Where I live - Østre Toten, Norway's Toscana : Kari Egge

 Capturing four seasons by mobile phone

Happy New Year 2022, everyone. I hope you are all well and healthy, and have started the new year with optimism and high spirits.

I promised last year to contribute to the X-Unicefers article series “the Place I live”, and share some photos from my homeplace in Norway.

It has taken more time than anticipated to get onto the task as I was engaged by a Norwegian Rescue and emergency relief company as advisor on how to engage with UN agencies and private sector companies in Africa, and especially on Covid-19 testing and prevention. 

It was both interesting and challenging but the best is that we ended up with a NORAD funded project, which will be implemented in remote areas in Uganda in collaboration with UNICEF Uganda.

The forests may be quite dense in our areas 

When I retired in 2012, we returned to Norway and settled in Trysil, the largest slalom and skiing destination in Norway. We already owned a cabin in the Trysil mountains and had good friends in the valley. My husband, Erik, is a very competent slalom and downhill ski instructor, so for him living in a mountain village was a great thing. We also thought that it would be great for our fifteen years old daughter, Karoline, to settle in a small place rather than a big city since she had never lived in Norway before. How wrong could we be! She did not like it at all, but that’s another story!

Trysil is one of Norway’s biggest municipalities and you can spend days walking through deep forests, wetlands and mountain areas before you get to the furthest end of the community. I am very fond of forests, and enjoy walking and picking berries, especially Mouldberries and Cranberries.

However, at a point I felt that it was simply too much forest and longed for open skies and landscapes. Fortunately, I had several consultancies abroad and was teaching at the secondary school in the municipality- They helped tolerate the “woods”!

I love to pick berries. These are Mouldberries picked in Trysil mountains, in the course of a few hours last August.

Wild Cranberries grow in plenty in both forests and mountain areas

Fortunately, after a few years in Trysil, I got an opportunity buy my childhood home, the farm where I grew up, at a place called Bilitt at Østre Toten. A few months later we moved to our new HOME and settled in the largest farming area and breadbasket of Norway after 45 years away from the place.

Our farmhouse was built in 1840s and fully renovated between 2015 and 2018

Since June 2015, we have lived on the farm that my grandparents bought in 1916 and in the old farmhouse, which was built in the 1840s. This is the place where I grew up, and spent my first 20 years. My grandmother and my parents lived here until they died, and my oldest brother until we took over the farm 45 years after I left the community to pursue my university studies in Oslo and elsewhere.

 
After moving back to Toten and living so close to nature, experiencing the four seasons to the fullest, I have got a passion for mobile phone photography. I always move around with my mobile phone in hand, finding motives and sharing photos on Instagram, which is the easiest and fastest way but also in a few photo groups on Facebook.

In this little piece, I am sharing some photos from the area where we live, which I hope you will come to visit one day. We established a small B&B in 2017 and receive guests from near and far all the year round. You find us if you google Faarlund and Breakfast.com

 
Welcome to our journey.

Farming right outside our house during spring time. In 2021, this was a potato field. The strange machinery attached to the tractor, does everything from preparing the field, setting and harvesting potatoes and onions.

 

With all four seasons, and three big Maple trees close to the houses, we’ve got quite some work to do during the autumn.

Returning home after so many years has been a very interesting and sometimes challenging journey. While I hardly knew and/or recognized anyone in our little community, people thought they knew me! Especially after a few interviews in the local newspapers.

 
While I had a hard time finding out whom I was talking to, people talked to me as if we had spent all those 45 years I had been away together. After a while, I found out that the best thing to do was to ask them WHO they were, and for their names, to avoid to embarrass myself by talking to people I did not recognize at all.

 
One thing I realized when we moved back home, is how beautiful this area around Lake Mjøsa is. For many Norwegians, beautiful landscapes are only those with high, rough mountains and deep fjords like what we find along the west coast, and in northern Norway.

 
Our area is often said to be “boring” as rolling hills and farming areas do not impress Norwegians much. However, I often argue for the beauty of this area which is mixed with our rich history as Vikings, farmers and hunters.

 
The beauty is not only present during spring and summer time, but all the year round. The area comprises mainly wide-open farm land, large and small forests with mixed trees and plants. Besides farming and forest areas, a few meters from our farm, we also have easy access to Totenåsen highlands, with mountain like areas, rich forests, a huge number of lakes, cabins and leisure areas. It is only 25 minutes’drive away.

