Here is first report from Singapore:
Source:
Video:
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More pictures from the National Day celebration around Norway:
A looong winter is over and soon just a memory:
#norwegianwinter Redirecting...]
We are heading into a sunny summer season with looong light summer nights:
Photo: Magnar Lyngstad
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This was how I was raised during the late Fifties and early Sixties. Was out in the water and swamps up to my chest at times, catching turtles, snakes, anything I could capture. Once dragged home an alligator snapper by the tail. “Don’t bring that inside.” was the response from my folks. Every critter was always released unharmed. I never understood the cruelty some kids showed to animals. Now, I wouldn’t dare enter some of the waters I did as a kid.
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Welcome to Ålesund, the hometown of my youth and now my home again:
Let me know when you intend to pay us a visit.
Not often that Norway gets a mention in Washington Post, but here is an article in today’s WaPo about EVs in Norway:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2025/05/30/norway-ev-adoption-electric-cars/? (Gift article, no paywall)
Most new cars in Norway are EVs. How a freezing country beat range anxiety.
Norway’s 60,000 miles of roads snake around fjords and through mountainous terrain. (Salwan Georges/The Washington Post)
From “Nautilus” magazine -
For as long as scientists have been watching, the world’s largest herring population has migrated up to 800 miles every year from wintering areas in northern Norway to spawning grounds along the country’s southwest coast. The herring larvae grow faster in the warmer southern waters, feeding off the rich zooplankton that thrives there.
But a few years ago, scientists noticed something odd. When the spring rolled around in 2021, instead of heading all the way south, the adult fish migrated a few hundred miles to Lofoten in northern Norway and then stopped, and they’ve largely stuck around there ever since, says Aril Slotte, a fisheries biologist at Norway’s Institute for Marine Research. The scientists track the fish’s movements with radiofrequency identification tags and other methods. “This is the first time something dramatic like this has happened,” says Slotte.
Like many fisheries, the region’s herring operations target the large—and hence, old—fish that fetch higher prices on the market, selectively harvesting at times and in places where the older fish tend to hang out. Scientists have long worried that this tendency could have outsized impacts on the population because the old individuals are thought to pass on knowledge of migration routes to the young herring. Researchers believe that when the young herring first swim south into the Norwegian Sea—after spending three or four years of their early lives in the Barents Sea in the north—they mix with schools of older fish, who lead the way to the spawning grounds that lie farther south. “The young ones will tend to follow the leaders that are very clear on where to migrate,” Slotte says.
When I grew up in Ålesund in the 1950s the winter herring fisheries were at their peak and Ålesund became the “capital” of Norway for a couple of months each year.
The population (abt. 10k) almost double with fishermen and workers from all over the country flocking to town to take part of the “silver bonanza”.
The boats were sitting in the harbour, waiting on word from the Fishery research vessel “G.O.Sars” and head marine biologist Devold that the herring schools had reached coastal waters;
Photo: Sunnmøre lmuseum.
It was boom time for all kinds of business, incl. illicit alcohol.
(Ålesund was a dry town at the time)
For me, as a newspaper boy, it was also boomtime, with up to 100+ copies of the local newspaper “Sunnmørsposten” sold out in a few hours.
When the word spread that “han Devold” announced that herring was within reach the cry of “the herring is here” went around town as a wildfire and everybody got onboard for a quick departure.
When the first boats returned to report their catch and be assigned the place to discharge it was another boom time for us young boys in town (could be me):
“Collecting” herring from the deck cargo, tread them on a string and out on town to sell our “catch” to housewives waiting anxiously to get the first fresh herring of the season on the frying pan. We got up to 30 Øre (NOK 0.30) per herring, a king’s ransom at the time.
Here is a video from the 1951 season:
PS> Hope you remember your Swedish.
“Hope you remember your Swedish.”
Enough to get the gist of the narration! That was a lot of fish. The men in small boats in their sou’wester gear reminds me that my Dad gave me an old sou’wester of his when I left for my first ship. Some rascal in Goa stole it from the oilskin locker.
You were a hustler, all right. I had no herring to sell, so, I did yard work around the neighborhood. A couple of my grade school buds had paper routes, and were up before the sun, preparing.
Whatever you want to call it, but it was a necessity Norway was still recovering from the German occupation during WWII.
I stared selling newspapers around town at the age of 8, as did many boy in town at the time. There is even a statue in the middle of town commemorating the Newspaper boys:
Photo: Karel Lenc, 9 mths ago
Could be me. Can you see the likeness? (Only a few decades difference)
Photo: Chen Poi San (My God daughter visiting from Singapore last month)
I later had a paper route at age 11 and worked as delivery boy from age 13, until I left for pre-sea training as soon as I turned15.
Since I lived a few hundred meters outside city limits (rural area) we went to primary school only every second day, while those living in town went 6 days per week.
We thus had ample time to do some “hustling” and make some money to buy things.
I bought a bicycle at 9 and an old traditional rowboat with sail at 12 with my own money.
PS> We had to pass the same exam as the city boy.at the end of Primary school.
Nice photo of you, Bugge. I meant hustler in a positive way. I never asked my Dad what he did for money as a boy in Norway, but he left Tromøy in his first ship, “O.B. Sørensen” at 14 years old. I have a photo of it hanging in my stereo room. It was his first and only tanker.
My first ship (after pre-sea training onboard the full rigger Sørlandet) was also a tanker:
M/T Polyrambler, ex Bergestrand, blt. 1950:
This particular “O.B. Sørensen” was built in 1931 at Malmö, Sweden. My Dad joined in early 1935. I believe this was the ship in which he was blockaded up the Yangtze in 1937 during the war with Japan. He told me that bodies would foul in the anchor chains daily, and they’d have to be pushed free. A Norwegian flag was painted on the hull to discourage attacks. He had some experiences, like all of us.
“full rigger Sørlandet”
I was Third Mate in a ship with a Chief Mate and Second Mate who both had USCG Master of Sail licenses in the rack, both having had years as mates in the original square-rigger “Sea Cloud”.
Tall fish stories usually is not documented, but this one is: