….just in case they have to identify my body…

It has been a busy few days here on Dønna - the big local event in the community was the concert in Nordvik Kirke on Sunday evening. It was an evening to show solidarity with and raise money for Ukraine. Dønna and Herøy have been keen to help out and I believe that we are hosting 50 refugees in the near future.

On the Thursday and Friday evenings I had rehearsals for the concert. Thursday was with Dønnahorn and then on Friday we were at Bjorn’s studio to rehearse a couple of numbers. One was with Mharit (originally from Aberfeldy) and the 3 of us worked on an arrangement of Wild Mountain Thyme. Much to my shame, I resorted to using the transpose button. A very poor show - I could have easily played all the chords up a mere semitone but it just seemed so much easier. Of course that could have led to unforeseen difficulties - and indeed almost did. During the warm up at the dress rehearsal I did start to play it up the semitone - but with the transpose button and it took me a moment to realise what I was doing. Not before of course blaming the guitarist in my head!

The other song we performed was Kvite Due written by Jens Carlsen - owner of the guest house I had been resident in for a week or so. A very attractive little ditty, it was fun to play and it ended up with a band of guitar, bass, piano and 3 vocalists. Rather than have 2 different keyboard setups in the church it was decided that I would just borrow the instruments of the other player - very swish. Fabulous main keyboard that I did use but when I saw the Prophet 6 on top I have to admit that there was a temptation to put in a flashy and shockingly inappropriate solo into Wild Mountain Thyme as we played.

The whole concert seemed to be a great success - the church was completely full (well over a hundred people and no spare seats downstairs) and I think a decent sum of money was raised for the cause. Obviously there was cake and coffee afterwards which is always good news. I was particularly pleased that there was melk og sukker as well. Further investigation revealed that Gudny was in charge of the coffees and brought it just for me. Very much appreciated!

My big adventure was on Saturday when Randi, Tom, Elisabeth and of course Toya the dog, invited me on their hike. This was waaaay beyond anything I had done before but a great time was had. Bar losing my sunglasses :-( It was an extension of the trip that Gudny took me on very early on in my time here, and when I say “extension”…… The sun was shining, there was only a gentle breeze - perfect weather for attempting to reach the summit of Litjtijn. That roughly translates as “The Little Peak” which I can safely say seemed very ironic to me as I struggled up. Litjtjin is near to the Dønna Man which is 858 m high.

With spring very much in the air the first section (the steps which I had done with Gudny) was a lot easier, no snow and ice to navigate and good progress was made. At about 12 we stopped for lunch and, truth be told, one of us had an unintended nap while lying on a rock. For the last section we just left our backpacks behind as we wouldn’t need anything. I was told that they would be perfectly safe but if I had anything valuable with me I might feel happier taking it with me. I said I had my passport with me: “why have you got that Graeme?” “In case I fall off the cliff and they have to identify my body” “Oh don’t worry, we’ve got DNA technology”….

The trip to the top involved a lot more trudging through the snow which was still surprisingly deep in places - I fell more than once and hoped that no one had noticed but alas was asked “did your face meet the snow?”…. Later on I stepped in an even deeper hole with water at the bottom so ended up walking back to car while wearing someone else’s sock inside a carrier bag inside a soaking walking boot. But hey ho….

I’m not great with heights so have to admit that I was a tad nervous when we got to the top and really didn’t want to look down so ended up sticking my phone over the edge and tried to take a photo without looking. We spent a while at the top sitting in the sun before the return trip and watched the world go by indeed some birds such as sea eagles and grouse.

I was also continually tested on some of the local islands which I eventually got the hang of through various memory aids - Tomma (sounds like Tom), Lovund (sounds like love and I know has puffins on it), Hestmannen (horseman), Rødøyløva (looks like the Sphinx and I can’t pronounce it) and finally Træna (originally I thought they said trauma and frankly that fitted how I felt so…)

But a great time was had and miracle of miracles I was able to walk the next day - I had visions of being unable to mount the steps in the church (Norwegian steps seem all to be spectacularly narrow) and having to ask for help.

The other thing which I took part in at the weekend was International Organ Day. I happened to see on YouTube that the Beauty in Sound channel were putting together an International Organ Recital and were looking for submissions so I thought I might as well submit something. In retrospect it wasn’t the greatest choice of music but I only found out 2 days before the closing date so didn’t have a lot of time to choose something. I settled on a 3 verses setting of the chorale “Wir glauben all an einen Gott” by JL Krebs. If you are interested, my contribution is roughly two and half hours in and it’s me playing the organ in the Nordvik Kirke. https://youtu.be/JA5SpDuPCMQ