SEPTEMBER 2003
Son Erling and I finally made it over to the old country on a short visit. Erling hasn't been to Norway since he was 3 years old, and I just realized it has been 7 years since my last trip. Ryan Air was offering flights to Torp, which is only a 30 minutes drive from my hometown, at £4.- return for the two of us . Even after paying £120.- for train tickets to Stanstead and another £50.- in Airport tax to the Government it was too good a bargain to pass up. My nephew Audun picked us up at Torp and left us at the apartment that my mother keeps in case we visit.
Next morning we visited our family tomb and paid our respect to the ancestors.
The town had changed a lot since I was there last; one good thing was that most of the traffic into and out of town was now in underground tunnels, leaving the centre free from cars.
The Home Secretary, David Blunkett, has once again given a strong indication that he wants us all to be carrying ID cards as soon as possible. The reason, we are told, is that the Government wants to crack down on illegal immigrants, as he has just admitted that the authorities are completely clueless regarding the numbers already in the UK. He insisted that the cards will not be compulsory, but you can't work or draw benefits, see a doctor or go to school without one. If asked to produce one by a police officer you have to do so, either at once, or at your local police station within 5 days. Doesn't sound to me that you have a lot of choice in the matter, but then I'm not a politician.
Though we might in fact being softened up for even more sinister plans. The latest initiative being considered is to electronically tag all asylum seekers and and all peadophiles (proven or otherwise). Some convicted criminals released early are already tagged, and the idea seems to be to combine the tagging with the proposed satelite position technology that we all soon will be having in our cars. With the authorities knowing where we are at any given moment, how long will it be before we are told where we are allowed to go.
Daughter Aki is not a happy bunny at the moment. She's had her car broken into 4 times in the last few months and her tax disc removed. Last week they also took some of her veterinary equipment, so she called the coppers and was given a crime number.
They also sent someone around to issue a fixed £30.- penalty for not displaying a tax disc.
Why don't the fruit and vegetables we buy in the supermarket taste of anything much, nor do the meat and fish? The medical explanation is that we all gradually lose our sense of taste as we grow older, which may or may not be true, but this can't be the whole story. We've had a brilliant harvest of apples and vegetables at Heimbu this year. The apples are scabby, and the vegetables are full of holes from insect attacks, but they taste like food used to do. We also dined on wild blueberries, lingonberries and cloudberries when we were back in Norway, and it was delicious. We had wild trout and salmon, venison that had been properly hung and homemade saugages, and there is absolutely no comparison between this and the storebought pap. I wonder if one of the reasons for the growing problem of obesity is that there is no satisfaction in eating, so people eat more and more in the hope of getting something out of it in the end.
The latest fad in the Martial Arts world seems to be World War II Combatives as taught by Fairbairn and Sykes, and later Applegate and Nelson. These are cracking good systems, but they were basically created for just one purpose; to quickly train soldiers to kill the enemy. Fine if your stuck in Iraq or travelling to soccer matches in Turkey or Sheffield, maybe less so if a drunk takes a swing at you on a Saturday night.
It has suddenly become much clearer why the People's Party is so down on private education. The Chairman of the Prep School Assocation in a speech called for children to be taught the 10 R's. In additition to the usual reading, writing and 'rithmatic, he would like to see resourcefulness, resolve, reliability, responsibility, restraint, remorse and respect. Them are fighting words, boss.
Several people lately have asked me why Stav, if it is not a religion, use words like a Horg, a Ve and a Hov, which Asatru regards as sacred places, and titles like a Thul and a Gode which are regarded as being clergy. When I was a child there were no titles in Stav, as this was just something the family did, though the Horg was a part of daily life, and we all knew of certain places that would be regarded as a Ve; places where the veil between the worlds were thinner that normal. However, when my original students, had students of their own, it was felt that some sort of titles were neccessary. Some have chosen neutral, modern English words like Master or Practitioner, while others have gone to traditional Scandinavian ones.
Some of this confusion between Asatru and Stav comes from a misunderstanding among many what Asatru is. The Americans especially seem to have created a belief system that is a mirror version of the Christian Church.
In Scandinavia, what is called Asatru, seems to be much more like Stav; a worldview that includes the spirits of the land, the ancestors and natural forces, where belief or non-belief in gods and goddesses are not in itself important, but adherence to the "Sed", the ancient customs and traditions, is. This doesn't mean that one can not belong to an established religion like Christianity; only that one does not work against nature.
Brian Plummer, arguably the greatest dog breeder of all time, died of cancer earlier this month, at the aged of 68. Many of you might never have heard of him, but he created a new breed of terrier, the Plummer Terrier, that is the most extra-ordinary hunting machine imaginable. My dog Rusty, which unfortunately died young under the wheels of a car, was of this breed.
Plummer was also involved in the re-creation of the Sporting Lucas terrier; he managed to breed both a pure white Alsatian and a strain of lurchers that were catching rabbits well into their dotage, and lately re-created the Alaunt, the legendary ancient Hunting Mastiff.
There were once people who lived profoundly on this planet, essentially without the self-consciousness of doing so. They were people who lived in reciprocal, respectful relationship within ecosystems of which they recognized themselves a part, and whose sacred nature they knew and understood. They lived lives in which the everyday activities of living were morer akin to ritual or sacrament, paced by the rhythems of nature and linked to and in harmony with the greater movements of the cosmos - blending the sacred and the profane, past and future, time and timelessness, in the present moment. They were people who inherited an uninterupted transmission of knowledge of a way of being that stretched back to their distant ancestors. They knew the anatomy of the land in which they lived, dreamed its dreams, learnt what it taught, and felt the same pulse stream of life flowing through the veins of the Universe that they heard singing within their own bodies.
From the Introduction in the book "The Shamanic Healer" by Ikuko Osumi and Malcolm Ritchie.
What's going on here. Last month we had the big black-out in America and Canada; a few days later the power failed in London; then Denmark and part of Southern Sweden were without electricity, and now most of Italy has been plunched into darkness.
The Swedes came up with a resounding NO to the Euro in the recent referendum despite immense pressure from the Establishment. Good on them. I'm getting the feeling that the EU is turning into a monster controlling all aspects of our life down to the minutest detail; Government of politicians, by politicians and for politicians. Is it still possible to get out?
Politicians of course, never take no for an answer. A spokesman for the Norwegian Government recently explained that because of EU rules genetically modefied food could not be banned in Norway. Excuse me. Sir. I didn't know that Norway was a member of the EU; I seem to remember that the result of the last referendum was that we should not join. Oh, I see. Silly me, I should know by now that referendums are only valid if the result is right.