That same spirit radiates off of Ørnulf Op-
dahl. A jovial 75-year-old with permanent-
ly windswept hair, he is one of Norway’s most
esteemed artists, and he and his wife, textile
artist Sidsel Colbiørnsen, live and work on
Godøy, a small island a few miles from Åle-
sund, where Ørnulf was born. The turpentine
fumes in his seaside studio make me woozy,
but the unfinished works lining the walls grab
my attention. In thickly textured paint he ren-
ders abstract images that convey the hulk of a
mountain, the glimmer of the sea at night, the
weight of heavy snow. “It’s all based on some-
thing I have seen or experienced,” Ørnulf ex-
plains. “A special light, a fog coming in, the
play between light and darkness.”
He’s been painting this way since settling
in Godøy in 1971. His work is moving, but it’s
not, I realize, pretty in the way that landscape
painting often is. As I scan one after the next,
I feel it again: that same sense of foreboding
I experienced in the fjord. It’s fear, I think, or
maybe just recognition of a destructive pow-
er held momentarily in reserve. “ Yes!” Ørnulf
exclaims, when I raise the comparison. “To-
day we say, ‘Oh, look at the beautiful moun-
tain.’ But my forefathers would also say, ‘Look
at that dangerous place.’ The sea is not a place
for vacation; the sea is where my grandfather
disappeared. There’s fear there, a sense of
threat. I try to put that into my landscapes.”
I think back to other conversations
I’ve had. That morning, during his solilo-
quy about his ancestors, Hans the pilot cap-
tain had mentioned how, like them, he had
learned to read the landscape for coming dan-
ger. “If you see spray from a waterfall shoot-
ing up, you know that the wind is 10 to 15 min-
utes behind,” he had told me. “Nature gives
you warnings.” The day before, up in West-
erås, Iris had recounted the story of a 1907 av-
alanche that hit all the farms on the moun-
tainside. And back at the Sloan farmhouse,
when I had asked Roddie to describe his rela-
tionship with the ocean, he had replied, “She’s
my mistress, and I love her. But you have to
respect her. She’s tried twice to have me. She
just hasn’t succeeded yet.”
I realize that for a Norwegian, nature is not
just about pretty views and having fun out-
doors. Friluftsliv encompasses more than an
appreciation for nature. It also encompasses
awe, in the original sense of the word.
By the time I get to Oslo, I’m feeling like
I’ve learned something. As I wander around
the city’s harbor, the weather changes dra-
matically in about as much time as it takes
to order a cup of coffee, but the switch from
bright sun to cold rain and back again doesn’t
much seem to affect the locals, who emerge
flushed and sweaty from a seaside sauna to
launch themselves into icy water, or lounge
in the park near the palace, or sit in the open
air in their properly weatherproof attire, non-
chalantly drinking beer. But there is one last
piece of the puzzle for me, which is why this
devotion to the outdoors is especially strong
in Norway, compared with the other equal-
ly northern, equally beautiful, and equally
harsh Nordic countries.
Luckily, Lasse Heimdal has an answer.
We meet for tea at the train station, but his
normal habitat is the outdoors; he is secre-
tary general of the national Friluftsliv As-
sociation. He warms to my question with a
brief gloss on 1,000 years of Norwegian his-tory, in which the glorious Viking reign gives
way, in the Middle Ages, to the predations of
the Black Death. The epidemic wiped out so
much of the population that Norway had no
choice but to hitch itself to bigger powers—
first Denmark, then Sweden. It took until the
19th century for the dream of independence
to take hold. “Then our painters and artists
and writers were all looking for some kind of
identity,” Lasse says. “They were asking, what
does Norway have that makes it different?”
The answer, of course, was nature. “Den-
mark didn’t have it—that’s a pancake land,”
he continues. “And even the Swedes couldn’t
compete with our mountains and forests.
Nature itself became a symbol of indepen-
dence.” Today, in addition to its political
lobbying and its work as an umbrella orga-
nization for the country’s many outdoors-
oriented NGOs, the association also plays an
important role in helping immigrants assim-
ilate to Norwegian culture by organizing ex-
peditions and offering classes in friluftsliv.
“If you don’t understand that national pride
is very connected to nature, you miss some-
thing important about being Norwegian,” he
says. “ Yes, we have challenges from nature
here. But you can’t fight them or avoid them.
If you try, you’ll get a very sad life.”Opposite page: Near the village of
Leinesfjord, which lies above the
Arctic Circle, long days and empty
beaches are an invitation to play.116 AFAR SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2019