The view from our farm is almost 360 degrees and it changes often, dependent on the weather and of course the four seasons, which we experience here.

 
We live in the middle of the municipality and in a government protected farming and cultural heritage area with many very old farms and remains from the Viking era. Although this is now a modern farming area, there is deep respect for old traditions and culture among the inhabitants. We have got an active local history organization and a local outdoor- museum, Mjøsmuseet, which is keeping track of what happened in “the old days”.

 
Of course, we also have to keep track ourselves on our own farm history and contribute to keeping it alive and up to date. By reviewing old documents at the National archives, last year I realized that somebody had stolen the rights to our old “Seter”, or animal summer grazing area, at Totenåsen. The guy had even erected a new cabin on my area. Since the grazing area had belonged to our farm since 1755, I was, through in-depth studies of old documents and contracts, able to win back the area back in the Regional Agricultural Court in 2021. The cabin is now also mine.

Our small cabin in the front, is one of five houses left at this grazing area. 40 years ago, there were 11 houses on this land and loads of animals grazing here from May to late September. Now, the grazing areas are shared between three farms while a number of old houses are in ruins.

 
The first written notes about our farm, Faarlund Østre, which was called Fyrilundir in old Norse, is from 1373. Historians claim that it is much older since this area is close to Lake Mjøsa, and the Vikings often established their homesteads close to lakes, good farming and grazing areas. Our farm is one of three farms with similar names, which were built close together as a “seat” as the Vikings used to do. All the three farms still exists.

The most visible sign of the Viking area is a Viking Grave from the early Iron-age, which is found on the farm. The burial place, which looks like a small hill, is for some reason called Pepperhaugen. Where this name originates from, nobody knows, but since the Vikings were great travelers and explorers, also on European rivers, they may have brought pepper back from their journeys to Turkey (Konstantinopel, now Istanbul), or other Mediterranean countries. and kept the spices on that sacred place. The burial site is protected by law, and preserved as a national heritage site by the central government.

 

Pepperhaugen in the front with Totenåsen communal forest areas in the background a cold winter morning. Who knows, maybe a Viking King was buried here? He would at least have a great view of his land! 

Pepperhaugen, an early morning when the sun is trying to break through the heavy fog On our national day 17th of May, celebrations were held on this site and it also had a flag pole.

Since we live close to Lake Mjøsa, the biggest lake in Norway, we often experience changing light, fog and differences in the many micro-climates in the area around in our neighborhood.

Lake Mjøsa is a 130 km long and ends at the Olympic city of Lillehammer in the north. Here we look across the lake at its narrowest. It is very close and in my childhood we used to go cross country skiing on, and across the lake for fun on the frozen lake.

The place “on the other side” as we call it, is Helgøya, the biggest island in the lake, also a rich farming and leisure area. Helgøya , or “the holy island”, hosted a Hov, or a Viking court, where the old Vikings came together many times a year to settle disputes, simply celebrate events or drink.

Lake Mjøsa at summer time when the sun never really sets in Norway. Although it is even brighter up north, we also often experience 24 hours light, especially around mid summer time. This photo is taken around 2 am a summer morning in 2021.

On a good day, we can see Lake Mjøsa through the forests. This photo was taken on a fog free morning and we also see across the lake to the farmland on the other side.

 

During winter time we often got heavy fog flowing in from the Lake. You can see the fog rolling in in the background. The frost on the trees creates a winter fairy tale feeling.

Dense fog during the blue hour – between the day and evening also creates special contours during winter time.

Our municipality has got approximately 15000 inhabitants. Most of the people are farmers, or descendents from farmers, and most of the others are in the service sectors in the municipality or in technical and skilled trades. We only have a few industrial enterprises, linked to the food and wood industries.

Østre Toten is indeed the breadbasket of vegetable farming in Norway. From the 70s, vegetables and potatoes became the main crop. Where we live, we are totally surrounded by farmland. This year the main crops were potatoes and onions.

On an afternoon stroll, I captured these trees which are a kind a wind breaker which farmers used to plant in order to reduce erosion in this very open farming area

The day after the heavy fog, the sky was clear and sun shining. This pink blue sky towards the east, was the opposite of the very colourful sunset towards the west