Christmas

We were celebrating Christmas with an other family with a little child. Christmas was time for good food, talking and board games for us grown ups, our son was consentrating on getting so much milk than possible.

One lady bought a Christmas tree but it was too tall for her, so she needed to cut the tree. The bottom part of the tree ended up on our friends house and there it was doing perfectly its duty as a Christmas tree.

Otherwise we were visiting people and getting visitors. Life has been so hectic lately, that it was nice to calm down and meet people we haven't met for a while and just sit down and use time with cosy chatting.

The picture above is from an evening with "Feuerzangenbowle". That is a German speciality, an alcoholic drink. There is a kettle with spiced red wine and over it's placed a sugarloaf which is burned with rum. Caramelized sugar drips in the drink and gives a good taste. That warm drink tasting a really good, but I hold anyhow with non-alcoholic drinks as I'm busy with nursing our son.

New home

We were planning to move to a new apartment before I was supposed to fly to Tromsø for to wait our sons delivery. We were thinking that it would be so nice to come back to a new apartment with the newborn. But things don't go always as planned. We managed to move half of our things to the new apartment when water suddenly broke and I was send with an ambulance flight to Tromsø. Everything just needed to be left as it was.

So, when we came back to Longyearbyen with our newborn son, we needed to continue with moving things and making the new apartment home. It's not an ideal situation to empty cardboard boxes between nursing and changing diapers, but it goes.

We got an apartment in Gruvedalen, up in the mountain side, in "Beverly Hills", as some people call it. Now in dark time we can enjoy a cosy view down to the town and towards airport. When the light comes back, we can see Hiorthfjellet, the mountain in the other side of fjord beside the town, and over Isfjorden, the big fjord.

Even though we have been busy just moving things in and putting them in places, managed we also make little Christmas as well. Our son is too small to realise it's Christmas, but it's cosy for us to celebrate in the darkest time of the year.

A puny Christmas tree

Christmas time starts traditionally with a celebration around a Christmas tree at the market place. Celebration is specially important to children, but the Christmas tree is also delighting us grown ups. This year the Chrismas tree gave a talking point: Isn't it slightly puny? Yes, for sure it was, it was something pretty sad thing to look at, but at least we were having a real tree on our treeless island. But it wasn't only us who was wondering about the tree, it came to the national news in Norway as well. As a result of that we got a new tree. This time they really selected an impressive tree at the mainland. The new tree is the biggest Christmas tree I have seen here in Svalbard.

Christmas in Svea

We celebrated Christmas in Svea. The work in the coal mine isn't stopped even for big holidays. But even though we were having a quite normal work days there were sense of occasion in the air. We were about 100 people who gathered together for to enjoy christmas dinner. At our working place amount of ginger breads made sure that we didn't lack taste of Christmas on our coffee breaks.

God jul!!!

Glædelig Jul!

Merry Christmas!

Hyvää joulua!

С Рождеством !

Linksmu Kaledu!

Froehliche Weihnachten!
Joyeux Noël!
Feliz Navidad!
สุขสันต์วันคริสต์มาส

White Christmas

We have got a good amount of snow lately - and a good storm as well!

Our dog needed to wait outside while I was shopping, but actually he thinks it's ok.

The market place got totally filled with snow.

As usually, we got a bad weather around Christmas time. That's getting almost a tradition. We managed just to get to Svea and then a storm took over Svalbard. Now we're stuck in Svea, but that does't do anything as we are supposed to be here anyhow. But that's worse for those who have been planning to spend Christmas with their families. Many people have needed to renew their plans because even a flight to mainland got cancalled.

Snow enough

Google was remindeing about beautiful skiing weather in the mainland.

We are also having some kind of skiing weather - just bit darker and kind of limited here in Svea. A chrismas tree by the canteen is already delighting our everyday.

We got today to Svea as normally. But that was also the only flight which have been today. All the other flights has been cancelled because of snowing. It has been snowing, snowing and snowing all day. But that I don't mind about - it can be snowing as much as it ever wants! It will be sunshine and skiing weather also here, after the while.

An ekstra pair of shoes and doghairs

We had visitors last week. One of them was two footed and two of them had four paws each and for addition nice furry coat. It was nice to have life on the house - and maybe not that nice with endlessly amount of doghairs floating all around.

Our two-footed visitor came while we were still in Svea. As we have got dark time here we wanted to give her some "illuminative" welcome to our empty house. Even though it was little bit early to put Chrismas lights on we did that. She didn't have any problems to see which house was ours!

During that week we got lot of new snow - and that's something we like! I'm already dreaming about a good scooter season and even nicer skiing trips. 

