Norway, 12-19 April 2006: The Complete Collector's Edition

[ironlord]

And here it is, in all its leviathanic glory. The longest LJ entry I have ever written, and probably the longest I will ever write. Even Wacken reviews don't come close. This is a whole new LJ experience for everyone.

I expect killerrrcocopop, who apparently enjoys reading my long updates, to read every last word.

Guilty parties: Hannah, Charlie, Reena, Allan, Jemma and... some bearded bloke who organised it all.



WEDNESDAY - 12.04.2006

The trip began with a night at my brother's house - who had to accommodate six of us this time, as opposed to three. Still, we all managed - somehow, to fit in and get up in the morning in time for a two-stage "taxi" ride to the airport, via a purple Fiesta, with payment delivered in liquid form the night before. Check-in was quick and painless; security was nowhere near as annoyingly anal as it could have been; the plane was the first object with a red nose that I haven't wanted to hack to pieces with a chainsaw - mainly because that would have been counter-productive.

Halfway through the two-hour flight the pilot informed us the weather at Gardermoen involved "light rain and light snow" so I was partially preparing for a repeat performance of THAT flight back from Wacken a year and a half back - which never materialised as the plane drifted effortlessly through the clouds to reveal...

SNOW! And bastard loads of it at that. Every non-road surface was covered in it, and generally had trees sticking out. Nothing could possibly say "Welcome to Norway" like this...

Somewhere between arriving at Stansted airport and landing at Gardermoen, someone must have thrown up the subject of what the hell Hannah was supposed to eat on the trip - being a nut chewer who occasionally forays into fish. Somehow, the conversation turned to Alaskan pollock, which, for the uninitiated, is a cheap substitute for cod. Equally unfathomably, the word managed to make its way into just about every sentence for the next week, and also became a word for "dog". And so, the first in-joke of the week was launched.

Passport control was painless for five of us, but inevitably spelled a lengthy wait as Jemma, the Aussie convict, was routinely probed in case she'd stolen anything. Getting the gear back involved a lengthy wait but up to this point, Norwegian had Ryanair beat hands down. The train out of Gardermoen airport was a tad grotty but still way beyond British standards, and did at least give us time to look out the windows at the seemingly endless covering of snow. Which, of course, stopped by the time we arrived in the urban jungle of Oslo. First impressions were: it's like most other big cities you've seen in your life, only with signs written in Norwegian, trams so loud they could wake the dead, and crumbling roads that the authorities either don't bother to fix, or which get wrecked every winter by the studded tyres that make a strange splattering noise on the road surface. Either way, there were probably less holes in the road around the M11 roadworks that I had so carefully avoided the day before.

The road to the Anker Hostel, our residence for the next four nights, led us ever onwards through a grimy part of the city - though it's not so far from the city centre and actually half the distance to the Rockefeller than the official Inferno hotel, the far more expensive Scandic Edderkoppen - where I'd figured the residents would be paying for far more than they needed. Still, at a reasonable 160kr per head per night (at a conversion of approximately 11kr = £1) it turned out to be simple and functional - enough to convince Reena and Charlie we weren't slumming it.

Soon after dumping our gear we met the staff: Gavin, who is English and now lives in Norway because he likes it so much, and Isak, who is Norwegian, speaks perfect English, and if he was any more laid-back he'd be horizontal. It was at this point we had our first round of waffles for 10kr, or with "the famous Norwegian brown cheese" for 12kr. Obviously, I had to experiment with the cheese - which was strangely sweet, as if it had caramel or brown sugar in it - it is probably a closely guarded recipe. The others, if I remember rightly, weren't so experimental, though I did have Jemma calling me a heathen for daring to ruin my coffee with milk and sugar.

The evening consisted of a brief trip to Kiwi Mini-Pris to stock up on bits of food and drink for an intended hike on the Monday, where I found the Norwegian wake-up drink known as Battery - Red Bull is banned in Norway and I wanted something to wake me up for the long drive on Sunday. It seems it's basically Red Bull without the taurine and with less of the nasty aftertaste that tends to disembowel British energy drinks. Hannah experimented with salmiak-liquorice - of exactly the kind Finns who've ruined their tastebuds with too much vodka are fond of - and was soon shovelling it by the bucketload.

Having dumped the shopping in the room, it was straight out again for a visit to Bodymap, Oslo's answer to Void and various Camden shops put together, to get the official Inferno wristband - which was of a far lower quality than those for Wacken and will last nowhere as long - but still allowed us to beat the queues the next day. Then there was the small matter of dinner - and I was determined that dinner that night would consist of the famous reindeer steak. Consultation of the Book Of Truth revealed a few places dealing in traditional Norwegian food - all quite a way off near the harbour, but with one outpost near the Edderkoppen, where we picked up Dave (one of Charlie's mates from Manchester, allegedly). The place spectacularly failed to have reindeer on the menu and during the walk down towards one of the others, there was already mutiny in the air as some of the guilty parties were already thinking of ditching to a pub we'd seen a few minutes ago. But I hadn't come all the way to Norway to be beaten that easily, and passing a Scottish themed steakhouse called, in a stunning flash of originality, "The Scotsman" - I thought I'd have a look at the menu, and promptly ran rings around the others as it came up with the goods.

