Your virtual tour of Alta Norway!

Alright, so I now in the middle of writing exams, instead of studying i shall tour you around the city i have been for the past 3 months. Located 69° latitude north, home of more reindeer than humans. I live right in the city center. A 3 minute walk from school, and a 2 minutes walk to shopping mall. I live in a student housing building. We have 1 kitchen for 8 people. There is a Unesco world heritage site, the Alta museum, many rock carvings, i think i already put some pictures up from when i visited there. Okay some boring history for you: in 1944 the whole town and area were burned down by German Nazis. All except one church, i have attended this church a few times. Everything is in Norwegain, but it is still very neat to experience. Anyways so besides this church, all the buildings are relatively new. Earlier i spoke about hiking to the Halldetoppen, there were 2 buildings on top of that mountains, Germans also destroyed them! All that is left from the original building is the stone foundations.
I'll put here some pictures of my room, i left it messy to give it a more student look. Cause you all know that if i'm not studying i am cleaning my room.

Juhls Gallery

For our last trip with the international student group we went to a town called Kautokeino. It was actually quite close to the Norwegian Finland border. We went to this silver gallery called juhls galleri. This couple moved here in the 50’s and built what started out as a small cabin, but they kept building on. It is now a huge gallery. The rooms were all very neat and different, in one room the roof was all caved in. I guess one winter the snow actually sunk down the roof. So the guy just left it. They were involved in this movement to help Afghanistan refuges; so one area of the gallery is dedicated to this Afghani culture. The couple are silver smiths, so they make a lot of Sami and Norsk jewelery. We got to go right into their workshop as they were working. There was a lot of exhibited displaying Sami culture and such. Don’t expect any presents from there, it was all quite expensive…

On the way home we stopped at this Sami culture College, a reindeer slaughtering plant (my vegetarian friend had the time of her life!) and this old church that was in a Sami movie we saw on an earlier trip.

Rah Rah Rilla in Russia!

So as part of our Cross Border Entrepreneurship course we were able to attend an Entrepreneurship meets Culture business week in Murmansk, Russia. This was the school we went too; Murmansk Humanities InstituteWe flew from Alta to a small Norsk town called Kirkenes, it was very near the Russian border. Though it takes 30 to fly straight from Alta to Kirkenes, our flight was not a direct one, we stopped at this small town call Vadsø, then for a 7 minute flight to Kirkenes! Though it did turn out to be around 10 minutes cause the pilot missed his landing, he came over the intercom saying he wanted us all to get our money's worth! So we met up with another class in Kirkenes and went by bus to Murmansk, the trip was made much longer because of the customs. I guess where we were entering was a very dense military region. Lots of guns, many passport checks, in and out of the bus. What a welcome to the ussr! We stayed in a very low class hotel, which just added to the adventure of it all. We had many classes; morning, afternoon and evening sessions. Some I just was not able to attend, due to shopping and site seeing distractions. The first evening my friend and i thought it would be nice to get a hair cut because it is so expensive in Norge. It is very hard to communicate what you want while speaking different languages. After a test piece of my hair turned green, I decided to go with just a cut.
One evening lecture took place on the atomic icebreaker 'lenin'. After the lecture we got a tour of the ship, it is docked in the Murmansk harbor. At the harbor there was this long fence, and on it where about a ton of locks. Lovers engraved a lock and put it on the fence, so for as long as the lock remained there their love would last! So romantical!
We went to so many markets, mostly selling fur coats and hats and vodka..
2 friends and i found the cutest cafe that we visited everyday. We pretty much tasted very cake in that place. Well i told my friend to order me a glass of hot chocolate (cause she speaks russian) and they gave a glass of melted chocolate! ha it was awesome! Exactly what everyone needs first thing in the morning, that and a creme puff.
At one souvenir shop I found the greatest matryoshka doll set. It had the last 5 american presidents inside each other!
On the return trip, we made 5 stops! It was crazy took us 4 hours total with no flight duration lasting over 15 minutes! I never had so many stops from Saskatoon to Alta.(Murmansk at night, it looked very beautiful with snow!)

