a couple of hours to shop or run errands, and Ropelv happens to be about 45 minutes north of Kirkenes, our nearest town, which itself is 30 minutes north of the school, at the coast. 10 of us load our backpacks into one of the minibuses, and head into town to collect and send various packages, and pick up snacks before our ‘hyttetur’ (cabin trip).

Warming up plates for our pizza in front of our best friend at Ropelv, the wood stove.

It is -15ºC outside, and the cabin at Ropelv is heated with just one wood stove, so it takes at least an hour for it to get warm enough for us to take our coats off once we’re inside– I climb inside my sleeping bag on the sofa to stay warm. We have running water here, which is a luxury, but it’s cold water only, and there’s also no phone signal, so it’s a really nice break from the “real world”. This trip is part a belated celebration of Amila’s birthday and part “yay we’re all back together after Christmas break and quarantine”, so once we warm up, we get into cosy clothes and start making the pizzas we’re going to have for dinner. There is a sauna at the cabin, but we don’t have enough wood to use it and keep the cabin warm enough overnight, so instead we play Politisk Ukortekt (basically Norwegian Cards Against Humanity), knit, eat pic’n’mix, and chat about everything and anything (but especially an in-depth discussion about Norwegian dialects). The last time I played PU was about 3 weeks into the school year, so it’s incredibly satisfying to actually be able to understand the game without google translating everything this time! Eventually we traipse off to bed around midnight, ready for a lie in the next morning.

Saturday rolls around, and we have a slow start with our breakfasts and coffee. One of the teachers is going to come and pick us up at 2pm so we can get back to school in time for dinner at 3, and we need to pack and clean, but since we’ve only been here one night there isn’t a lot to do. A few of us decide to go for a short walk up to a nearby viewpoint and try aking– basically tobogganing, but using large plastic bin bags, since we don’t have a togobban here at the cabin. Unfortunately there isn’t really enough ice on the roads, and there’s too much snow on the fields for it to work, but I get some hilarious videos of my friends trying to scoot down the road on their butts, sitting on a bin bag.

We tried some different aking techniques, but there just wasn't enough ice!

Emma, Martine and I head up to the viewpoint, and as soon as we get off the trail, we realise we made a mistake: while it was a relatively mild -14ºC on the shelter of the road, the winds from Storm Frank mean there’s powder snow up to our knees, and the wind chill drops the temperature down to a frigid -27ºC. We so did not dress for this. Nevertheless, we drag ourselves up to the top, and the view is absolutely worth it, though if we were more than 20 minutes from a warm cabin it would have been a dangerous idea to let our hands and faces get this cold. Frostbite and hypothermia are no joke!

My 'I have to take a photo before Storm Frank freezes my ears off' face.

One of the first questions I got from friends about being at a folkehøgskole was what we do on a day off. Often I'll take the opportunity to sleep in; living with a chronic illness means I need to make the most of the time I can rest. However, sometimes I use a free day to go on an adventure!

*** Sunday 17.1.21 – Sledding with Mailin

Sunday is always a free day, so we get to do whatever we want! Normally I have a long lie in, but one of my friends isn’t feeling well, so I’m taking his feeding shift today, so I’m up at 9 to get dressed and head to the dog yard. It’s a balmy -4ºC today, so I’m just wearing one layer of wool underwear under my thick hiking pants and wool sweater, snow boots, hat and gloves. Now that it’s too cold to leave water in the bowls all day, we feed the dogs a soup in the morning to make sure they stay hydrated enough; equal amounts of meat and kibble, mixed in with lots of warm water and left to soak for about 15 minutes while we scoop poop. Tequila and Tibia both pick the kibble out of their soup and then tip their bowls over, and spend the rest of the morning licking at the snow where the meat water spilled over (weirdos). Ami doesn’t like her soup, but happily chews on a ‘meatsicle’– the disk of now-frozen soup that was accidentally left in her bowl overnight.

After plenty of cuddles, the three of us who fed today head back to our dorms to change out of our “dog clothes” before breakfast. I realise this is possibly only the second time ever that I’ve been to breakfast on a Sunday! It’s 2 hours later than on a weekday, at 10am, and I am normally always either already out doing something or still asleep, depending on the weekend.

