I remember one day when I was 15 when I got to know my cousin Emma better and nearly froze to death. I was staying with my cousins in Molde Norway over Christmas break. They had a big house with an extended family: my great-granduncle, his daughter, his granddaughter and her family. There's others relatives nearby. They all speak Norwegian, and I only speak English, but they also speak English, so they tried to speak English around me. I managed to pick up a little Norwegian, but only a little.
One day my cousin Emma wanted to show me a cabin she and her brother Erik were restoring. Up there, in December, the sun's only up for a few hours each day. I looked it up recently: 10am to 3pm, and twilight from 8am to 5pm. It's dark when you wake up and dark when you eat dinner. So she was up and packing while it was still dark, and we took our bikes down to the harbor while it was twilight. She had loaded us up with food and picnic basket and boards and a tarp-covered painting ... she promised it did make sense.
Even in December, Norway is a beautiful place. We biked down the road to the harbor through this U-shaped valley that glaciers probably carved out recently, with evergreen forests on either side. There was a little snow, but not much. Molde is next to the ocean, and the ocean's fairly warm (40 Fahrenheit counts as warm), so the weather was surprisingly mild. Below freezing at night and a little above during the day. Everything was frosted as we rode down. We had gloves and mittens and heavy coats. Further down you'd get sheep and cows grazing on green open spaces.
I was talking about books I'd read, Ivanhoe and Pride and Prejudice, and Emma laughed at their strange old customs. Like, entailments, with English women with no hope but to marry into riches. Who needs to be rich? Who wants to depend on everyone else? Silliness, she said. By the time we reached the harbor it was almost daylight.
The harbor had fishing boats, and there was this one guy. Karl, Emma said. "Don't pay any attention," she said.
[Hello pretty lady! Come see a real boat sometime!] the guy yelled at her in Norwegian. I couldn't interpret but I could guess. Emma was just staring at the ground. [Is that your boyfriend, Emma?] he yelled. She glanced at me then back at the ground. "What'd he say?" I whispered. "He asked if you're my boyfriend," she answered. I stared at the ground too. We just walked past and I hoped he'd leave us alone, because I certainly couldn't defend Emma or myself if he did anything.
I had a thought, and said, "Accismus. He could use Accismus."
Emma said "Pbbbbfth. He's no getting a kiss from this miss!"
Now I grant you accismus is kind of a fancy word, but that seemed like a strange reaction. "huh?"
She clarified: "I'd rather kiss a frog."
Then I got it. "Ah! It's AK-sis-mus, not a-KISS-miss," I said. "I wasn't saying you should kiss him. Accismus means to pretend not to want what you really want. What I was saying was, if he wasn't so direct, he might get more girls."
"Oh is that what you're doing being so polite all the time?" she asked me.
"Arrraghh ..." Er, no, not me, don't look here. I turned beet red and pretended not to be there. She's like my third cousin, so I guess theoretically kissing her should be OK? She was a really awesome cousin. And undeniably attractive in an athletic tomboy sort of way. But, she was two years older than me, plain out of my league, and both our families would certainly disapprove of me doing anything like that. So, no, that was a can of worms I did not intend to open.
We got to Emma's boat. It was just a big rowboat, but with an outboard motor. She put the boards and painting and picnic basket in, showed me how to get in without tipping it, then got in herself and started the motor. Putt putt putt putt out into the fjord.
And I have to tell you again, the scenery in Norway is unbelievable. This big channel of water in a U-shaped valley between wooded mountains on either side dotted with snow. The sun must have been up but it was behind the mountain to the south. The water was smooth and the sky was these high little puffy clouds red with the sunrise. Then the fjord opened up into open water, dotted with islands in all directions, and beyond that the rolling North Sea. The sun finally came out from behind the mountain (well, more that we had gone past the mountain). The sun reflected off the water and we were a speck on a little boat in the middle of it all.
Emma pulled up to this rocky island sparsely covered with grasses and trees. A little dark shack was perched on the western face. Emma parked the boat in a little lagoon, tied it up, and unpacked. I looked at the knot she used but didn't recognize it. We hauled all her stuff up a little dirt path to the shack. It looked sort of haphazard, like it had been built by teenagers.
"Erik and I built this mostly ourselves!" said Emma.
