An evening flight from Gatwick to Bergen in Norway for a literary festival the next day in an unusual town called Odda, which is at one end of the formidable Hardanger Fjord. My Scandinavian agent and good friend Frank Nes was at the airport to pick me up and drive me to my hotel, the beautiful slightly shabby Radisson Norge in the centre of the city. I find my job endlessly hard, but one of the great things about it is to be able to easily pick up where I left off with people I really like all over the world, and this is certainly true of me and Frank. We rode through the dark into town talking of family, football and music. Frank runs one of the world’s best festivals, Bergenfest, a once a year event, but he also promotes shows throughout the year, and as such, is a fund of showbiz inside stories. I myself, once known as ‘the Maida Vale mouth’ for my hopeless indiscretions, tend to hear juicy insider stuff (gossip is the pain that tells you that reputation is still alive) so we had our usual orgy of ‘NO! – he didn’t! – and what did his wife say when the squirrel came out of his arse?’
On a positive note, Frank was impressed by the basic humanity of Coldplay when they came to Bergen, and their kindly way of dealing with the local act that supported them. If you think ‘basic humanity’ doesn’t sound like a lot to write home about, you may not be coming into regular contact with the mindlessly vindictive bloody machine that is the Music Business.
Frank and me were having a business lunch the next day before I took a high speed ferry to Odda – we said goodnight at the hotel, and after checking in, I walked down through the rain-spitting city lights to the harbour where I bought some fish and chips from a lonely Turkish man with a van selling fish and chips. Across the main road we could hear the usual mayhemic Norwegian nightlife in a series of harbour bars. I didn’t have the energy to become part of it – the fish and chip man decided I was a good guy and gave me ‘secret mayonnaise’ as we stood together saying nothing, waves lapping across the way, impossibly good looking young blonde couples weaving in and out of pub doorways, constantly yelling, and the little chip van radio playing ‘Black is black – I want my baby back’....
Next morning I went for a swim and a sauna in the hotel – the sauna was wonderfully hot and the pool was nearly icy – just the way you want things, and increasingly unusual as hotel spas become more ‘family orientated’ – saunas tend to be never hot enough in case kids find them to be ‘too hot’ and pools are the temperature of minestrone so families can bugger about for hours on end without getting cold (grumpy old man speaking here).
Towards the end of my sauna session I was drying myself and staring at a notice on the wall which was in Norwegian but not in English as well. A kind young Norwegian man decided to explain to me that it said you should not get the floor wet in the changing room, but dry yourself before coming into it. I nodded my thanks and said: ‘I’m thinking of learning Norwegian as it is so close to English, certainly Scottish, in many ways.’
The fella nodded but said – ‘it might make more sense to learn German – it’s a bit more universal in Europe.’
‘Actually I can speak German already’ I replied – ‘I can completely learn any language in about six weeks – I just haven’t got round to Norwegian.’
I was kidding of course, and my dressing room pal was enjoying the conceit.
‘Oh, I see – and what languages can you speak?’
‘Well, lots of Arabic languages, Japanese, Mongolian, and Finnish’.
‘Finnish? – my grandparents were Finnish – I can speak some myself’.
‘Ahh!’ – I said – ‘Hrrrt, unwins das nickerbocker spondoolican!’.
The man feigned surprise – ‘Is that Finnish? – I don’t know these words’.....
‘It’s OLD Finnish’ I explained – ‘I’m a professional songwriter, and as I get older I have become more and more interested in the languages which came before the ones we speak now. For instance, not many people in the UK can speak Old Scots – ‘whi’ ra fuck urr ya dae’in’ man?’
‘Mmm – that sounds a lot like ‘what the fucking hell are you doing, man?’ said the Norwegian.
‘Amazing! – you can speak OLD SCOTS! – how many Norwegians do you meet who can understand THAT!?’
‘Old Scots is very similar to Old Norwegian – I noticed this when I was at university in Aberdeen’.
As I always say – if you’re looking for an intellectual conversation, go to a Norwegian sauna.
The next day Frank and me planned our campaign for 2010, went for lunch, then walked over to Bergen’s main police station where T Bone, a friend and associate of Franks had something for me. This was a bootleg DVD of a performance from earlier in the year in Hartberg, Austria. Frank explained that T Bone was in charge of the confiscated drugs box at the station, and that this was where he was keeping the DVD. T Bone was too busy to meet with us, but later he came down to the harbour’s edge as I waited for my ferry to Odda and handed it over.
