water’s edge was coated in the kind of slush
that Norwegians call “porridge ice” and that
I would have called “miserable” had Roddie
not prohibited me from complaining. And
although he has lived in Norway for 22 years,
he remains staunchly proud of his Scottish
heritage. He seemed to me the perfect entry-
way into friluftsliv, not only because his pro-
fessional life depends entirely on nature but
also because I suspected that he, as a non-
native, would confirm my hunch that Nor-
wegians don’t have some
mystical relationship
with nature; they simply
have more nature.
So Roddie, Lindis, and
I sit outside in that glori-
ous light and talk about
why they chose to live
where they do. Work de-
termines a lot of it: The cold waters of the re-
gion hold some of the best sea urchins and oth-
er “shells,” as Roddie calls them, in the world.
But it’s more than that. “It’s for days like this,”
Roddie says, and I have to admit that, at the mo-
ment, with the silence and the blue skies and
the sun warming our faces, I can’t think of a
better place to be. But even now, winter is nev-
er far from their minds. “Have you seen Game
of Thrones?” Lindis asks, while, as if in prepa-
ration, she knits the sleeve of a sturdy-looking
sweater. “There’s a reason we joke that we live
beyond the wall.” She enumerates the challeng-
es: the endless dark nights, the ice that comes in
October and doesn’t leave until April, the wind
that can blow so hard it once spun Roddie—
and the wheelbarrow full of wood he was cart-
ing—full around. “Yes, but,” Roddie interrupts.
In deep winter, “there’s no light at all—the skyis completely black. And sometimes the north-
ern lights just make you feel tiny.”
Spend enough time in the north, he seemed
to be saying, and the dark and cold come to seem
less like things to be overcome than things to be
appreciated. I think about that the next day when
Lindis and I hike up a nearby ridge. Except for
a few steep stretches above some newly plant-
ed spruce, the incline is mostly gentle, so it comes
as a surprise to get to the top and realize just how
far up we are. From our perch, the astonishingAbove: Roddie Sloan watches
for his diver, Jens, at sea near
Nordskot. Right, Roddie and Jens
sort freshly gathered scallops and
clams at the dock.
112 AFAR SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2019