The Danish waitress inside was extremely friendly, as was a drunk local who engaged us in a loud conversation about English football teams - and why he hates Rosenborg so much (for the uninitiated, they're Norway's version of Manchester Fucking United - based in Trondheim and won the Norwegian league for 13 seasons in a row. Bastards...) Anyway, the steak arrived, complete with potato gratin and a large amount of cranberries. Dave and Allan were also tempted, and while 224kr is a lot to pay for a one-course meal - you do the maths - it really was quite fantastic. The flavour is as intense as keirf has previously described the Finnish version to be, only it increases the more you eat, and though the portion was not massive, it was enough as it was starting to taste strongly of liver by the end. According to Dave, this means it has been well hung for as long as it needs to be, and is the sign of good quality. There's no way any of us could have put down any more, though. And let's not forget the most expensive Coca-Cola any of us have ever had (at 35kr) or Dave's bank-account-damaging first experience of Norwegian beer (at 58kr... ouch!)

The restaurant was also notable for throwing up the second and third of the trip's in-jokes, as the drunk Rosenborg-hating man greeted Hannah with a shout of "Gaby!" It seems this "Gaby" was a contestant on Norwegian Big Brother - who looks nothing like Hannah except that she has black, straight hair. Hannah was concerned that Gaby was actually a transsexual. She isn't - as far as we know. Still, Gaby's dubious origins somehow led to the mention of "jizz" - which, again, crept into more and more sentences. It was not long before various and endless mentions of "jizz" and "Gaby!" - accompanied by violent pelvic thrusting motions - were ripping their way through just about every conversation anyone started.

It was time for an early night after the first of many Norwegian-strength shocks to the wallet, which backfired spectacularly as the room was far too hot to sleep in. I seem to remember still being awake at gone 4 am even though we intended an early-ish start the next day...

THURSDAY 13.04.2006

Thursday morning presented us with a potential problem over our coffee and waffles. It seems that everything shuts for easter in Norway on the Thursday, leaving us with one less day for seeing and doing things than we'd planned. Still, Gavin was around for his last day before a break, and helpfully printed us off a list of when all the museums and attractions were open. This proved to be absolutely invaluable as it told us we had to do the Viking Ship Museum that day or not see it at all. So we found ourselves grabbing a bus from just outside the Anker, right over to the Bygdøy peninsula on the west side of the city. It was probably walkable, but time was of the essence, and the bus ride did at least allow us to see some of the nicer parts of Oslo on the way - there are some, trust me on this. The Viking ships are about a millennium old, and were rescued from a burial site at the beginning of the 20th Century - seriously, the Vikings buried two entire longboats, along with various other smaller boats, with their high-ranking dead. These days, under the watchful eye of the University of Oslo, they're preserved in the museum for all to see - and for us to grimace in front of like the black metal warlords we are...

The next stage of the trip was right next door, the open-air Folk Museum. There was a short indoor section, looking at 18th-19th Century folk art - from the christian *spit* era rather than that of the Vikings, but of primary interest to be were the rather large ale containers. Not drinking horns or pint mugs - "ale boats" ranging in size from two pints or so, to a fucking cauldron. Clearly, beer wasn't as frighteningly taxed in those days as it is now...

The open air part of the museum claims to be a cultural history of Norway in two hours. Despite the rain, that's about how long we spent looking round the old, wooden houses, all of them originals from the 18th-19th Centuries, demolished from whatever part of Norway they came from and perfectly rebuilt here. Some of them were perched precariously on stilts beside a sharp drop, and at least one looked to be leaning sideways. Hannah made friends with a worm, Allan risked his fingers in a water mill, I grimaced under one of the buildings on stilts, and we made a five-heads-two-pigtails-and-no-bodies shot which has to be seen to be believed. One of the houses had smoke rising from the chimney, where inside a couple of local women were showing us how to make lefse - some traditional Norwegian bready pancakes that go very well with butter, despite putting another 20kr-shaped hole in the wallet. However, the highlight of the entire museum was the stave church at the top of the hill. It's one of only 20-something left in Norway - I'll wager that there were more than that 20 years ago, if you know what I mean - and much hilarity was had climbing the hill, getting photos with a lighter in the frame, recreating THAT Immortal picture and - live on video - Hailing The Necrowizard. All pictorial evidence will, of course, be posted for all to see.

There was time on the way back to stop in the middle of Oslo and take a few shots of the National Theatre, along with a couple of other old-style and important-looking buildings in the same area, before having a wander down towards the harbour via a restaurant called "Tors Hammer" - surely the best name in the city?

Anyway. Some more coffee and waffles later, it was time for the opening night of Inferno. Ten bands per night, over two stages, and the first up, Imbalance, were spectacularly ignored in favour of buying t-shirts - four, in Charlie's case. Keep Of Kalessin, on the other hand, were far more entertaining, and more than justified the hype Charlie had been giving them beforehand - despite being hindered with a name that implied they'd be in the Stratovarius bracket. It also helps to open the set with a blast of fireworks barely five seconds in for added effect. Equally, Waklewören were left out in favour of what I considered to be one of the highlights - Nightrage. Worryingly, there was a spectacular lack of beard and ginger hair from the frontman. All this time I've been waiting to see Tomas Lindberg live and he's eluded me *again* - seems he buggered off a while back. This, then, would explain the low amount of material from the first (Lindberg-fronted) album in favour of the (not so good) newer stuff, though we did get Elusive Emotion and The Tremor. Enjoyable, but no Tompa and no Gus G dulled it a bit. Then I thought I'd check out a band on the John Dee stage just because I hadn't so far - it was Demonizer, who were just plain dull, and made waiting by the Rockefeller stage a far more tempting proposition. The waiting was for Khold who were well worth it. This is black metal the Darkthrone way - slow and grindy. Lyrics would seem to be exclusively in Norwegian. This, people, is the way it should be. Add in some flaming torches that burned constantly throughout the whole set, and the guitarist breathing fire - and you've got me happy.