Cars by Unis (The University Centre in Svalbard) were getting totally snowed down.

We had also a little workshop for to get some winter decorations. Somebody could think there are kids living in the house!

Our four-pawed visitors were mummy (right) and sister (middle) to our own dog. The owner of them is taking care of our dog while we're in Svea. These two dogs are very easy going and well trained so it was just a pleasure to have them on our house.

Happy Christmas!

We have had five fantastic Christmas celebration in Svalbard. Two years we have been in the town, one year in Svea and twice had a cosy Christmas in a cabin. This year we decided to do something totally different. We took a little bag and our dog with us and flew to Tromsø. We got a change to borrow our friends house in Kvaløya - thanks for her! Here we have couple of hours twilight in the middle of the day and Christmas peace over us. And that's about everything we need for a Happy Christmas!

Merry Christmas for all of you!

Chrismas is arriving also in Svea

Christmas has arrived even in Svea. Christmas decorations and good Christmas meals are giving a sense of occasion, even though people working as normally. A coal town is busy even in these holidays. We left Svea before Christmas but many are celebrating in Svea while they working.

Evening with Ginger breads

Even though all Norway included Svalbard has been suffering for butter shortage we had our yearly Ginger bread baking evening for girls. Luckily people in Svalbard are used to squirrel away amazing things in their freezers - included butter. 1,5 kg fat, 2 kg sugar, 5 kg flour, 1 dl spices and little cognac became a delicious dough with Swedish Ginger bread recipe. Recipe is Swedish because tradition were started by a partly Swedish girl. And tradition is still going on even though the first Ginger bread bakers have been moving away from Svalbard.

Light in darkness

In Longyearbyen darkness isn't feeling that dark because I know what there is in darkness, I know what I could see. In Svea I'm not that known with surrounding around Svea and somehow darkness is feeling more dark here. Strange...

But even we're getting some light in darkness before Christmas. There is some Christmas lights installed around the ports and on buildings and some candles are giving cosy light on the breaks. We can't lose the feeling of coming Christmas even though we're working far a way from home.

November is over

We were getting almost every kind of weather in November. We got rainy days with some plus degrees in Celcius. Everything was slippery and that with high wind caused some cancellations on the airplane traffic. Some people got a creepy experience when SAS-flight ended up crosswise on the airstrip after landing. But we had also really nice days with temperature around -20 degrees Celcius. On those kind of beautiful days it's still possible to see a shimmer of the sun over Sukkertoppen and behind the glaciers.

We have already a good amount of snow. Some people have started their scooters and every time I hear a sound of a scooter my fingers start to itch. But we're waiting still a bit before we start our scooters.

This year advent was really early, already in the end of November. Suddenly we got a Christmas feeling over the town. It's really nice to be walking on the main road and to see all Christmas stars and other kind of lights on the windows. It's always nice to get some light on the darkness.

Late Christmas greetings

Our hyacinths started to flower little too late thinking about Christmas, but that doesn't matter anything. They are anyhow beautiful :)

Northern lights as Christmas decoration

Christmas was peaceful in Svalbard. We were lucky with weather and in the Christmas day we got a spectacular polar light show. It's not that often with pink and violet beside green colour, so it was really amazing look those colourful lights dancing all over the sky.

We dog owners skied to the cabin with our dogs and other people used scooters. They also took all of our totally full packed Zarges-boxes and other stuff with them. Huskies got a nice snow hole to sleep under the cabin and we others had it cosy inside the warm cabin.

In one day I needed to go to town to work for some hours. For that I just borrowed a scooter and drove to the town and later back. In one afternoon we got visitors from the town by scooters. They had also a dog with them, but she sat at a scooter with people. That's really practical :)

We had everything in the cabin without water and electricity: A real Christmas. Far away from busy world, out of commercialism. That is what Christmas is for me :)

Merry Christmas!

Christmas at a cabin

We will spend our Christmas at a cabin with some of our friends and dogs. We try to take some parts of Christmas traditions from all the countries which are somehow represented. There will be some traditions from Norway, Danmark, Sweden, Finland and Germany. In our Christmas dinner there will be some typical Christmas food from all of those countries. We are not yet sure will it be amount of meat or sugar which will kill us... Otherwise we just waiting for quiet and nice Christmas outside of the "busy" town.

Christmas preparations

I'm back in Longyearbyen. It was nice to see twilight in Tromsø - now I'm ready to continue in totally dark again. Or, actually almost... it's soon full moon, so that will be giving magical light again.

We're having a visitor at the house over Christmas. We're preparing for a real Christmas with making decorations, baking and just having good time. Christmas with little excitement is allowed even for grown ups :)