A Report for the Augustana Student's Association on the Nordic Skiing and Outdoor Life Exchange Semester in Norway

A Report for the Augustana Student's Association on the Nordic Skiing and Outdoor Life Exchange Semester in Norway

by Matt Martin

As a brief description, the international students’ outdoor life program at University College of Southeast Norway (now the University of Southeast Norway) consisted of courses on basic skiing, being outdoors in the wintertime (on skis), Norwegian perspectives on outdoor education, and Norwegian perspectives on educational guiding in paddling activities. The first three courses took place over the months of January, February, and March, roughly. Then, we switched our focus to the latter two courses until the end of the semester on May 14.

Having been on five overnight trips ranging from two to seven nights spent in the beautiful Norwegian natural landscape, the program gave me myriad opportunities to learn through experience and the more practical, hands-on approach often afforded to students of outdoor education (in Norway, anyway). I learned and improved upon several practical components – or ‘hard skills’ – particular to each trip’s activity, but I also developed ‘soft skills’ such as leadership, good group membership, activity facilitation, etc., which hold more value in outdoor trips than expected.

Setting off for the wooded winter wonderland of Telemark’s Hjartdal municipality marked the beginning of the winter forest period – the first trip of our "Outdoors in the Wintertime" course.

Among skills such as constructing a toilet in the winter, building a fire, and building a tarp shelter, orienteering with map and compass was one skill that was particularly important. Not only was learning navigational skills essential for safety reasons, learning to work with map and compass was also a skill we consistently practiced during every one of the semester’s trips. The photograph above depicts my group huddling around our maps to find the way in the low visibility conditions. The picture below shows us moving on our skis together in the deep snow of the forest.

                                           

In addition to acquiring or developing skills, I also had the chance to simply experiment and try something new, such as sleeping underneath a tree (see below).

            The semester’s trips focused on travelling as a group rather than embarking on solo excursions. As such, working with and travelling as a group presented challenges and opportunities for personal growth. For instance, individuals who would have normally skied more quickly on their own time had to consider the slower traveling speed of other group members and acknowledge the potential effect on group morale an exhausted group member could have on the group’s overall performance. Below, we are seen traveling together on a sunny morning on the fourth day of the winter forest trip.

            The picture below ties together the "Outdoors in the Wintertime" course with the "Norwegian Perspectives on Outdoor Education" course. Being outside away from a busy, noisy urban centre for several days allowed us to connect with nature in a deeper way, which is at the core of friluftsliv – Scandinavia's closest equivalent for ‘outdoor life.’ Friluftsliv encompasses a lifestyle and philosophy that promotes opportunities for people to connect with their natural environments. By connecting to and developing a relationship with nature, we will then be more likely to protect it, realizing the dependence we have on our ecosystems. Sliding through the snow-covered hills of Telemark was one of many occasions I had to connect with nature in Norway this semester.

          A few weeks later, after reflection and further preparation, we departed Bø for the high mountains at Haukeli, on the edge of the vast Hardangervidda National Park. Here, we learned about avalanche safety and travel near avalanche-prone areas, snow shelter construction, making a winter tent camp, and further developing our competencies using a map and compass.  

          Above, gathered in a circle with maps in hand, we continue to practice wintertime navigation. The flame captured below burns amid matches, biscuits, marshmallows and cooking chocolate in the 5-person snow cave we dug on the third evening of the trip. Using one of my peers’ firestarter matches, we managed to enjoy a decent dessert of s’mores in a high mountain snowdrift together. 

          Having s’mores in a snow cave marked one of two exciting snow shelter experiences on this trip. The second, pictured below, came on the fourth and last night of the Haukeli trip when I dug a mock-emergency, one-person bivouac to sleep in. It was really neat to find such solitude and peace in this solo snow shelter and enjoy a break from a crowded tent.

  

           The winter mountain environment presents astounding challenges to the life forms that inhabit such an often-desolate place. Energy is precious in any cold winter environment in both the forest and the mountain. For example, coming too close to reindeer, deer, moose or other local mammals risks causing these creatures overexertion and possibly death. How ironic that post-modern humans seek out these unforgiving conditions and sport wide, ear-to-ear smiles such as I do below. What a fantastic mystery to find joy in sliding through a frozen wasteland.  

             

             But despite the energy the cold winter air takes from my cheeks, wrists, and any other exposed blotch of skin, it also gives so much in a more abstract sense. It gives space to socialize and cooperate with other people, time to just be and think, and it offers the chance to respect the awesome power of the planet’s complex natural systems. What’s more, these opportunities to witness starry skies and breathtaking sunsets (such as the one below) instil and fuel deep passions for the outdoors.

