I've noticed someone from Norway reading my blog, and I even know who that someone is: Kåre Vaksvik, who had been a friend of my best friend, Noel Butler, and who had sent me some photos and copies of their correspondence several years ago - see here.
When I think of Norway I think of Michener's book "The Drifters" which became my much-loved and much-read 'Bible' during my footloose and fancy-free years. One of the book's protagonists is Britta Bjørndahl who lives in Norway and wants to escape its dark winters. She is the daughter of a radio operator whose mission it was to alert the Allies to the arrival of German ships in Norway, and who dreams of going to Ceylon (modern-day Sri Lanka) once the war is over. As Britta grows up she watches her father endlessly listening to Georges Bizet's The Pearl Fishers during the endless arctic nights while his dream slowly fades into a distant vision never to be realised.
Of course, the permanent temptation of life is to confuse dreams with reality. The permanent defeat of life comes when dreams are surrendered to reality. What dreams do we have today for ourselves and for the world in which we live? Let us search them out and discover where the journey takes us while we're still young at heart. Because once we have ceased to dream, Michener seems to say, it is simply time for us to die.
If you would like to read the story, go straight to page 42, then JOIN UP with archive.org (it's free!), SIGN IN and BORROW, to read to the end.
Britta was from Tromsø; Kåre's log-in is from Tomasjord, some forty kilometres from Tromsø. Coincidence? I must email Kåre to ask him if he now lives in Tromsø and if he's read "The Drifters" and if he also listens to Georges Bizet's The Pearl Fishers during those endless arctic nights.
I saw you reading this blog at three o'clock in the morning Norwegian time, Kåre. Are you still reading this now under your midnight sun?
