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So the Princess finally opened the angel school about a month ago. The teaching began in August, but without a location for the school! So I can't go there to tell you what it's like. The address for the school (for now) is apparently the Princess' home address in Lommedalen. There has been this announcement on the Astarte Education website (my translation): "We at Astarte Education know that there is a location for the course that awaits us. It just hasn't found us yet. If you know about a place for sale, preferably an apartment that is regulated for business activity with a big room that can fit 30 people and 3 small rooms that can be used for individual treatment sessions, that has a little kitchen, wooden floor, preferably with a fireplace, a lot of light and a nice backyard, situated in central Oslo, we are interested." (Picture: a...

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Pictured: Marie and Ida (cello) at the soundcheck at Dattera til Hagen. Recently I've been playing in someone else's band other than my own. The band is Hanny. I like the band so I said yes to doing it. It's good songwriting with melody, not hung up on genre, and with some songs in French, a welcome relief from Norway's obsession with anglo-american music. But the songs are deceptively complicated to play. Unsure of my own abilities, I thought it was a bit like asking Sid Vicious to join the Beatles, but with a lot of practise I thought I got there in the end. The first show was at Dattera til Hagen during Oslo's Øya festival and the second was at home at Sound of Mu. I'll also be playing with them at the Organ festival for music and art. As in my own band, there is frequently a...

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I don't want to leave the subject of Norway's psychic princess Märtha Louise just yet. I'd like to report on what the reaction to her opening an angel communication school has been like in Norway. Clifford Pickover, in his book The Girl Who Gave Birth To Rabbits (about Mary Toft, the woman who faked giving birth to a litter of rabbits in 1726), didn't see much difference between the delusions of the 18th century and our age, and he wrote, "What I have learned from Mary's legacy is that there is increasing urgency for scientists and leaders to be vigilant in their struggle against hoaxes, especially now that the mass media make it particularly difficult to distinguish fact from fiction... Nonscientific reasoning and bizarre therapies are gaining acceptance as medical treatments... The best way of battling the spread of pseudoscience is an enlightened public, able to distinguish logic from delusion,...

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At last, something actually happens in event-shy Norway. Princess Märtha Louise, 4th in line to the throne, has declared "I am psychic" and is opening a school to teach people how to communicate with angels. The princess has been in contact with winged celestials, having previously had her third eye opened by communicating telepathically with horses. Märtha Louise, whose tax returns for last year, according to Dagbladet, show net assets of over 6 million Norwegian kroner, is setting up the school with Elisabeth Samnøy, a 39-year-old former assistant ships’ mechanic, who registered assets of zero (her surname the papers have also spelled “Sømnøy”, but not “Rasputin”). The school is called Astarte Education (they have a website), named after Astarte, goddess of fertility, sexuality and war. Fertility is mentioned on the website but there’s no mention of sex and violence. Interestingly, the horse is one of Astarte’s symbols; the fact that...

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There are certain advantages to the desolation of Oslo in the month of July. For one thing, our bar is one of the few places that actually has something going on. This week we had some busy events, on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, during which we were thanked for keeping the city alive. We had our summer party on Saturday, and were treated to a visit from the UK: Amity and Mark of Morning Bride turned up and played us a few songs acoustically (see picture). On 22 July we then closed, and will re-open on 2 August. This is for necessary renovation work on the interior. It's good that most of my friends living in our apartment block also remained in Oslo in July. We have a massive wooden table in the yard, and have our meals outdoors when we can. Festivals happening in remote spots of Norway often...

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I title this picture "Nature: bored." A bird flew into my hallway, looking for something different. The streets and gardens of Oslo offer nothing to anyone anymore. It is July, the most hideously vacant month in the calendar, a month in which I have all the time in the world to write about the particularly torturous phenomenon of the Norwegian summer. "Torturous?" you ask, "The time of year when Scandinavia is warm and sunny?" It's true that there does not seem to be an hour of proper darkness, and the night sky sometimes goes a pleasant shade of violet, but these summers can be best described as long, boring and lonely. Sleep is the best option, and I frequently rise at 6pm, to take in but a few hours' waking reverie. Allow me to elucidate. You readers from abroad know well that for example in an office, employees take turns...

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More about the magic symbol. This time I can't pretend it's too much of a secret. The editor of blather.net greased up his research elbows and emailed me some pertinent information about it, thus rousing me from my drunken squalor. Whatever the symbol was called in Viking times is unknown. Modern scholars call it the Valknut (from the Old Norse word valr, meaning "slain warriors" + knut, knot). We know this symbol is associated with funerals, from where it appears. For example, the Viking Ship in which the pot lid was found, the Oseberg Ship, was found in a burial mound. It also appears on rune stones associated with Odin. You'll notice that it's three interlocking triangles with nine points, thus suggesting the magical significance of the numbers three and nine. The latter number has particular resonance, as there are nine worlds in Norse cosmology. In modern times, you may...

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One interesting thing for a tourist to do in Oslo is visit the Viking Ships museum, where you get to see, er, Viking Ships, but also some of the fancy stuff that was discovered with the boats. There's a particular pot lid with this magic symbol on it. My niece sketched it for me, and wrote, "The magic symbol on the viking lid. It took less than two minutes to reproduce." I am currently investigating this symbol, exploring its meanings, its portents, its possible usage and its potential power. When I conclude these studies I will of course mention nothing of it in this blog, as I will keep all significant and dangerous information to myself. But I just thought I'd stick it up here on the internet to attract other cognoscenti, those in-the-know, holders of secrets, keepers of flames, and the like. Read part 2

An email from Paul Thornton of the Save Grünerløkka Campaign came cruisin' through my inbox. He has now set up a blog, and he says "It contains a running commentary of what is happening in the Campaign to Save Grünerløkka as well as links to related information... You can even subscribe to the blogs RSS feed if you like. Please feel free to make lots of comments and tell us what you want out of the campaign." There is also a Facebook group with over 1000 members. The word on that is: "You can only become a member of the private group by being invited by one of the current members. If you don't know anybody that is in the private group already send an e-mail to grunerlokka@gmail.com with a description of the skills you can bring to the campaign." The really interesting news is what has been happening in...

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It was a rainy Sunday evening in may. A friend and I took the train deep into the Oslo suburbs (well, Slemdal) to hear folk singer Unni Løvlid sing at Emanuel Vigeland's mausoleum. I've written about the mausoleum, Tomba Emmanuelle, in an earlier entry of this blog. It is where the ashes of Emanuel Vigeland are kept, in a huge room the walls and ceiling of which are covered by frescoes he spent over twenty years painting. The reverberation in the room is impressive: every sound seems to last about ten seconds. Tonight about 24 people gathered to hear a solo vocal performance by Unni. We were given blankets with which to keep warm. This being a very spiritual place, Unni sang very old religous songs, the kind you don't hear very often, perhaps because of their unusual tonality. The notes that she chose to sing louder remained hovering in...