Today I’m heading over to my friend Mailin’s to run dogs with her at 11, so I change back into my dog clothes, putting on an extra layer of wool. Between the wind and the fact you’re mostly either sitting as a passenger or standing quite still on the runners, it’s always colder when you’re out mushing. For Christmas I got myself a new pair of felted wool boots and overshoes to wear when I mush, because my old snow boots weren’t warm enough for my feet– I have terrible circulation– so I’m excited to try them out for the first time! Mailin is a friend of a friend, and has become an unofficial mentor to me in the past few months. She’s a seasoned musher who lives directly across the road from the school, and most weekends and some weekday afternoons I go over to train the dogs with her. All of last semester we were using either her car or ATV because there wasn’t enough snow, so today is going to be my first sled trip with her! I’m also taking with me several bottles of coca cola and some chocolate, as a thank you for the four bags of mushing gear that no longer fits her that she gave me last week. There were some real gems in there, and I know she won’t accept any money for them, so payment in sugar it is.

Geizzi in her tshirt being used as a chin-rest by Uvja

This morning Mailin wants to take out the puppies on a run; she has 5 pups who are 10 months old now, so they can run shorter distances than the adult dogs. We harness up pups Rajapää and Sorbme along with adult dogs Geizzi, Uvja, Timo, Hulda and Lelu, and Mailin show’s me how to tie a slipknot– her way of securing the sled to a post before we start. At school we use a different system involving pulling a short, thick stick out of two interconnected loops, and I have to say I prefer the slipknot method. One of the incredibly valuable things about training with Mailin has been seeing alternative ways of doing things with the dogs, as it means I have some familiarity wider variety of techniques. Mailin trains her dogs to stay quiet while we harness them up, which means things take a little longer, as every time one of the puppies starts barking, we stop what we’re doing and wait for them to stop again before we continue. Once all the dogs have their harnesses on, we start bringing them up to the line, and that’s when the full force of excited barking is allowed to start. Even after 5 months of mushing, that sound still fills me with a rush of joy and adrenaline.

I settle myself in the sled– I’ve only driven one three times before, so I assume I’ll be a passenger today, though Mailin has said I might be able to drive in the future, which is an absolute honour, considering the standard she has for her dogs, and the trust involved. She pulls the rope to undo the slipknot, and we’re off! I always love training with her dogs, but it is vastly different being a passenger in the sled than sitting in her car with her as we trained the dogs last year. The trail out of her dog yard is bumpy and windy, including a part where we both have to lean as hard as we can to the left, to try not to tip the sled into a ditch as we go up a slope; she wanted to fill it in earlier in the season, but there hasn’t been enough snow to do so. We make it through the bend, and suddenly we are out on the frozen river which marks the border between Norway and Russia. The sun came back yesterday; it rose above the horizon for the first time since November, putting an end to ‘mørketid’ (dark time), and Mailin tells me it’s traditional to make a wish when you see the sun again for the first time. I wish I’d known that yesterday, I would have wished for more snow!

The stunning view from the sled, out on the Pasvik river

Mushing is always beautiful, but today is particularly gorgeous: the dogs running smoothly out on the frozen river, with the most spectacular sunrise/set happening in front of us. I honestly can’t believe this is my life now. Then, as if I wasn’t already feeling like the luckiest person in the world, Mailin asks me if I want to mush. I’m incredulous– she trusts me with this already?! But the trail is smooth and mostly straight, so it’s great for a relative beginner like me. I jump out of the sled, hop on the runners, and off we go again. Immediately, I’m struck by how much better my new boots are than my old ones: they’re wider, so I have more surface area to grip the runners, and thinner and more flexible in the soles, so I can feel what’s under my feet better. My toes stay toasty warm the whole four hours I’m out with Mailin, which is a record.