What did I say?
So I asked, "Isn't this going to get washed away by the next storm?"
Emma explained it was well above the treeline, there'd been a cabin here forever, but it had been falling down before she and her brother started fixing it up again.
The cabin looked bigger and sturdier inside than I had expected. We'd seen the north side, it was mostly facing west. Emma unwrapped the picture, hung it on the wall. Tilted her head to the side to admire it. "It makes the place look classier, don't you think?" she said. Then she took the tarp and the boards and climbed out the window and up onto the roof and started hammering in nails.
This painting was a portrait of a man facing left, with ruffled black hair, a big pointed nose, a monstrous mustache, and little beady eyes staring out at you accusingly.
"Who's this a portrait of?" I asked Emma.
"Oh, that's mother's painting of great uncle Bernard Olsson, barrister. He declared the moon illegal."
"Crazy, was he?"
"Mother says no. Strong willed. Strong of faith. But not strong enough to persuade the moon not to rise," said Emma.
The guy was dotty as a dingbat.
"He used to go out at night and swear at the moon whenever he saw it. The moon paid him no mind," said Emma.
What did I tell you.
Emma pounded on the roof for about half an hour then came back in the window. The sun was already setting again. The ocean and islands were spread out to the horizon below a flaming red sky.
"What do you think of our little cabin?" asked Emma.
"Wow."
"Here we are, Christopher, all alone, miles from anywhere, with this sunset all to ourselves! Do you know what this calls for?" she asked me.
"... uhhhh ..."
"Lunch!"
Oh my god I thought she was going to make me kiss her there. I was saved. She got out the picnic basket and handed me some food. "You're right," she said as she stuffed her face. "The weather's hard on our little cabin. The most important thing is to build more. Build more than the weather takes away."
After we ate we went back to the boat, and Emma piloted us back out onto the water and into the fjord. The waves were bigger now.
About halfway back the motor stopped. "Oh crap no! I ran out of gas? How could I ... ach!!" She swore and fumed at herself in Norwegian. She blamed Karl for distracting her. It was windy now, and getting darker and colder.
"... nnnnnow what?" I asked.
"Now, we row," she said, handing me an oar.
"Back to the cabin?"
"No we're a little closer to harbor. Staying in the cabin overnight would be rough anyhow. Sit here, next to me."
She showed me how to row. I had no idea what I was doing. But after about a dozen attempts, she got me rowing with her in sync. It helped to lean against her, that way I could feel if I was getting out of sync. The boat was rocking like crazy, and you could only see the horizon at the top of the swells. We were looking out to sea anyhow and it was getting dark so I had no idea where we were going. I just concentrated on the oar: pull, lift, feather, dip, pull. It was such a contrast to the easy morning ride out on a smooth watery mirror. "You're doing fine," she told me. It started raining.
After forever we reached the harbor. She got out, helped me out, tied up the boat. We got on our bicycles, but I was beat. She must have been taking it easy on me, but I was in no shape for that much rowing. I was really dreading the bicycle ride back uphill for miles.
Then Emma said "I'll go ahead and have mother come with the car. You come at your own pace. There's just one road so you can't get lost. But you DO have to keep moving or you're going to freeze to death, you hear me?" With that she shot off up the hill, leaving me on my own.
I tried pedaling. But my muscles were shot. They weren't willing to do any more hard work. So I got off and just walked the bike uphill. Just plodded along. It was dark and raining. Sometimes I couldn't see the mountains through the rain. Sometimes the rain would let up, and the moon would peek through, and glisten off the snow on the mountains. I leaned on the bicycle. I was thinking the moon was really pretty.
Then there were headlights ahead, and Erik and Emma and her mom got out and tied my bike to the roof of the car and hustled me into the back seat. My fingers didn't seem to be working anymore. I said the weather had turned awful. Emma's mom laughed. "There's no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing! We'll get you right home and all wrapped up."
Back at my great granduncle's, they wrapped me in a blanket in front of a fire and gave me Kvaefjordkake, with slivered almonds, and hot cocoa with a dollop of whipped cream. It's amazing how good food tastes when you're tired. I watched the flames. Great-granduncle was asleep in his chair. I fell asleep listening to Emma and Erik debating what additions they should make to the cabin next.