Back downstairs for The Deviant. What an effect they must have had on me, he said sarcastically - I can remember absolutely nothing whatsoever of their set, even what they sounded like. Upstairs, though, were Carpathian Forest - who were on fire. Not literally, like Khold, just one of those rampaging sets that never let up for any of their allotted 45 minutes. No Bloody Fucking Necro Hell, but then you can't have everything - still a contender for best band of the day, though. By this time I'd already run into bighairydave who was looking forward to the next band on the bill - Sahg, downstairs on the John Dee stage. I had no idea what to expect, but was pleasantly surprised to find they were a stoner band doing their very best impression of Black Sabbath - howlingly off-tune vocals included, unfortunately, though I did stay for the whole set. Apparently they've existed for only two years, so give'em time and they'll improve. Final band of the day, back upstairs, were Usurper. If anyone from Manowar is watching: this is how it is done. Usurper, being American and well into their metal, have some gloriously *proper stoopid* titles such as Kill For Metal - it's just that, unlike Manowar, it's backed up by a relentless thrash metal assault rather than the plodding, mid-paced dirge that Joey DeMaio seems to think is the very definition of metal. More fool him. Not quite in the Carpathian league, but more than enjoyable enough to finish the night with.

Also useful earlier in the night was a tip from Allan that the catering stall just to the left of the mixing desk was serving whale. I'd figured that the slightly grey slices of meat in the tray were pork of some description. Apparently not. On further investigation, sure enough, it was whale - and despite the 60kr asking price (vertical as opposed to steep) - there was no way I'd ever have another chance. So, I ordered one whale pitta. It smells of fish, tastes a lot more meaty than fish, but will taste of fish if you burp at any stage in the following 12 hours. Just so you all know what you're faced with. So, that's another species to cross off the list, and it's also two thirds of the Grand Scandinavian Meat Trilogy.

Better still, the front door of the Anker was still open by the time we arrived back there at about 2:30 am. No need for the night key...

FRIDAY 14.06.2006

We all slept better on Thursday night just by opening the window to let most of the scorching heat out, which in turn made another early start easier than it would otherwise have been. Reena was up first to get showered before the rest of us - good idea, given the previous warning about how long she usually takes - so we were downstairs for another round of waffles with plenty of time to see more of the sights. This time, the tagret was the Munch museum, over on the east side of the city - which was quite a long walk, past more kebab shops than in the whole of Turkey and up a steep hill. The security there was as tight as at your average American airport and the rules on what you can and can't take in there were bewildering beyond belief. It took half an hour, maximum, to look round all the exhibits, precisely none of which were The Scream, only about half were painted by Munch, and the vast majority involved naked men or naked boys in some way. Well... charming. Clearly, the man and his cohorts who contributed the rest were either gay and voyeuristic or just plain mad (which is reputed to be the case with Munch). This was also the most expensive attraction of the whole trip and the least entertaining... though there were some cheap thrills still to come, for sure. The first of these was provided just a stone's throw further down the main road, at an address known as Schweigårdsgate 56. Those of you who know your black metal as well as blackmetalbaz will recognise this as the former address of Helvete. That's right, Euronymous woz ere. It's now a sandwich shop, which was unfortunately closed or I'd definitely have been in there, but there was more than enough time to recreate THAT Immortal picture again, followed by Necrowizard Round Two.

It was lunchtime, and on the way back, I decided to head into a small supermarket and get my lunch. This consisted of a packet of dried ham, and a large quantity of flatbread. It is not easy to make flatbread sandwiches while you are trying to walk down the street - but I managed it, somehow, and had devoured half the packet of flatbreads (a not insignificant amount for something drier than the Sahara Desert) by the time we reached our next destination, the Elm Street Rock Cafe which we would visit more than once. There were a large quantity of English people in here decked out in Inferno gear, possibly some had just been to Bodymap which was just over the road. This is where the others were separated with 100-odd kroner each for a burger (which turned out to be really good and undercutting usual Norwegian prices) and I had my first taste of Norwegian beer - all 53 kroner's worth of a nearly-pint of Ringnes. In truth, there's not a lot wrong with it - it's somewhere similar to a Czech pilsener, such as Staropramen, and a vast improvement on the Danish muck that occasionally gets a look in here - you know the one I mean. It was also the first time I met Doug, who the others had seen the night before, whose real name is Joe and who is Viking Phil's half-brother. Only he's half native American, so he doesn't look similar at all.

The customary stop back at the Anker before day two of Inferno was briefly held up by a look in the random shop on the way selling military gear, suits of armour, and leopard print hats which Charlie was a bit too interested in. There was something which appeared to be a mock-up of Eddie from Somewhere In Time, an alien taken straight from Roswell, and a large selection of axes. Interesting. Still, a round of waffles later, and it was time for Inferno day two... nearly. We'd dragged Manc Dave back to the Anker so he could see how we lived, and he repaid the compliment by bringing us back to the Edderkoppen where we saw what he'd got. Amongst other things, some metal version of MTV, a minibar (which wasn't free as he found to his cost), and unlimited tea and coffee making facilities (which were free) and resulted in Allan drinking tea from a wine glass, and a horrible experiment at Irish coffee which went disastrously wrong. All this arsing around meant we missed the first band on, Rimfrost, which I was annoyed to find out later from Hairy Dave sounded a bit like old school Immortal. Missed it - bah. Next up were System:Obscure, known mainly as "The Colon Band" who were... what were they like again? Possibly a bit better than the punctuation in the name suggested, but not enough to hold my attention. Funeral, on the John Dee stage, were the first stars of the day - apparently this is the band Funeral Doom is named after, though they've since switched to a more My Dying Bride-type direction which was apparent in the set. Still, it was slow enough to keep them down to five tracks in half an hour, and the frontman is very fat - which you need to be when you're playing this slow. I will continue to follow this band's progress. As I may possibly do with Susperia. I spent half their set wondering if I'd bad-mouthed them in the past - there are many similarly-named bands, before I remembered it was Sirenia that I was thinking of who are bollock-achingly awful. Susperia were one of the more upbeat bands of the day, despite the grim black metal crowd - they did their all to get everyone going and won the pyro show hands down with spinning catherine wheels up near the roof before showering us with pieces of shiny paper. Let's not mention the mild panic of the roadies when there was a small fire on the stage, though...