We mush down the river, past the house of the friend who introduced us, Anne. If I wasn’t terrified of letting go of the sled, I would have taken a picture to send to her, but I settle for just telling her later. Soon, we get to the point where we need to turn the team, which is where things get difficult. I assume Mailin will want to take over again, but she lets me keep driving. We are trying to get the dogs to turn to the left and loop around so we can go back, but our leaders, Geizzi and Uvja, are not having it. Tiny superstar Geizzi pushes Uvja over to the left when Mailin gives her ‘haw’ command, but Uvja just runs over to the next parallel trail, so I have to break, stop the team, and give the command again. We repeat this several times, until eventually Geizzi drags the team around by turning to the right– not what we wanted them to do, but at least we managed to turn the dogs finally! I then add to the slight chaos by not turning the sled fast enough– Mailin’s sled is longer than the ones we use at school– so I crash us into a tussock, and flip the sled for the first time. I’m mortified, both because I have tipped Mailin onto the ice, and because I instinctively let go of the sled when it tipped, something you should never ever do; if you’re alone and you let go, the team will just run off without you. Luckily everyone is fine, and Mailin doesn’t mind: “every musher tips the sled sometimes!”. I’m glad she is nonchalant about this, because a few kilometres later, as we head back towards her dog yard, I tip the sled again into the ditch she navigated so smoothly on the way out. Nevertheless, we make it back to the dog yard in one piece, and Mailin asks me if I want to go out again. I still have 2 hours until dinner, so obviously the answer is yes!

We unhook the dogs, take the two puppies out of their harnesses, and then harness up Roavvi and Koru. The third pup, Biekhan, and adults Toivo, Vandre and Storm had dog chiropractic sessions yesterday (yes, that is a thing!), so they aren’t going to run today, and neither is Ella, who is in heat. I wolf down a square of peanut butter flapjack and half a bottle of soda, then hop back into the sled to head back out onto the river. We take the same route out of the dog yard, and Mailin shows me up again by navigating the ditch perfectly, but she does have more than a decade of experience on me, so I don’t take it too hard. One we make it out onto the river, we turn left instead of right, taking the trail up towards where the river gets narrower, hugging the Norwegian edge of the ice. Just after the 5km turning point, Mailin lets me switch places and drive again, which results in me accidentally letting the team start before I have given them the command to; not a great habit for them to get into, but it is so beautiful out on the river that neither of us can be too annoyed. Mailin takes some pictures of me grinning like a loon while driving, and then I complete the hat trick of sled tips with a third and final plunge into that damned ditch. I really need to practice not letting go when I fall, which means I have to tip the sled more to practice, so at least today was a useful lesson in that!

For some reason, Mailin insisted on hiding under the sled bag while taking a photo of me driving the team

Back at the dog yard, we unharness the puppies, and move the adults back to their houses for a brief snack break of some tasty frozen horse meat. Mailin is going to take the adults out again for another 30km or so after she has a quick lunch, to try and get them up to about 60km today. If she was racing this year she would be doing 300km over the weekend, but with so many young dogs, and no Finnmarksløpet ambitions until 2022, a short 60km is just fine for today. After giving the dogs one last cuddle, we head into the garage for Mailin to find her old mountain skis, which I’m going to borrow for the next couple of months, since skis are so expensive to buy new, and she doesn’t use hers very often. Norwegians don’t really do politeness in the same way Brits do, so I try to reel in my instinct to offer profuse thanks, and just say one short sincere thank you instead.

Sara (L) and Tequila (R) in lead, with Dia and Tundra behind in point/ team, and Frost and Rubbe yelling in wheel

Thursdays look broadly the same as Wednesdays, so after breakfast and assembly, we head back up to the dog yard. After we feed the dogs, scoop poop, check that none of the chains on the houses are coming loose, and set up the sleds, Thor-Atle (our teacher) tells us we’re going to drive a longer loop on the marsh today. I’m driving in the second group, which means after the first group sets off from the dog yard, we walk out to the change-over place on the marsh. One of my friends is recording a ‘day in the life’ vlog for her presentation in assembly soon, so we make jokes to her camera and tackle each other into the fresh snow to the sides of the trail. When it comes to my time to drive, I’m on the tandem sled behind one of my stipps, who makes driving around the slightly more bumpy and technical trail look super easy. We switch halfway through, and every time she tells me I’m doing a good job switching my weight to the outside runner as we go round corners or breaking to keep the tempo of the team smooth, I grin– I always was a bit of a teacher’s pet!

Mushing in -18ºC leads to some pretty epic frosted eyelashes!

