Back home

After a long stay in Norway, which was fantastic, relaxing, enjoyable and beautiful, I do love being back in Scotland, back in the world that I now call home. The Anglo-Celtic (?) culture and tradition is sometimes wonderfully strange to me, but also more and more my own and my home.

Flying in over Aberdeen (in a charming Widerøe Dash 8 100 propeller, which gives you a feeling of proximity to your environment that is hard to get in bigger jet engine planes, and which is particularly suited to coming home somewhere), watching brick houses with long back yards and clotheslines, little high streets, open fields and granite, organised in a charming, haphazard way that Norway's ramshackle but sorted settlements will probably never be. On the other hand, even if the towns are plotted out nicely and ordered, there is a lot less structure and stricture there, unlike the cultured neighbours in a fjord-ridden country further west. What Norwegians cherish in being out in the wilderness, about being in a primitive cottage without electricity and water to relax, with getting away from it all: the freedom and naturalism, is maybe what they banish from everyday life, from homes and cities, where rules, etiquette and expectations are often the orders of the day. On the other hand, in Ireland especially, and in Scotland, at least outside of Edinburgh, the people and the world are less formal, taking yourself seriously is less important, breaking the rules is more fun than keeping them, and the attitude is that "it'll be fine!" - particularly when it probably won't.

A striking example of this is the attitude to snow, which for many parts of the UK is a pressing concern these days. Norway has -23 degrees and a heavy layer of snow in the rainiest city, but the buses run on time, the plough cars are out before dawn (which to be honest is easy to do, as dawn is about 2 o'clock in winter...) and no schools stay closed just because the layer of snow is taller than the kids. The education will be administered, the roads will be cleared, everyone wears practical puffa jackets and sturdy winter boots, and there is no nonsense about this. Over here, people expect 'snow days' when the weather forecast shows 0 degrees celcius, expecting to get a day off work because it's too hard to get there in 10 cm powder. The trains collapse, the heating doesn't work, the council runs out of grit, salt and gas, but are we worried? Nah, it'll be fine! In Yorkshire, people and sheep huddle together in the pub, in North East Scotland they find alternative solutions for Christmas dinner, and in Aberdeen the taxi drivers claim ardently that it's only 'down sooth' that they can't handle the weather. It'll be fine up here!

And you can't but love it. It also helps having the Norwegian sensible winter wear culture - layers and boots really do help...