           After breaking a ski on the winter forest trip and ripping off the binding clip from one of my ski boots on the winter mountain trip, one of my highest hopes for the study trip was to avoid the experiential and financial nuisance of equipment failures. Although I sustained some fairly unsightly and uncomfortable blisters due to wearing barely-worn boots, they thankfully put up with the strains and forces of an 8-day camping trip. One of our group’s members experienced worse blisters than I and had to be evacuated by the Red Cross on the fifth day. The rest of us laughed about it over the next three days, judging evacuation due to blisters to be hardly worth a rescue. However, we later found out that our peer suffered from blood poisoning in the wake of the incident. The whole situation in the end gave us plenty of insightful reflection.   

             We continued to develop certain skills related to backcountry touring in the winter. I learned that you could never underestimate the benefit of a proper snow kitchen. Standing in a snow kitchen whose depth forces you to bend over in every chore puts a lot of strain on the body. Having at least 80cm of snow to work with makes a huge difference in making the experience of winter tent camping more comfortable and enjoyable. Below, Lucka, our peer and friend from the Czech Republic, stands in a sufficiently deep snow kitchen in the eastern area of Dovrefjell, south of Trondheim.

   

And, no surprises here, we continued to develop proficiency in orienteering. Below, Lucka and I stand on a lake under clear blue skis and consult our maps yet again.

Without an instructor, the study trip gave us a different experience compared to the Haukeli winter mountain trip. There was no relying on the expertise of a professor. We had to put our own competencies to the test and fully engage in the task at hand. It felt quite empowering to be trusted to lead each other through a completely foreign place in the dead of winter. Now the third winter trip, I really valued this chance to improve and further develop my abilities. One such skill, building a winter toilet, was one I particularly enjoyed practicing. The one below was my second toilet of the trip equipped with a wind wall to keep the breeze away from users’ exposed rear-ends.

            I also included an avalanche probe for easy location and numerous chunks of winter toilet paper (wedges of packed snow). Burning toilet paper in the winter is a difficult task, one many give up on. Using snow to wipe (not as cold as you think – quite refreshing actually) is a more low impact way to go about winter defecation that avoids the unpleasant litter of toilet paper. Contrary to popular belief, toilet paper left in the winter does not decompose before the spring as it often just ends up on the ground’s surface in the runoff.

After reflecting together and adjourning the group, we faced the bittersweet end of the winter period of our semester. An Easter break to write our portfolio for the wintertime course was all that separated us from the start of paddling. The subsequent canoe trip offered a group of mixed experience in canoes a fairly fast-paced trip that combined both lake and river paddling within the span of three days. We spent the first half on Seljordsvatn, only a fifteen kilometer walk from home and the second half on Bø river which began on the east end of the lake. In the photograph below, I paddle along in an aluminum canoe with Owen, the American exchange student, on the way to our first campsite.   

One of our professors of the paddling course, Hedda Faerden, structured the canoe trip such that the eight of us would pair up and deliver teaching programs to each other during the trip. The difficulty in learning about and preparing a teaching program for topics that were completely new to most of us translated into a rich, and sometimes entertaining, learning experience for all members of the group. Flo, the German exchange student, delivered a teaching program on solo canoeing since he had experience from the fall semester’s canoe trip. I took the basics he provided in his instruction to challenge myself the following day in a daunting rapid.

I began by simply canoeing through the rapid and executing a smooth eddy turn to exit into calmer water. Then, I felt ready to ‘ferry’ across the rapid and back, a paddling method using the current’s power when traveling from an eddy on one side of the river to the other without drifting downstream. Difficult to see, the above picture (barely) shows me on the left side under beneath the black cliff as I ferry across the rapid while Hedda supervises on the right. It took me several attempts to successfully get into the rapid in a good position, but Hedda patiently encouraged me nonetheless. Finally overcoming this challenge meant a lot, and I was grateful for her patience with and confidence in me.  

Some of the most fun we had with our paddles on the trip happened in the absence of the boats. This picture above portrays one of our warm-up games. Gathered in a circle holding one paddle each with both hands, Hedda or the first person out of the game would announce whether to move to the right or to the left. When we heard “left,” for example, we would leave our paddle upright and move to grab onto the paddle to the left (with two hands simultaneously) before it fell to the ground. The game became particularly difficult with more space between participants and even trickier with only two opponents.

