YCGL - Wednesday, September 20, 2023 - Closing the Circle in Vingelen - Draft
As cloudy and overcast as it was yesterday, today it is bright and sunny. Erik, Liz and I have been staying with Olov in her home called Fredhiem. This was the view from my window.
Erik was up early to help Tore (and Marit?) with the milking. Kikki was working at the school and Marit was working at the hospital in Tynset, so it was a quiet morning. Einar was out on the front porch playing his accordion. Olov and Erik met in the yard in front and started dancing.
It was a special moment for me, and I think everyone. I know Sally would have loved it.The old barn is quite a structure. The upper floor used to store the hay or grass that was used as feed. Now it is used as storage, especially after the big remodeling they did over the last couple of years. The lower floor was for the cattle. Now it is the shop and storage also.
Look at the size of those timber beams. Stocking up for winter.
Between the old barn and the milking barn is a Rowen Berry tree, a European Mountain Ash.
It has beautiful red berries that they used to make the wreath for the ashes yesterday.
The Youngers, Erik, Liz Arthur and Tyler, went to Hell in the afternoon. Hell is a community just south of the Trondheim airport and 30 km east of Trondheim. They stayed there that night and flew off to Berlin the next day. A picture before they left. 
Tore took off a little while later to have a business meeting in Trondheim. They were all going to get together that evening.
When Sally and I were here in 2018, we saw a small wooden basket for sale at the museum. I figured it was just the right size that I could fit it in my suitcase with a shirt or something stuffed in for padding. The craftsmanship was very nice. 
It was even nicer when we found out that Jon had made it.
We took off for Tynset to visit uncle Jon and Anna. Jon is a wood craftsman and has made a variety of neat objects.
But, I really wanted to watch him make a basket. So he did. It starts with a mold. 
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And here is where I marvel. It's the wood. It is so different than the pine I get in the States. This is soft and porous and has an open, uniform grain structure that I have never seen in our wood. And in those 5 minutes, I see the whole Norwegian craft structure in a different light. The chip carving, 
the acanthus carving and rosemaling, 
The container was Mali Aalborg Hilmarsen's (Einar's great-grandmother) (see the MA on the top) and was made in 1881. You can see it in this photo from 1890, along with the coffee grinder.
He then sands down the outside edge of the base.
It was just the instruction I was looking for. Thanks Jon! Maybe you'll have some Stateside competition too. At least Stateside Appreciation!
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He now wraps the slat around the mold, clamps it and lets it dry.
Once it's dry, he scribes the inside and outside shapes on to the base plate. He cuts the outside circle on a bandsaw.
Next, he adjusts the height of the cut of the circular saw to cut into the edge of the base to the height of the inside scribe. Then, he cuts a groove in the base making the other side from the marks the thickness of the final rim of the basket. 
He chisels the upper side to the inner circle and sands the edge with abrasive strips to make it smooth.
Then bend the handle and drill the holes in the ends to weave the grass into place.
Afterward, Anna made us a "little lunch" that was more than a little filling and delicious. (This little lunch was carried over in America also, and it is still rare to visit someone within a generation or two of Norway in the afternoon without having coffee, tea, cookies, cake, lefse, bars and more on the table.)
And then we went outside to see their vegetable garden and the stabbur that Jon has built. 
Jere, Thom, Lyndon Einar, Jon, Anna and Olov
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