If you have been in my presence at any time in the last month, there is probably no way I haven’t already regaled to you every last detail of my Nordic Dreamvacation at least once. I can’t just forego converting it to blobbovision, though, so here goes. Træna! Træna, I learned, is actually a municipality of thousands of tiny islands off the coast of Norway, including Sanna, which forms the dramatic silhouette you see above. Lying just below the arctic circle, Træna sees sun 24 hours a day in midsummer, and each July is host to a music festival on the islands Husøy and Sanna which lets people like me, who are not year-round Arctic fisherpeople, experience all the adjectives depicted above firsthand.

Drew and I started planning our adventure last November, after thinking about it for several years, and it thoroughly exceeded all the built-up expectations. But Træna was not the only stop on our dreamvacation. Let us follow along with Drew’s backpack:

Salient moments

1. Oslo: The first night there, the bartender detects my particular ‘merican way of speaking, and in about 18 seconds we determine we both come from the same 10 mile radius of Jersey Shore suburbia
2. Træna: Unable to quite process the full range of stimuli hitting us as we step off the ferry boat onto this ridiculous island, I am unsure how to react to the 20 or 30 small blonde children with various makes and models of wheelbarrows entreating us in Norwegian to let them help us carry our things to the campsite. I think there is also a group of people singing songs under a welcoming banner
3. Walking to the campsite, I am agape and giddy. Drew turns to me and says, “This is my favorite temperature!”
4. While sitting in lush warm grass swatting bugs with a hundred or so cohorts who also could not fit into the tiny church where Erlend Øye is playing his Kings of Convenience song “I Don’t Know What I Can Save You From,” we enjoy a brief impromptu whistle-along. I have been taking notes:

5. We are sitting in the pews of a wooden church built in 1773 to see Ólöf Arnalds perform. During a particularly quiet moody song a tiny spider, descending slowly from the ceiling, passes exactly in front of my face. I stare at it for a second, elbow Drew so he can see this perfect thing that is happening, then pinch the thread trailing behind it and redirect it to the church floor
6. Walking along a road which we are pretty sure leads to the mouth of a tunnel up the inside of a mountain, we notice a small lone figure on the beach in the distance. As we draw nearer we realize it is a woman in a wedding dress wading in and out of the waves. Her attention is fixed out at sea, presumably in search of her lost sailor fiancée. Maybe she is art, maybe she is a ghost, we speculate the merits of both theories
7. After 40 minutes of cold, slippery, pitch black, completely enjoyable treachery up Kjærlighetstunellen, the Love Tunnel, we pass through a bright square of light, the opening flanked by a man brushing cymbals and a woman strumming a guitar and singing a pleasant song. Just beyond them is a table with complimentary strawberries. I take one and bite into it staring out from the top of this mountain at the wild seascape dotted with pancake islands
8. Waiting for our ferry back to the main island, we stand in the midst of a rowdy singalong to classic American pop songs, led by a feisty red-haired Norwegian woman and a red-nosed seafaring man wearing a kilt
9. Bergen: We see a sad lost baby seagull reunite with its mom, then a couple hours later, we run into Erlend Øye at a bar – hundreds of miles from Træna and days after the festival has ended. I signal to him with the festival band still around my wrist, we talk about Træna magic for a little bit and he departs

I’m leaving out a lot, but this is just my blob. Please peruse the flickr for many, many more charmingly captioned photos and a brief video attempt (higher quality here). Til next time!