Cooking on a campfire again was a refreshing experience. Most of us had not cooked on a fire as a group since the winter forest trip in January. A spruce-fuelled flickering flame in a ring of stones that gives warmth, a source of heat for cooking, and a gathering place to engage in discussion adds a tremendous amount to an outdoor trip’s experience. I realized during these evenings that despite the extra labour involved, I had really missed having fire on the mountain trips above the treeline. 

 

Apart from a few rapids and two portages around some fairly wicked waterfalls, the above photograph represents our experience on much of Bø river quite well: plenty of space, deep water, and the temptation to rest and just float down the river as though in an old tire tube on a hot summer’s day.

  

After the last portage along the river, we had only a short distance to go before exiting the river for good. We dragged the canoes up the riverbank and attached the portage trolleys to the canoes and walked our canoes from Oterholt back to Bø (only about three kilometers). The local access that didn’t require public transportation was another aspect of the canoe trip that I, and several others, especially enjoyed. Emily and I walked from the student housing in Folkestad to the starting point at Seljordsvatn with all of our gear over fifteen kilometers of the municipality’s charming countryside and walked with the rest of the group back to campus on the final day. I felt much better about the impact of this trip compared to the other trips that required either private vehicle use or a charter bus. The pollution resulting from this transportation owes to outdoor life students who, in general, ironically identify as environmental stewards. I felt this satisfaction for having chosen a low impact mode of transport to and from the coast for the kayak trip. Emily, Lucka, and I managed to successfully hitchhike from Bø to Valle and back again. Although the use of public transport is arguably no worse than catching rides in terms of its environmental impact, hitchhiking made much less of a financial impact on our increasingly shallow pockets.

Although the I-don’t-have-to-carry-it-on-my-back-so-I-don’t-have-to-fuss-over-how-much-luggage-I-bring kind of thinking is oftentimes appropriate for canoe trips, we quickly found out how naïve it is to bring such a mentality to a sea kayaking trip. In our professor’s defence, he did warn us to pack in small bags. Nonetheless, it still turned out to be a game of paddler’s tetris. Above, we play around with different combinations of packing our belongings to find a suitable arrangement in the awkwardly shaped storage holds of our kayaks. Stuffing a winter sleeping bag in a compartment with an entry the approximate diameter of an ice cream pail called for some serious wiggling.

Apart from the more obvious differences with regard to location, climate, and activity, sleeping in a lavvo (the structure depicted above) was unique to the kayak trip. This sleeping arrangement provided us the comfort of standing up inside our shelter. Unfortunately, due to our innocent mistake of failing to tuck the tarp inside the lavvo, it also provided us (mostly me) with a shallow swimming pool to wake up to after a night of steady rain. The top of the lavvo also seemed to leak and gave Emily a dose of drop-by-drop water torture as she struggled to find escape from rain drops meeting her forehead despite adjusting her position several times. But new experiences seasoned with a few sprinkles of catastrophe make for good character-building opportunities and more interesting learning moments.

Self-rescues and companion rescues were never boring. Technical exercises such as the brace represented above were obviously not all that dull either. Amid the skills we were expected to adopt and develop on each trip, an additional learning moment I experienced related to pedagogy was not to under-appreciate the role of fun in learning. Dreary learning experiences demotivate and sterilize students from the potential progression and achievement of which we are capable in learning something new. This is a realization I plan to take with me regardless of whether or not I find a career in education.

The photograph of three pots hanging on a product of Flo’s creativity captures a moment when I remember feeling both impressed and excited. I reacted with raised eyebrows and a nodding head at the construction of this double tripod providing a much more efficient cooking system than the conventional alternation of pots under a single tripod. After realizing how neat this was, I felt excitement as I thought back to some of the literature in the reading package for our "Norwegian Perspectives on Outdoor Education" course and how outdoor life gives children (and adult students as well, apparently) an arena for creative expression. Drawing parallels between our readings and the practical components of the courses improved the overall experience. Recalling the theoretical aspects of a course while on trip revealed the applicability of the literature, and reading about a subject after a trip made the reading much more interesting.  

Five trips and five months later, I am coming away with an experience abroad worth my investment. After reading this, I hope it is clear that this endeavour has been worth the investment of the Augustana Students’ Association as well. Thank you for your generosity in supporting my attendance at this program in Norway. I feel exceptionally grateful to my professors and friends in Norway with whom I shared the aforementioned experiences and supporters such as the ASA who helped make those experiences possible.