And so to the festival's wooden spoon. Downstairs on the John Dee stage, Manngard were tolerated for all of a couple of minutes before all six of us left en masse. They were supposed to be old-school thrash but were ruined by a horrific vocalist - who turs out to be the same man fronting Sahg, of all bands - who must have thought he was in the Dillinger Escape Plan or one of their ilk. Aargh! Still, there was always Dismember upstairs to give us all a reminder of what it was like to be in Stockholm in the early 90s, with THAT grumbly guitar sound. In truth, they're a band that I've only ever paid attention to live - I've got two albums and couldn't tell you what's on either with the notable exception of Skin Her Alive which both genders of the audience were shouting for all the set. Maybe this will change in the near future - we'll see. From here I stayed upstairs for the rest of the night, ditching both Endstille and Bloodthorn in favour of a decent place at the front for the headliners. Borknagar were well worth it - I know I've had a passing look at them before, probably at Wacken; this time, I paid proper attention and was duly rewarded. It's probably the first black metal band I've seen with a fretless bass and (some) clean vocals - courtesy of Vintersorg who was doing his best to ruin the effect with a yellow and black stripy jumper. I kid you not. Still definitely one of the highlights of the day, and they would probably have taken the spoils... if only it wasn't for the appearance of Emperor. Everyone, and I mean everyone, in the entire festival was here for Emperor, and this was obvious from the minute Borknagar left the stage. For every other band on the Rockefeller stage, it was possible to get right near the front with less than ten minutes before the band appeared; with Emperor, the crowd was four rows deep within five minutes, was filling up with 45 minutes to go, and was turning into Oslo's largest game of sardines with 20 minutes still left. Finally, though, Emperor made it, with a huge blast of pyros. One genuine classic blasted out after another, for something like an hour and a half, and it's fair to say they could have gone on for twice that without it ever getting boring. They're going to be back at Wacken, but an open-air setting with several thousand more people isn't ever going to compare with getting *this* up close and personal. And sure, we all enjoyed it - cue many, many more mentions of jizz on the way back from Hannah and Charlie - but by far the most pleased was Allan, who couldn't stop raving about how Samoth had personally handed him both a pick and TWO setlists - one of which ended up in Charlie's hands.

We had to wonder how the final day could possibly follow that.

SATURDAY 15.04.2006

With the excitement of Emperor still blasting through the veins of all the others, Saturday morning was designated as a "take it easy" time, so there was no morning coffee and waffles until midday. The plan for the day, though, was the Resistance Museum - where some Norwegians, unhappy with their treatment at the hands of the occupying Nazis during WWII, lined up some of the Nazis against a wall and shot them. The bullet holes can, allegedly, still be seen to this day. It was a fairly lengthy walk out there - only to find that (1) we were at the harbour we'd visited on Thursday and (2) the museum itself was closed. Arse. Still, we did get a look at some huge cannons, and get a damn good view over the harbour and out onto the Oslofjord from right up on top of the walls. Unfortunately, the plan for Vigelands Park had to be dumped as it was too far away - and in retrospect that wasn't such a bad thing, as we'd seen some miniatures of Gustav Vigeland's sculptures at the Munch Museum and they were of... you've guessed it... naked men. So, instead, it was back to the Elm Street pub, passing Det Gamle Rådhus on the way - one of the expensive Norwegian restaurants that The Book Of Truth had promised us reindeer - which it wasn't serving! Still, the pub provided us with more beer, more (probably slightly artificial) perry that Charlie had taken a wallet-shattering liking to, and another Norwegian speciality - the smørbrød - that's an open sandwich to the rest of you. So that's cheese on toast with extra bacon and a fried egg on each slice, served with a large amount of baked beans and fried potatoes. That, and a couple of beers, damaged my wallet by a further 200 kroner or so, but it was worth it.

Towards the evening, there was a brief-ish stop in Oslo's most metal CD shop for a rifle through the bargain bin - with everyone bar Allan buying something cheap-ish and not necessarily nasty. This resulted in Hannah, Reena, Jemma and Charlie all picking up identical "Metal Girl" t-shirts which were obviously cheesier than a party at a cheese factory - and the shot of them all lining up together should happen at the next Damage, if I have anything to do with it. There was just time for a waffle as a decent kind of dessert, and we actually made it to the Rockefeller in time to catch the first band on. There are probably a lot of bands out there called Legion - this was a bunch of locals playing proper old-school black metal which mostly drew a positive reception. Not so for Norway's latest Next Big Thing - Disiplin, upstairs on the main stage. They're really quite generic, and their party piece is the bassist and guitarist wearing matching Disiplin hoodies, with the hoods pulled up and towels over their faces. They look like a cross between Slipknot and some ABSO chav kids from the Meadows - and don't sound much better, either. Suffice to say the most exciting part of the set was Darkthrone's In The Shadow Of The Horns - which was playing over the PA once they'd left. This drew the attention of some locals who just couldn't believe I didn't like Disiplin. Well, if they were better, I would. The lesson in how to do it was almost immediately provided by Vesen - no, I'd never heard of them, and a topless frontman with very badly-done corpse paint and "UGLY" scrawled across his chest in huge letters didn't fill me with confidence. That was, until they started playing - more old-school black metal but with a heavy dose of 80s thrash mixed in - something along the lines of Gorgoroth's Under The Sign Of Hell. That was one very pleasant surprise which kept me there for the whole set. This, in turn, meant that I missed the first few minutes of a band that Hannah had been raving about non-stop for the whole trip - Myrkskog. They're Norwegian, and one of them is apparently also in Zyklon. Sounds good, doesn't it? So imagine my crushing disappointment when I was greeted with relentless battering, no treble, no semblance of a coherent riff and unchanging grrrrg-grrrg-grrrg vocals. No matter how you look at it, lumpy Florideath made by Norwegians is still lumpy Florideath. I allowed myself a good fifteen minutes to be impressed before giving up and heading to the catering stand for a 40kr salmon burger. Still they battered away as I checked out what it was like upstairs - no seats on either of the two tiers, this festival was standing room only.