After lunch, we make some plans for a trip we’re taking next week. This is the second time the trip we were meant to take, to mushing legend Sven Engholm’s kennel and lodge in Karasjok, a few hours west of us, has been cancelled because of Coronavirus concerns, so Thor Atle wants to give us an alternative that will be really fun. We settle on booking some cabins in the Sameti national park, an hour or so to the south of school, to go to with some of the dogs for a 2 night skijoring trip. I’m excited but apprehensive, because I’ve still only skied once so far; I decide to rectify that this afternoon. After dinner, I head out on the new, wider mountain skis I borrowed from Mailin, with my new ski boots that have better ankle support than the ones I was borrowing from school. I find them much, much easier to balance on and generally more stable, and only fall over once! I’m hopeful that with a bit more practice, I’ll be ready to add a dog into the mix next week.

Finally it’s Wednesday! We have linjefag all day on Wednesdays and Thursdays, so after breakfast we all head up to the dog yard. We have a bit more snow now than last week, so we plan to drive out onto the marsh behind school, using a tandem sled set up. Normally we mush with one person driving and one sitting as a passenger in the sled, so driving in tandem (with one sled tied behind the other) means we can practice steering without any extra weight in the sled. Before we can start harnessing up the dogs we have to feed them their breakfast soup, so they’re hydrated for the run, as well as checking that they all have enough dry straw in their houses, scooping poop, and setting up all the sleds.

I got to mush twice with my stipp (second year teaching assistant) during quarantine, so I know what I’m doing driving tandem, and get to drive the front sled of the first team! I find it a little nerve-wracking being the first team out on the trail, but I’m confident I know the route around the marsh well enough, and am determined to push through this anxiety. My friend Sophie is my tandem partner, and I’m excited to drive with her, because we haven’t mushed together since a trip last October!

Snute (L) and Tibia (R) in lead, with Isa (L) and Punch (R) in point/ team, and Saima (L) and Balto (R) in wheel

Even though it’s only been 4 days since I was on a sled, it’s been a month since I got to mush with my classmates, so I’m buzzing. My new boots have way better grip than my old ones, and I feel strong and exhilarated as I pull out the quick-release stick to unhook the team from the tree. We have Costa and Snute running in lead today, and they fly across the football field between the dog yard and the start of the trail, kicking up fresh powder snow. Even though it’s only about 5cm more, the new snow makes a huge difference as we drive around the marsh, smoothing bumps in the trail, and making it easier (and quieter) to use the drag mat break. Halfway around the loop Sophie and I switch so she’s driving the front sled, and I pick a smooth section of trail to sneak my phone out of my pocket and take a few videos of the perfect Arctic landscape we’re flowing through. After everyone has had a chance to drive, we unharness the dogs, take them back to their houses, check their feet and massage them a little, especially the older ones. It’s Amila’s birthday today, and some of my classmates have made brownies as a birthday cake, so we have an early, sugary lunch in the dog yard classroom with a side of celebration.

While everyone else heads back to the main school building after lunch to do some more work on the kompetansebevis, my stipp and I drive into town to run some errands and get me to my police appointment. Though I moved to Norway before Brexit, meaning I get to keep my rights as an EU citizen for as long as I live here, I need to apply for the new residence card for British citizens in Norway. Kirkenes and the police station is a 50 minute drive from the school, which makes it all the more annoying that my appointment only takes 5 minutes. I’m the first Brit the officer has had to process for the new card, and while it seems dubiously straightforward, he takes my email address in case of any issues, and lets me know I’ll need to come back in a few weeks to take photos and fingerprints for the card. My stipp and I head to the hardware store to pick up several bales of straw for the dogs, and then stop at the petrol station to collect some packages; normally only small parcels get delivered to the school, so to send or receive anything larger, we have to either go to the petrol station, or the small post office at one of the grocery stores.

My knife blade and the block of wood that will hopefully become a functional handle!

Tuesdays start with another Norwegian lesson, in the time slot where everyone else has various sports options. In contrast to yesterday’s very organised lesson, today is chaos, because several other teachers are off sick, so people keep interrupting us to get permission from the vice-principal to do something other than their normal activity. We also get incredibly distracted by the sun, which finally came up above the horizon for the first time since November on Saturday, but it has been incredibly cloudy, so today is the first morning we can see it properly for the 10 or so minutes it hovers above the Russian mountains, and I take a lot of photos. Despite these distractions, I feel like I’ve turned a corner with my understanding of Norwegian; yesterday I spoke more in one day than I ever have before, and I’m excited to try and keep that up. I took French for 9 years and Spanish for 3 at GCSE level, and I never even got close to confident with speaking the language, so my progress with Norwegian is really exciting to me.

