Lillehammer
A significant part of our (hi)story.
As you may already know, Lillehammer is a significant part of Norse and Norwegian history. This is where it all started for Hákon Hákonarson (Håkon Håkonsson in Norwegian, and known to the rest of the world as Haakon IV Haakonsson). Birkibeinar (Birkebeinerne in Norwegian, and Birkebeiner in English) most famously took him as a baby from Lillehammer to Østerdalen and ultimately Trondheim, on a long and perilous journey through treacherous mountains, forests, lakes and rivers.
For those who have read Úlfheimr: The Dark Age, you also know that many of us were born in Lillehammer. Or that the last time I broke my leg, I reached help south rather than north, even though it took longer, precisely so I would be sent to Lillehammer.
So, now is time to put some visuals to the location. For more context, the photos were taken yesterday around 4pm. Lillehammer is built on a hill, and is by a lake. It is about 2 hours north of Oslo.
Now, if you are wondering why we tend to be fit here, we didn’t drive from Rena (base, and largest one in the country), we skied. That’s about 75km.
For the anecdotal story, and a reminder that women truly are insane (something even our 4yo boys understand that this point), some of our women were at Ikea in Hamar again. Their full time job doesn’t seem to be so much to look after our boys when they are very young, but more to spend our money. And why get handmade furniture in Norway out of solid wood, as we do for our own houses, where they can buy crap at Ikea? Anyway, as usual, they spent too much money, and the shopping spree didn’t fit in their car. They could have done two trips. They could have returned some. Nope. Instead, they asked us to take some of the purchases back to Rena on a sled they expected us to pull on skis. Bear in mind that Hamar, where Ikea is, is already 50km south of Lillehammer. So, we would have had to ski to Hamar, back to Lillehammer, and then back to Rena. Pulling IKEA boxes on a sled. It probably would have been a 2-3 day operations. So, yeah, women are crazy…