So I found myself heading downstairs to get a prime position at the front for Face Down, joined by a couple of Finns who announced their arrival with a loud "Perkele!" Now, I hadn't seen Face Down live since the 11th May 1996. That's, give or take a few days, a decade. So the expectation was high, especially since I'd never expected them to reform. So, at the risk of repeating myself, imagine my crushing disappointment as their two pre-split albums - Mindfield which is very good and The Twisted Rule The Wicked which is fantastic - were duly ignored in favour of the new, post-reformation material. It sounds not a million miles away from Slipknot. I sat there to the end in the hope of Life Relentless or Holy Rage - it didn't happen and didn't even threaten to happen. I was cursing my bad luck as I returned upstairs for a rather better proposition. It has been said that the gift of death metal does not smile on the good looking - and fortunately for Bolt Thrower they're a bunch of gargoyles. I say again: slow and grindy, which Bolt Thrower are for the most part, is the way forward. They were proud to announce it was their first gig in Norway ever, even after 20 years in the business, and the greatest hits set was belted out to a highly appreciative crowd. They even saw fit to close with my personal favourite, For Victory, which has a riff to beat christians to death with. Any bad memories from earlier in the day were well and truly blown away. Unfortunately, the train had to hit the buffers again; downstairs were Battered, who I'd heard were composed of one or more ex-members of a really good band (I thought it was one of Immortal, but it turned out on later research to be three of Einherjer). So I'd heard good things about them which were undone within a few minutes. They're trying to be old school thrash, but were scuppered by an admittedly live-wire singer who sounds like he wants to be in a New York hardcore band. After two tracks I figured my time would be better spent upstairs, grabbing a sausage and a decent place at the front for Marduk. I remember being very impressed with them three years ago at the Astoria - now they've got hold of a new frontman who's trying even harder to attract our attention. I never expected to be assaulted by a violent moshpit while watching (Swedish) black metal in Norway, but it happened, and the crowd behind me went even more berserk as the aforementioned frontman headed off stage, returned topless and spilt a pint of fake blood all over himself. Meanwhile, in front of me, Hannah and Charlie were also going berserk... in a rather different way, which was destined not to stop for the rest of the trip... cue more and more and more mentions of the J-word.

And so to the last band of the festival. Having ditched Witchcraft, who Allan informed me were like Black Sabbath with extra comedy (I'll have to check this out) - the final act was Cathedral - possibly an odd choice to headline given the two bands that had come before them on the Rockefeller stage. They were going to have to be on top form to dethrone Bolt Thrower for band of the day - and they came... this close! Utopian Blaster, to be honest, would have clinched it, but it wasn't there. Still, any bad memories I may have had of The VIIth Coming were swept away by the far stronger material from The Garden Of Unearthly Delights which is now winging its way to me from Nuclear Blast. That, mixed in with a vast majority of the old classics, wrapped up a damn near perfect set - not as much doom as they tried to fit in at Wacken last year, but that would probably have backfired. And to top it all off, the whole festival closed with The Greatest Metal Track Of All Time Ever - that's right, Hopkins. I've been waiting ages to see Cathedral get the recognition they deserve. It has finally happened. And bighairydave was just as pleased - he was raving at the end of the set about how he's always wanted to see them on this kind of form. Godly, and no mistake.

SUNDAY 16.04.2006

Sunday morning brought possibly the earliest start of all. The reason for getting up at 7:30 was to make sure we were checked out of the hostel by 11 am, preferably before. This did allow me a bit of extra time to investigate the fish shop on the square which I'd seen was selling stokfisk - if only it had been open! Still, cereal bars at Kiwi Mini-Pris were something of a replacement - better for going up mountains with, y'see - and after our final batch of waffles at the Anker, we found ourselves boarding a train to Asker, about 20 km south, where we'd be picking up a car. I say a car, it was actually a Toyota Previa, the size of a small van and which could hold six of us and all the luggage. Knowing full well that the car hire plus fuel cost was going to be about 750kr a head, I thought I'd have a look to see what a train ticket to Stavanger would cost. 833 kroner. Yes, you heard me right - and that was only one way! So, it appeared we'd made the right choice. Only, on arrival in Asker, the SIXT hire place was nowhere to be seen. We wandered around for a good half hour before finally giving up and were going to call a taxi - before someone helpfully pointed out we'd gone completely the wrong way. So I headed out in the correct direction with Allan to see what we could find - and *still* the place eluded us for 15 minutes or so... until we found what appeared to be a hire car place, with a Previa in it, only it was called Asker Bilutleie. Then, Allan noticed a SIXT sign in side, and on closer inspection, a sign on the side stating "Kirkeveien 220" - the address we wanted - revealed that this was it! So we called the others over, and right on time, Ottar, the Icelander with very little grip of English who was meeting us at 1 pm, turned up. Within a few minutes the deal was done and we were off. In a huge, automatic Toyota Previa in which I was already having trouble remembering had no clutch pedal. There was a brief stop, just up the E18, to adjust everything the way I needed it, and for Allan to work out the heater controls which were already looking like a necessity. It was here that the Previa was officially named: The Crusher.