After lunch, I check the post cubbies to find that my new ski boots have finally arrived! I excitedly head back to my room to try them on, and thankfully the larger size of the two that I ordered fits really well. It’s still strange to me that I need to size up when I buy shoes now, but nothing is worse than having boots that are too tight in the cold, since it’s the pockets of air between layers of socks and around your toes that actually keep you warm.

In between lunch and dinner we have a few hours of linjefag- our main ‘line subject’. Some weeks we head straight to the dog yard on a Tuesday, but today we are having a theory lesson inside. We’re all working on an optional assignment to prove our competence in mushing, the kompetansebevis, which is basically a paper on everything we know about dog care, gear, training etc. in combination with a ‘solo night’, where we will go out in pairs with a dog team to drive them and then camp out overnight. We’re also all working on preparing for our ‘linjefagskveld’, a sort of variety show where we’ll tell stories, perform sketches and roasts, and show photos from the school year so far. Two of the other line subjects have done theirs so far, and the bar is super high, so after some time talking and writing about how many calories a dog needs for an 8 hour trip, we start brainstorming sketch ideas.

This week I'm going to give an overview of what an average week at Pasvik looks like! Every week is different, but last week was a "normal" school week without any trips, so I'm going to share what went on up here at the edge of Europe.

***

Monday 18.1.21 Today is my first normal school day back after Christmas and my 10 day quarantine, so getting up at 7:45am feels extremely early, though I know I’ll get used to it again pretty quickly! Mondays are generally a very chill day, so I bring my knitting up to the main school building. I’m working on my first ever sweater, and I’m almost finished with the pattern, which is exciting. Everyone here knits during assembly and ‘fellesfag’- common core- which we have on Mondays and Tuesdays, so I work on a couple of rounds of my sweater while our vice-principal gives us a lesson on how to make friends. Weirdly, I find doing something with my hands helps me focus on the Norwegian better, so I find myself understanding most of what he’s talking about. I was a bit worried that the month of holidays and quarantine would mean I had lost some of my skill with Norwegian, but happily it seems that isn’t the case!

After fellesfag, we have electives, which for me is a Norwegian lesson. Normally there are 4 of us, but my two Russian friends are still in quarantine, so today it’s just me and my German friend. Last semester our lessons were very low-key, but it seems like our teacher has taken our feedback on board, because he declares we are going to work harder this semester, and launches into a lesson on irregular verbs, which I happily follow along with. I manage to talk mostly Norwegian during lunch, part of a concerted effort to get over my anxiety around saying things wrong, which tends to mean I just don’t practice speaking at all.

We have a room inspection on Mondays, so after lunch I do a quick once-over of my room; I vacuumed yesterday after I re-shaved my undercut, so there’s no need to do it again. I have a couple of hours now to chill out before we have our ‘house meeting’ at 2:15, so I read for a bit and then end up taking a nap, like I do most Mondays. I’m pretty sore today after falling off the sled yesterday, so it’s nice to just cosy up in bed for a bit! After an uneventful house meeting, we have dinner, I do my kitchen duty, and then sit down to write. On Monday – Wednesday afternoons there are different optional electives, and most of my friends have music today, so I like to use the time to do different creative things, and get myself sorted for the week ahead.

After dinner, I have kitchen duty for half an hour, and then a free afternoon. We all have different valfag- elective subjects- on weekday afternoons, and most of my friends have music today, whereas I only have valfag on Wednesday. I was hoping to go for a ski trip, but my new school boots didn’t come with the post this morning, so I take the opportunity to to just chill out. Mondays are always my most low-key school day, so I do some more knitting, reading and writing, then go to supper, do my kitchen duty, and have a quiet evening.

Quiet, that is, until I get a message from a friend just saying "NORDLYS". It's -19ºC outside, so I throw on several layers of wool, a hat, mittens, and my big coat, and leg it over to the football field, where there's the least light pollution on the school campus. Lady Aurora puts on a truly spectacular show for us, swirling and dancing through a sky that is otherwise so bright I can make out not just Ursa Major and Mars, but Cassiopeia, Cancer and Aries too. I watch the sky for about 20 minutes before heading back inside to warm myself up in bed, once again absurdly grateful that this is my life.