Blake has Stockholm Syndrome: 08/04-05: Up North

The morning after the crayfish party Courtney had planned to go on a 4 hour horseback ride with Maria, one of the residents of Lame Cabin. When Courtney and I awoke we walked into the kitchen to see two empty beer cans with daisy's in them sitting on the floor. This to me was rather odd, but maybe it was some heathen Scandinavian tradition to keep gnomes away or something.

Courtney rushed out and I promptly went back to bed. When the rest of the cabin awoke we realized that the mysterious cans weren't the only thing. Outside was a can of snus wrapped in paper hanging from a beam over our porch. Snus is a tobacco product wrapped in a porous fabric. You put it in your upper lip so you don't have to spit. It's super popular among the guys here.

At any rate, we then realized that this was not the work of Scandinavian traditions because, as everyone knows, gnomes love snus. Both of these "pranks", if they can so be called, were just bizarre and did not even qualify as annoying. However, when we went to make our coffee, we realized there was an important component missing that kept the water from going into the pot.

Nobody should ever get between a Swede and his/her coffee. Björn pointed out that this was definitely the work of Hawkeye Håkan. Needless to say, it was on. More to come ...

Towards the tail end of Courtney's ride I went berry picking with Björn and Ulrika, who is a berry picking machine. On the walk out there I snapped this photo:

I then went to meet Courtney as she rode gracefully down.

Afterwards we went on a free trip to go and see a fish ladder at a dam on one of the local rivers. It sounds totally stupid, but it at least qualified as moderately amusing. Here's Björn in front of the dam.

These two elderly gentlemen were running the show, basically catching the fish as they came up the ladder, weighing them and then letting them go on the other side of the dam. Courtney took a much better photo of the oldest most crotchetiest old man. He had this bizarre expression as he held up the fish to the dozen or so tourists gathering around for this bizarre tourist spot.

I don't know if this is actually in Lonely Planet's guide book, but by the gathering of tourists I had to assume he is a quasi-celebrity. Afterwards we went and hung around the cabin after a rigorous day for Courtney, and an especially lazy day for the rest of us. At one point however, Bjrn noticed that our treasonous neighbors were not there. They locked their door, but that would not deny us as our spies located the hiding place for their key.

We sprung into action, rushing into their cabin, turning all of their furniture upside down. Courtney went through their bathroom and stole all their toothpaste and sabotaged their coffee pot.

The next day we woke up early and packed up and went to Sami country. The Sami people are the indigenous people of northern Europe. The tend to have darker hair, and I believe their lineage is not European. They have a distinctly different culture and their people are native to Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. They have a certain amount of autonomy from their respective home countries as they each have their own separate parliament.

Many are involved in the reindeer herding trade, which is my new dream profession (sorry for wasting all that college money mom and dad). Anyways, this is the Sami flag, which if I would totally have a full back tattoo of this design if I was Sami.

We then gathered at this Sami guy, Daniel's house with some other campers and tourists. We had a delicious reindeer soup along with some bread and cheese before embarking out on a fishing adventure. As it began, Björn and Ulrika made a friendly wager of 10 kronor (a little under $2) to the person with the first fish, the biggest fish, and the most fish, or in Swedish the först, störst, och mest. Here's the winner that made Ulrika sweep the honors.

Kudos also to Ulrika for the awesome beanie (or mössa). We quickly grew board with fishing so we took a few berry picking breaks with limited success. Towards the end of the day our motor, which had been acting a little finicky, just completely crapped out. We called to Björn for help, but on his way over his motor cut out as well. It appeared as if we were caught in some sort of Swedish equivalent of the Bermuda triangle. Eventually we got our motor to start, and we towed the other boat towards the cabin where we started. A couple hundred yards away it crapped out again, meaning I had to row the rest of the way back.

Once we returned we met our Sami guide's tame reindeer, which was especially awkward since were still in the process of digesting our reindeer soup.

After we returned we were forced to say goodbye to our newfound Awesome friends. They were headed to fly to Rome (oh poor them), so we were left with a cabin of four.