We'd set off just after 1 pm. Coffee and waffles would be served at the Stavanger Bed & Breakfast at 9 pm. A quick calculation revealed that we'd only need to do a constant 50 km/h to get there on time. As the day drew on, though, that target became less of a certainty and more of a problem. Very few of the roads in Norway are dual carriageways and even those have a blanket 90 km/h speed limit. Those that don;t have massive concrete blocks down the middle are usually restricted to 80, and there are rather too many long sections of (slow) 70 and (fucking glacial) 60 km/h limits to contend with. And all this is coupled to the dreaded "Automatisk trafikk-kontrol" signs that could only mean one thing. The roads between Drammen, just outside Oslo, and Mandal, a good 300 km away, were infested with more speed cameras than even Ken Livingstone would think about putting up. And they put them in some nasty places, such as hiding against a slab of grey rock, or - worst of all, in a tunnel in Kristiansand. And then there were the tolls, most of which we weren't told about. You can't get round any cities in Norway, you have to go through them and shell out for the tolls that are anything from 10 kr (going into Kristiansand) to 30 kr (on a road just south of Drammen, and the first one we came to). By the end of the trip we were running dangerously short on coins between the six of us, and further panic was caused when the toll just outside Sandnes let us through - seemingly illegally. *And then*, to add a potential serious injury to the existing insult and injury, the police were waiting with a mobile camera just inside a layby that I'd decided to brake sharply to head into. I think we got away with that one, given that if there was a problem they'd surely have sprinted over to us to investigate, but by that stage the trip was pushing my stress levels to problems-with-the-first-year-PhD heights. Furthermore, once we were past that obstacle and the signs for Stavanger were out, it became painfully obvious that the one number in the Veiatlas Norge distance chart that we were interested in - the distance from Oslo to Stavanger - was wrong. I had calculated everything on the basis that the distance given was 442 km. Bu about 7:30 pm it was clear that we weren't going to make it to Stavanger for 9, and we might be looking at nearer 10. However, with no cameras in sight, some slightly creative interpretation of the number "80" on the scarily twisty roads south of Stavanger brought us to our final destination, Stavanger Bed & Breakfast, at 9:15 pm, with the trip counter reading 542 km. Fortunately, the B&B was still serving the coffee and waffles that I was now in medical need of. There was a quick check-in and a few minutes to park The Crusher round the back and bring the gear in... and finally we could sit down for some much-needed refreshment. I say "sit down" but in reality it was a constant up-down-up-down whenever a fresh supply of waffles arrived, or if we wanted another mug of coffee - which generally happened very soon after finishing the last one.

Ask yourselves this: how much fun can you have after dark in a strange Norwegian town without any alcohol? The answer: loads. We decided to have a look round Stavanger, in the dark, wound about 10:30 after the supply of waffles had dried up. By this time, Allan and Hannah had both downed six mugs of coffee each, and Allan doesn't even like coffee. The results were plainly obvious. Having reached the central lake and found a bit-too-trendy pub misleadingly called "The Viking" we decided on a walk round the town centre - up a hill, and straight into a small park with a small playground and some bronze statues. The mental age of the group suddenly sank to somewhere around five, and a good 20-30 minutes were spectacularly wasted arsing about on the roundabout and a bizarrely designed see-saw, and pulling some of the most horrific poses you'll ever see with the unfortunate statues. Several locals passed us and must have thought all English people were mad - which is probably not so far from the truth. Allan and Hannah, the most obviously caffeine-fuelled of us, were mostly responsible. The hilarity continued via a trip through the white, wooden houses of the old part of Stavanger, where I spectacularly failed to work out how to use the timer on my camera. We were helped by a man who left his house at just the right time to be accosted by Allan... the result being, we managed to get a proper group shot of the six of us amongst the old houses. Heading back down towards the harbour, the final point of interest were some blue lights along the harbour wall - Allan in the eerie blue glow made an excellent version of Eddie from inside the cover of Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son, while Charlie managed to look properly evil. A brief blast of Necrowizard followed before Charlie's evilness came crashing down to earth as she posed with an anchor. All that was left was to dig our way back through the drunken locals to get back to the B&B... after all, it's not like any of them had anything else to do on Easter Sunday...

MONDAY 17.04.2006

The previous night, in the times that we weren't all high on caffeine, had been filled with a dubious discussion about whether we should have a hike up Preikestolen. From this rock, sticking at right angles out from a nearby mountain, can be seen the best view of a fjord in the whole of Norway. Only, the sun that had greeted us at 7:30 am was being rapidly replaced with a gigantic stormcloud. One of the girls at the desk had been up there within the past week and had reported knee-deep snow. Apparently it was possible for small children to make it up there - but that would be locals who greet knee-deep snow with no concern as they have all the proper gear. After much agonising over why we'd come all this way not to do what we'd planned, we were pointed in the direction of a few other attractions in the area. So, no sooner had we set out for the Swords In The Stone than a torrential rainstorm hit us. It was a struggle to see where we were going as the rain lashed down on The Crusher - which did a fine job of keeping us all dry. Eventually, after finding that we were supposed to go down the road we'd first thought of, we arrived at the huge, iron swords. Only, they were a modern sculpture put up in 1983. Bah. Still, it was something to grimace by, in the freezing, Norwegian weather. The next stop was intended to be some stone crosses, though we turned the wrong way out of the car park by the swords, and headed the wrong way round the lake we were circling. This, though, brought us to a small village just outside Sola, where Stavanger airport is, where we parked up and set off looking for Ytrabergset - a medieval hill-fort where the locals fought off some (possibly Swedish) invaders. Up and down some small hills we went - the rain had stopped but the weather was still cold enough for us to be convinced we'd made the right decision about binning Preikestolen. Most of what is left of the fort is a series of small walls, though there were artists' impressions of what the fort would once have looked like while in full battle. From there, we worked our way clockwise round the huge lake, eventually running across the stone crosses which were very well hidden down a small back road where there seemed to be nowhere to park. For this reason we could only stop briefly, but it was long enough for Allan to attempt to crucify himself against one of them, and take a piss nearby.