HUNTING

Alright so for our last outdoor activity trip we set out to the gargia peninsula to hunt grouse! We stayed at this beautiful cabin owned by a nearby folk high school. Both teachers joined us and brought their dogs, unfortunately we lost the one dog! But it was found later and brought into town. So we hunted as one large group.We started target shooting by setting up magazine pictures in the tress. I was so terrible at this I missed every target. Later the next day we hung small bottles, and i hit those! Then on the last day we through up bottles full of snow, and i hit those too! Watch out Saskatchewan gophers! On the last night we were given the option to sleep outside in a gapahuk, just one tarp tied onto 2 trees. So only 5 of us crazies did it. Oh and this night the northern lights were incredible! They weren't an extremely bright green. But they stretched from the far east to the far west! Actually lighting up the sky! ps. as i am writing this it is dark: 3.30pmThis is me with my two teachers Kolbjorn and Daniel.
We walked over this peninsula it was all white and the wind was blowing very harshly, it really felt like the arctic!

Haldde Peak

So from the town of Alta there is a very large mountain that can be seen. It has a very steep peak, and on the top has 2 buildings. In the late 1800's a family of 17 lived up on the very top. They had a tunnel built between the 2 buildings because it would get too stormy to walk outside. From 1900 to 1930 it was used as a northern lights observatory. In 1944 the buildings were burnt down by the Germans, only the stone walls remained. The climb was over 9 km, but very steep. And as we neared the top the snow was very deep. That night 2 boys made this finnebif (er something) it had mushrooms and reindeer meat over rice! It was incredibly tasty! It was kind of a shame the sky was very cloudy so we were unable to see the northern lights. It was a beautiful cabin, lots of bunk beds, and was kept very warm by a wood burning stove. After the decent we stopped and explored the remains of this old coal mine, then to this old church.

dam reindeer

Alright so a few weeks back, our class biked out onto the Finnmark Plateau to see the Sami mark and butcher there reindeer. It was big family affair. Sami of all ages were present. Even the smallest of children had long knives attached to their belts. I learned that even if they have other jobs they must be present during these events. We arrived just as they were finishing up for the day, so when they all left we set up our tent by this small lake. That night it was incredibly cold, when we woke up out tents were covered in snow! As soon as we finished breakfast some Sami boy came to us with his dirt bike, and informed us that they wouldn't be doing anything with the reindeer for at least 4 days. So we biked around a little bit then headed home. So my dream of riding a reindeer was slipping away. The hills were covered with reindeer! As we'd bike they'd run right in front of us. Oh and they make the strangest noise, its like a really low bellow/ pig snort. It is quite scary when they are in big groups the sound is so loud! Oh and they all have antlers; males, females, babies. How the Sami mark their reindeer is they carve the name of the owner into the antler. One person is only allowed to own a certain number of reindeer, so every member of the family each owns some.

The next week the international student group took a bunch of us to this dam in the Alta river. We got to walk under this mountain to get to where we could walk out on the dam. I guess there was alot of controversy over the building of the dam. It interrupts the reindeer route, and also the quality of salmon in the river. There was a big protest before it was built they had to bring 30% of Norway's police force, over 400 officers came to arrest these people. My outdoor life teacher was in on the rejection of the dam. And now it doesn't even provide very much energy.

northkapp

Last Sunday a group call ESN an International Student group took a large bus of foreign kids to the North Cape. It is the most northern point in mainland Europe. On the way we saw many reindeer just on the hills and also in the middle of the road! Before we arrived at the cape we stopped in the very small Sami town. There was this house there that an old lady had made it Christmas every day. She opened her house to tourists and served Christmasy food and drinks. When we got to the end of the world as we know it, we all watched this promo video. It was really awesome, it showed the cape in all seasons, and gave a little history about the area and culture. Then we just took alot of pictures around the monuments and such.. and spent alot of time in their giant souvenir shop. In the bus we watched Norwegian videos that i did not understand at all.