work!) but there was also lots of free time so it was like a nice holiday really Anyway, this year the seminar was held in Norway, right up in the North in a little fishing village called Sommarøy. This is actually an island right on the Western edge of the country, about an hour's drive from the nearest city, Tromsø. The most exciting thing, though, is that it's right up in the Arctic Circle – check out this map and look for Tromsø.What an amazing place it was though! The scenery is just so so beautiful. Being so isolated, it was really peaceful and quiet and I enjoyed many lovely walks through the wild landscape. There were amazing tropical-looking beaches with amazingly clear blue water and white sandy beaches (so many of them), wide rolling meadows covered in heather resembling in some ways the great wild expanse of the flat parts of the Central Plateau in New Zealand, steep rocky wind-swept mountains which plunge straight down into the sea, the big black and incredibly deep fjords, huge jellyfish slowly jetting away under the bridge with bright circles of colour in their clear bodies... I could go on for a while: in short I found it breathtakingly beautiful!
We were staying in a lovely hotel with a sauna and hot tub. They served lots and lots of food, good food, so much so, that I reckon we should have done a little study and measured everyone's weights at the start and end of the seminar to see how much weight we all put on!!! Seriously, if given the option, who can resist having bacon for breakfast with lots of really nice freshly baked bread, hot food for lunch and dinner, and delicious desserts for lunch and dinner? Some of us did come to the conclusion after the first 2 days that we really needed to start exercising some self restraint and only have dessert once a day, and be a bit more selective about which foods to eat for lunch and dinner. We also discovered that there were mostly the same dishes day to day, lunch to dinner, with a few different ones new each day and a few old ones phased out each day so having a bit of everything soon became boring. I was able to try some interesting foods here
though: reindeer, moose and elk. I refrained from eating whale and seal – they really didn't appeal and besides, aren't whales somewhat endangered (I'm sure I've seen 'Save the Whales' stickers)? A pity I'm not keen on seafood because there were great selections of fish and other seafood available including little tubes of caviar for breakfast (Ugh!).Now one of the highlights of the trip was the hot tub. I rather enjoyed the (nearly) true Norwegian experience of spending time getting hot in the lovely wooden hot tub then going for a dip in the sea to cool off. I should mention that it was rather cold up there – temperatures during the day were about 6-8 degrees Celsius, so who knows what temperature the sea was at that time in the evening! It was cold, yet strangely somehow exhilarating, and somewhat addictive – the hot tub always felt so much hotter after the sea that you warmed up a lot more quickly and to a greater extent than before. It was quite amusing to observe which people in the group were the first ones to give the sea-dip a go. Vinjar, one of the Norwegian lecturers had told us on the first day about the tradition and despite the loud and stubborn protests of most people, claimed that by the end of the seminar almost all of us will have given it a go. And he was right. I admit I was something of a ring leader persuading people to join me on my excursions across the deck, down the stairs, onto the sand and into the water (you have to do it at a run if you've got any hope of being fully immersed before the cold hits you). There was also a rather nice sauna but I found this got rather too hot.
I
guess I should mention that we did do some work as well. The other seminar attendees, from all over the world, were really nice people and we had a great time together (despite my being the youngest of the bunch). The lectures were really good, particularly Vinjar with his simple, clear explanations of foundational statistical concepts using the example of Mary (a short girl – something I can associate with). I have to admit though, that in some of the statistics lectures when I was particularly tired and finding it difficult to feign interest in being taught things I already knew, I took advantage of the wireless broadband available throughout the hotel and undertook some 'research' (i.e. checking email, or perhaps fluffing around with R because it's a statistical program and it seemed somehow more appropriate and less guilt-inducing). We were split up into four groups for discussions on particular topics each day then in the second week we had to design a study to answer the question, 'Is chocolate related to stroke?', with which we had great fun, of course, and showed our rather strong bias/hypothesis by eating lots of chocolate on the grounds it was good for us. Thankfully we didn't have to carry out the study so as yet, we have no conclusion to the question. However, the Norwegian guys managed to squeeze in a couple of questions to the Tromsø Study before the questionnaires were printed, so we might have an answer in the near future...Besides being hard at work during the day and relaxing in the hot tub at night, we had a couple of outings to keep us entertained and free from cabin fever. On the Saturday, we had a trip into town with the first stop at the base of one of the tall mountains overlooking the island city. We took a cable car to the top and had a chance to look around and take a few photos before we headed back down and on to the Polaria – a kind of Antarctic Centre, only it was about the Arctic instead. They had live seals which they fed and trained while we were there. One of the handy things about Norway is that almost everyone speaks English and so the seal commentary and many of the display boards were in English. The rest of the day was filled with wandering around town, visiting the Polar Museum, eating dinner and relaxing in a bar. On Sunday we had an all day trip around some of the neighbouring islands to see some of the different types of scenery in the area which was most enjoyable. On all our trips, Vinjar became an amazing tour guide, informing us all about the places through which we were driving and about Norwegian culture and history – we enjoyed it so much that if he was ever silent for a few minutes, people would call out asking for a story!!! I can also now say I have visited the largest troll in the world (it's even in the Guinness Book of Records) which is unfortunately one of the most tacky tourist destinations I've ever been too. We also had a great fishing trip in the fjord – a local fisherman took us out to where there were some fish and we caught a good many pollock (I managed to catch 7 myself, although I must admit it was hardly more difficult than simply letting the line and hooks down to the sea floor then winding it up again and hey presto, there were 3 fish!). A group of us also tackled the mountain overlooking our hotel, which was a good climb. Unfortunately, the weather turned a bit sour by the time we reached the top so the descent along the crest of the hill was somewhat precarious as the wind did its best to blow us over.
The last night we stayed in Sommarøy, it snowed down
to about 500m and Tromsø experienced the lowest overnight temperature of 1.1 degrees Celcius in August since a long time ago (i.e. I can't remember the exact date!). I had a very memorable time there and would love to go back and see more of the country one day. On my way back to London, I spent one night in Oslo and had a quick look around some of the main tourist attractions there including seeing The Scream at the national art gallery, the Nobel Peace Centre, the famous Vigelan Sculpture Park, and the folk museum which was particularly interesting and informative. As you might expect, I took rather a lot of photos so do have a look at them here. I seem to have rambled on for quite a long time, so well done if you made it to the end!
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