And so began the long trip back towards our next point of call, not so far from Kristiansand. However, with the hike ditched, there was plenty of time to stop along the way and look at some lakes. The first, the long Ørsdalvatnet near Bjerkreim, took a while to get to - we had to ditch The Crusher and walk a good 2 km to get to where it opened out from a far smaller lake - and on arrival, it was disappointingly misty, so the murky view seemed to be as if we had reached the edge of the world. However, better views of the smaller lake could be had from a path up the mountain beside it, which four of us ventured onto, Jeema and Reena preferring to stay put. The path ended quite abruptly, and we briefly thought of making our way down the scree slope, then decided we'd prefer to live instead and head back the way we came.

Further down the road, we decided to stop at a frozen lake. It was the middle of April, but despite the covering of partially melting snow on top, the ice was more than thick enough to survive a good five minutes of Allan hurling rocks into the same spot in a futile attempt to break through it. The snow was reasonably deep in the surroundings as well, prompting Allan and Hannah to have a snowball fight. Clearly, the caffeine from the night before was still working its evil magic.

There was another stop for a view of a lake, the 30-odd km long Sirdalsvatnet, which stretches out north from Osen. This time, with the sky clearing rapidly, the view down the lake was nothing shirt of spectacular. Realistically, the only way to see it properly would be to get a boat and sail its entire length. Though we didn't have that option.

There was one more stop at Mandal, about as far south as it's possible to go without leaving the Norwegian mainland. We intended to have a walk down the beach, but time was getting tight and the better option was to find food instead. The others wanted a proper meal - which, just like the Scotsman a few days before, relieved us all of about 200 kroner each, or a bit more in some cases. Allan somehow got away with being undercharged, and Hannah's constant references to pollock backfired as she was presented with some kind of mystery white fish after ordering salmon. She wouldn't make the same mistake again for at least five minutes. We did get to see the beach - briefly - just be driving past it, where it appeared to be all of five metres wide. Maybe we'd found the wrong spot. Either way, it was just a short trip up the road, and down a narrow back lane, to reach our third place to stay, the Liane Gård.

Pictures do not do this place justice. You have to be there to experience it. We were in the apartment attached to the main house - it's entirely panelled with Norwegian pine inside, has beds for up to seven people, and is decked out with just about everything we'd need for anything up to a two week stay. The stunned reaction of the others on arrival said it all. From the Anker, and definitely from the Stavnger B&B, this was a massive step upwards in quality. And the previous two had not exactly been shabby, either. Our host, Wenche, was very friendly and had helpfully set up everything we'd need for breakfast in the fridge - which included a lot of bread, cheese (including the brown stuff), salami, milk, and vast piles of coffee. We even managed to extract a tin of herbal tea for those who didn't like coffee. The washing machine came in extremely useful as well, given that we'd all managed to miscalculate how many socks to bring.

So we had far more of a relaxed evening, enjoying the fantastic setting of our wooden home, where the conversation inevitably turned to how long it would be before we'd be back here, and how many we'd bring the next time.

TUESDAY 18.04.2006

Tuesday morning was as relaxed as it could possibly be. This would be our day of "doing nothing" - mainly to prolong the amount of time we stayed in the Liane Gård - most of us had decided we didn't want to leave by this stage. There was a video so we watched Bruce Almighty, complete with Norwegian subtitles, first thing in the morning, before spending a lengthy breakfast devouring all that had been laid out before us. Very little of it was left, and it was about lunchtime by the time we'd finished. There was still time to admire the view out the back, which involved a fair amount of climbing over the rocks to see as far as humanly possible.

It was 2 pm before we left, and Larvik, where we were due to stay that night, was still a long way off. However, there was time to stop for a while in Grimstad, a small town on the southeast coast that I have an interest in - those of you in the know should realise why this is. It was reaching 4 pm, but the sun was out, and the conditions for a stroll down the harbour were damn near perfect. While the others found ice creams, and marvelled at the clarity of the harbour water, I spotted a shop with a huge "FISK" sign, at the end of a pier. Sure enough, the dried stokfisk that I'd been looking for all trip was there, and a small snack-sized pack plus one that was rather larger relieved me of 94 kroner. Only Jemma was brave enough to try the dried fish - at least none of the others jumped in before I'd finished the small pack. Grimstad, despite the name, was possibly the nicest of the small towns we'd seen - it's certainly a step up from Mandal, which looks a bit dull in comparison. The only minor blip was that the large pack of stokfisk wasn't sealed, and after I'd taped it all up with a large amount of gaffer tape and stuffed it in my rucksack, I found one piece missing which I thought I'd eat whole. For the next 2-3 km of the trip out of Grimstad, I was still chewing, and constantly pulling small pieces of bone and fish scales out of my mouth - which spoiled the experience somewhat. Still, I know what to look for in the rest of the pack (and I'll say now, half of it has gone and the rest will follow soon. In fact, let me take a quick pause from writing here... bear in mind the next paragraph will be written while I'm chewing on a piece of dried cod. You have been warned!)