The high speed ferry ride to Odda was two hours long and extremely beautiful – a line from Joni Mitchell’s song Amelia kept running through my head – ‘and your life becomes a travelogue of picture postcard charms –Amelia – it was just a false alarm’....
A half hour before Rosendal where the ferry would terminate, it lost power in one of its engines and we limped along the rest of the way, the day darkening to night as we passed mysterious large ships at anchor in cold stony bays. At Rosendal two great lads, Bard and Ivar met me to take me on the forty minute drive to Odda. Bard was driving, I sat next to him, Ivar was in the back. Bard was concerned that we would be late for the soundcheck at the Hardanger Hotel where I was also staying, so he was driving at rally speeds on twisting black roads through the fjord night. I wasn’t afraid, but Bard kept checking with me that I was okay about it. We were driving round the Hardanger glacier which is called Folgefonna. As we came close to the town of Odda (we’d been listening to some great country music, none of which I was familiar with) Bard explained that we were about to go through an 11 kilometre tunnel ‘under the glacier’.
As we sped along under the glacier I looked to the right and saw, in the massive walls of ice, frozen figures of men, their faces twisted in final agonies, staring out. Some of them held still-born wolf cubs in their arms pressed hard against their hearts. We were driving so fast that it was impossible to make eye contact with their dead stares. From time to time I could also see frozen women further back in the ice, their faces set in grief, yet serene as well. I asked Bard if more of these figures kept appearing or if this was the final extent of the manifestation. ‘And the grit inside your heart is on my hands’ said the man on the country music record. Bard thought about my question for some minutes, then explained that sometimes the ice women disappeared and that where they had been there could be seen a small mound of glistening salt, said to be so pure that if you touched it, all the original water in your body which came with you at your birth flowed out through your eyes. He said that he had often considered walking back through the tunnel to the salt and the men so that he could look them straight in the eye, but that it was forbidden to walk through the tunnel, and anyway, like Johnny Cash, he was afraid he could never walk back.
Suddenly the tunnel came to an end and we turned right into Odda, a town culturally and psychologically dominated by the enormous remains of a dead factory, an old smelting works, once owned by a British company called BOC, now long closed, but with the magnificent grey brick complex running like a haunting scar down one side of the town. The literary symposium at which I was performing was being attended by an impressive swathe of the intellectual life of Scandinavia – my show was good natured and warm, and the next day a lovely woman called Tone took me to the Smelt Cafe for a chicken and mango wrap. This is a great country full of alive souls and I count myself as blessed that I can be asked to play in remote hotels in remote towns where fierce eyed folk demand that you demonstrate their equivalent of ‘duende’ or just don’t bother coming back. As I constantly say to them, Norway is like an extreme version of Scotland - itself an extreme example of negotiation of the human condition.
The next day I was alone on the quay at Rosendal in calm warm sunshine, waiting for the ferry. The fjord was absolutely still, the glacier, unseen from where I sat, but close by in the mountains, cast occasional wisps of ice cold air around the wooden jetty under which huge crabs, all the way from Russia clattered and slithered in clear water.
I thought about something that Bard had said to me on the helter-skelter drive the night before. He had been explaining that he had lived in Odda for 25 years, and that although it was far away from anywhere there was plenty to do, and that was why he stayed.
‘Like what?’ I asked politely.
Bard then told me three things you can do round here which make it all worthwhile:
You can stand on the glacier.
You can shoot deer.
In Spring there is apple blossom.
Later that evening, on my flight back to Gatwick from Bergen, I was infuriated to discover that the Financial Times that I had bought at the airport did not contain its weekend magazine, entitled HOW TO SPEND IT. £5 this had cost me, and on the front of the paper it said that in HOW TO SPEND IT there was an article by Lucia Van Der Post about German paper napkins and their exciting break from traditional designs. Now I would have to wait until next year when I returned to Germany to see for myself these exciting new designs.....life can be so unfair.
In the plane the last of the blood red sun was fading and I fell into a broody sleep as hundreds of excited Norwegian teenage girls discussed going to London for the first time. I dreamed of a beautiful little train engine I had seen at the smelt works in Odda. I had asked Tone about it. She said it was called Nautilus and that it was much loved in the town – one day, in times gone by, some lads had been larking about and had managed to drive Nautilus into the river by the side of the factory from where he had been rescued. In my sleep and in my dream, I had caught my hand amongst pearl shells. As I struggled frantically to free my hand I heard a clank and a sigh behind me – when I turned, Nautilus was slowly gliding towards me with a smile of understanding.
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