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Some time ago I wrote an entry called Arbeid, which was about working in Norway. Tonight I'm updating you on that subject, from my place of work. Yes, I'm blogging to you live from behind the bar at Sound of Mu. It's 8.30pm and there are eight people drinking here. As I may have mentioned before, Sound of Mu is an art gallery / bar run by an artists' collective. I'm part of this collective and work here part time, which means I finally have a regularly paying job. There's money in my account, but it had been empty so long I forgot my pin number, and a machine ate my card. I've started a second job, doing some English-language editing of academic documents, and that's work from home (or from here... wherever I have my computer...). I have to register with Brønnøysundregistrene to be self-employed and send invoices. But...

This week I went to the funeral of a woman I worked with in London. Her husband was Norwegian, so the funeral was here in Oslo. When I think of the nice things she had said to me before I moved here, and of her love for Norway, it was obvious to me she would have liked me to attend. I had a half-hour train ride, then a walk through the snow. I knew I was on the right road but didn't know how far ahead of me Haslum Kirke was. I knew the church had to be interesting enough to get married in. She was married there, and her daughter, who is now only four, was baptised there. Sure enough, a medieval church soon appeared out of the snow ahead of me. The service began very beautifully, with gentle chimes from the belltower announcing the hour. Then a family...

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Ok, so I was in the Sound of Mu, opening the bar for the day. Petter was there, folding a piece of A4 paper in half. "How long have you been in Norway?" he asked. "Since June," I replied. So this was my first winter. He said he'd have to introduce me to a feature of Norwegian winter called takras. It was raining outside, indicating both that the temperature had risen, and that the snow was beginning to melt. This meant the ice on the roofs would become unstuck - and fall off. Petter and I went out onto the street outside Mu and he pointed to a menacing shard of ice on the roof, high up above us. Soon, it would fall, to the peril of whoever stood below. On his piece of paper, Petter wrote his warning Se opp for takras!! and put it on the door. Se...

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O snow, thou art warm. Someone said to me that the bleak, depressing part of winter is not now, in the cold, but earlier in winter, before the solstice, when the days are getting darker. Now, when it's -8 degrees, the snow, a white blanket, brings more reflective light. Also, each day now is a little brighter, leading to spring. Oslo folk found a way to love the snow. They go cross-country skiing on the well-lit tracks outside the city. Cold air in the lungs? Back when I was in the International Summer School, we drove up to the mountains so the Africans could touch snow for the first time. They seemed to enjoy themselves, although, in a way, they knew it of old: they had all had previous contact with refrigeration! And as I knew I'd have months of the stuff ahead, I didn't get out of the bus.

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("Our Saviour's Graveyard"). This graveyard, established in 1808, is Oslo's most famous cemetery, and many of the great Norwegians of history are buried here. On this 'warm' January afternoon (it's about 7 degrees, and there isn't any snow), I take a stroll through the Gate of the Abandoned Glove... Of course, that's not its official name, but there's a hardened, weather-beaten and presumably abandoned glove on the gate and it doesn't look like it's going to be removed any time soon. See how low the sun is in the sky? It is about 1.30 in the afternoon, and the sun will set in a couple of hours. So none of these photographs will be particularly good. But perhaps they will be 'atmospheric' enough to peruse... The graves of many of Norway's best-known artists are in VÃ¥r Frelsers Gravlund, and monuments of them are displayed together in the 'Honour Ground'. You...

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Yes, "Back to Norway!" as Klaus Dinger from Neu! so memorably hollered in song. I've been out of the country for two weeks, and now I have returned. Everything here in Oslo seems pretty much the way I left it, but in the first hours after my arrival, it seemed like I'd lived a whole life in the interim, like I'd been away in Ireland for a hundred years. But despite feeling disconcertingly different, I simply picked up my life from where I left off. I had been feeling fairly glum about employment prospects and impending financial doom, but I am pleased to find myself in a snowfield of optimism. The bar project is going very well, and this block is fast becoming the most interesting part of the city. I probably need a proper job to keep the wolves from the door, but for the moment I will be...

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Our story begins in 1864. Diego de Landa, Bishop of Yucatán, Mexico, publishes an alphabet that can be used to translate the hieroglyphics of the three Mayan codices. Enter the translators. The Abbé Charles-Etienne Brasseur interprets the Troano codex to be about a land called Mu, tragically destroyed by a volcano. Augustus de Plongeon's version is similar, although he sees much more about Mu in the codex. He comes to believe it is a lost continent in the Caribbean Sea. In reality, de Landa's alphabet is wrong, so the codices cannot be translated this way. The year is 1926. James Churchward writes his magnum opus, The Lost Continent of Mu. In his opinion, Mu was not only real but it sank in the Pacific Ocean. His evidence? He visited a Tibetan temple and became friends with its priest, who happened to show him some ancient tablets: the so-called Naacal tablets....

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Let me begin with the question: why am I living here in cold, expensive Norway? Unlike almost all other foreign men in this country, I wasn't press-ganged into moving here by some weeping, homesick girlfriend, nor was I avariciously lured by the black gold of plentiful oilfields. Nay, there can only be one category to which I belong. I must be one of the norgesvenner ("Friends of Norway") that I hear whispers about in the bars and streets of Oslo. Yea, these fabulous and strange creatures come from afar to become peculiar objects of Norwegian affection in every fjord and fjell, despite the fact that they are often fameless and obscure throughout the rest of the globe. I now institute the Online Norgesvenner Museum. Can I persuade you to take the tour? ENTRANCE. The first exhibit is Bonnie Tyler, pictured here in her original glory. A Welshwoman, Bonnie is best...

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This is Torbjorn Davidsen: artist, actor, protestor, Nordmann, but most of all a father. On the day that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and its director Dr Mohamed ElBaradei were awarded the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize, he made a strong individual protest, by carrying a gravestone 20 kilometres on his back, to put on the lawn of the Nobel Institute. The IAEA have actively promoted the directive Euratom 96/29, an agreement between all EU countries (except the UK) to allow radioactive waste to be used in consumer products. Norway is not in the EU, and could outlaw the importation of, or trade in, any such products, but only if that does not go against any prior international agreements. As Norway has the European Economic Area (EEA) agreement with the EU, it does not look as if she could keep these products out. Under the directive, it is permitted to...

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This painting, Spill og dans (Play and Dance), depicting a fiddler and a dancer, hangs in the same room in Oslo's National Gallery as masterpieces by Degas, Picasso, Cézanne, Van Gogh, Gaugin and Courbet, as well as six of the most important works of Edvard Munch. So whose painting is this, to be given such major prominence? It was painted by Halfdan Egedius, a Norwegian who died before his twenty-second birthday. He was born Halfdan Johnsen in 1877, but later gave himself the name Egedius, because let's face it, that's a much cooler name than Johnsen. Egedius' interest in painting and illustration began at the age of 5, and he attended art school from the age of 9. From the age of 15 he began painting the landscape of Telemark, and he became fairly successful at this. Teenage works by Egedius can be seen in major galleries. He illustrated books...