Trying to keep the car slowed down through the treacherous 70 and 60 km/h sections, littered with speed cameras, was becoming ever more tricky as lorry after lorry pulled up behind us, threatening to ram us from behind. I was having none of it, and eventually pulled into a snow-covered layby - whereupon Allan and Hannah, possibly still caffeinated from Sunday night, raced headlong into the snow. We managed to waste a good half hour arsing around in the snow which was anything up to waist-deep in places - or even higher in Reena's case. I say again - you don't need to drink to have fun in Norway!

Despite the tomfoolery in the snow, we were set for an early entry into Larvik - until we were told at the next toll that there'd just been a crash up the road, and some delays were expected. Sure enough, we were stuck in a jam, on a single carriageway road, for about half an hour while the debris was cleared up - despite the best efforts of the Norwegian police and ambulance crew to clear it up quickly and efficiently. It was obvious from the wreckage that it had been a head-on collision, and it was not beyond the realms of possibility that one of the victims had left the scene in a body bag. Grim thoughts aside, though, we still made it into Larvik at round about 7 pm, where my second home-brew map, with Allan's assistance, directed us to the address of what we thought was the Seierstad Gjestegård. Strange, then, that it should be at the bottom of a timy residential street, and that the man in the house had absolutely no idea who we were or why we'd turned up. But he did give us a number for Ole Seierstad, the owner, who managed to explain that we'd turned up at his business address - in other words, his sister's house, and actually we should have stayed on the E18 and turned off... approximately 1 km further than where my home-brew map ended. Anyway, despite the confusion, we made it to the Seierstad Gjestgård, narrowly escaped being rammed from behind by a lorry *again*, and met Ole, who has almost as much beard as I do.

The Seierstad Gjestgård was the cheapest place we'd stayed at all week, and it showed - it's a converted farmhouse where electricity was an afterthought. No sooner had I turned the lights on in room 10 than one of them flashed, exploded and took the whole circuit with it, leaving us in rapidly descending darkness. We thought we could manage, though. For dinner, we a quick trip down the road to a roadside cafe, run by an Albanian who was once a professional footballer there, and if anyone ever turns up there, I highly recommend the Sjåførfrokost - bacon and eggs with a gigantic amount of fried potatoes. Others were more content with a burger, or in Hannah's case, a salad on a glass plate which constantly threatened to fly off the table. We sat there for rather a long time, and it was nearly 11 pm by the time we left. By now, the guesthouse was cold, and the blown fuse had also taken out the heater from our room upstairs. After loud protests from Charlie and Reena, I called Ole who came scampering back to fix the fuse. Even if the fusebox hadn't been locked, I'd have had trouble fixing it myself as the design of the box, and the fuses, is older than the Vikings. Fortunately, Ole knew what he was doing, and had it fixed in no time. We thought it'd be a good idea to get some sleep before anything else blew up. And before we were murdered, apparently, given that the window in Allan's room opened even when the lock was on...

WEDNESDAY 19.04.2006

It was the earliest of early starts - 7:30, and I was the only one to brave the shower - which looked ropey but did the job fine. Reena and Charlie were still alive, as were the other three downstairs. Clearly there were no murderers in the area that night. I cleared up what remained of the food I'd bought for the hike that never happened, while the others skipped breakfast in the name of returning the car to its hidey-hole in Asker before 1 pm. We made it with stacks of time to spare, brimming the tank on the way and bringing the fuel cost to a rounded 200 kr per head. The car was returned to find SIXT had cocked up, and the 3300 kr we'd been quoted was for only two days. With a bit of explanation, Asker Biluteleie realised it was SIXT who had made the mistake and not us - given that I'd printed the receipt from the website - and so the 3300 kr asking price stood. SIXT would certainly be kicking themselves. Lunch followed in and English-themed pub called The Lancelot, of all places - where the others decided to pay me for the car there and then. The resultant pile of notes brought the amont in my wallet back up to 5000 kr exactly - the amount I'd set off with, though I did now have a large hole in my credit card. Though I had no real need to eat, I did go for a plate of buffalo wings and a pint of Hansa - which is nowhere near as good as Ringnes, unfortunately. Still, it gave us a place to sit and kill a bit of time before the inevitable trip back through Oslo - and this time we decided to skip the capital completely and head straight for the airport. The trip took all of one hour, and we were about an hour and a half early for the check-in - not that it bothered the people on the desk much who opened anyway to let us through. Security was again painless, but not so the duty free shopping where we all managed to get split up and/or lost as Allan tried to keep check of everyone and lamented the girls' shopping habbits. What I found, though, was far more interesting than a keyring or a troll - a Norwegian Fine Food shop where I could have blown a fortune if I'd wanted to. What I did go for, eventually, was a pack of partially dried moose meat - which is similar to reindeer, tastes just as strong, but darker. This was the basis of the black salami that bighairydave had told me about before. It was 99 kroner, but it was worth it as it gave me something to do while Charlie and Reena agonised over what to buy in the souvenir shop next door.

The flight was, again, painless, despite something of a warning shot just before we dipped through the clouds. This time, there was to be no spectacular view - just grim, grey skies and the small villages near Stansted. Everything else was equally painless, apart from passport control for the convict - again. We were stuck in a queue for a while, Jemma sailed straight to the front of the non-EU queue, and still we were through a good ten minutes before she was. The clouds outside threatened again, but still, with the taxi queues at over half an hour, we walked back to my brother's house, about three miles away.

And there, having gone full circle, is where the tale ends.

Photos are, of course, on their way.