DAYS 15, 16, 17

 

DAY 15

(May 8)
Episode 3

This morning I drew Hagalaz; the pattern of all things.  I will meditate on hagalaz during the flight.  It is the mother rune, and it offers protection and growth, the kind that usually comes after destruction, a necessary rune, the magic number nine.

I am on the plane now, we just left Oslo and they told us we are going to Stavanger.  When they told me that I involuntarily giggled like a small child, I couldn’t help it.  Stavanger is one place that I have wanted to go to since I was a small boy.  It is the area that all my people are from, it is the port where they all left from to come to America.  I have been hearing the name Stavanger for as long as I can remember…and now I am going there.  I no doubt am still related to people in that area, and very soon I will be breathing the same air as them.  I can’t honestly remember when I have been this excited, perhaps when my children were born?  It is all a bit emotionally overwhelming and I hope very much that I will be able to keep it together. 

I don’t cry from physical pain, I never have.  I only cry when I am very happy, or when my heart is touched in a certain way.  I become full of emotion and I overflow, the tears are just the extra emotion leaving my body because it is full.  Not everyone understands that, but it doesn’t matter…because I do.

I can’t help but wonder if they might take me for a special day to my ancestral family farm while we are in Stavanger.  I am a little afraid to wonder about it though, it makes me nervous, because what if I get my heart set on it and then it never happens?  I just won’t think about it too much, I will remain steady and focused on the tasks before me.  That is my plan.

 

 

DAY 16

(May 9)
Episode 3

I had to wake up very early this morning, leaving at 0730, getting on a helicopter to go out to an oil rig.  No time to write today, it’s going to be very busy…I drew nauthiz, the need fire.

DAY 17

(May 10)
Episode 3

This morning I drew gebo, the gift.  I have a lot of catching up to do in this journal.  Yesterday…well, it was simply amazing!  We were on an oil drilling rig called the Trans Ocean Barents, 200 km out in the sea off the coast of Stavanger.  We flew a huge chopper out to it, the flight took about 45 minutes.  Sometimes I really wonder if I am in a coma somewhere and these are just my crazy dreams.

The rig is the biggest and newest in the world.  A drilling rig.  I would love to work on it; 2 weeks on and 4 weeks off, and you make tons of money!!  You can’t beat that deal with a stick.  I got to have some good conversations with the captain Arild at dinner, really nice guy.

The team competition yesterday was pretty intense.  One team had to pump 16 buckets of oil out of a drum while the other team scraped kroners out of a big vat of drilling mud as deep as my arm.  Then the teams switch, the team that collects the most money wins.

We did really well, my team fought very hard.  I was on the blue team this week with Austin, Amy, Jonathan, and Barbara.  Even though we did really well, we lost by only 13 kroners.  13 kroners out of a possible 3000, that is insanely close.  We were pretty bummed about it, but when you know you have done your best you can’t be too sad just because you lose, because you know you could not have done more.  I felt very confident even though we lost, so did Austin, we spent time trying to encourage the others.  All they really gained was a slight advantage in the next competition…they had really won anything yet.

Also yesterday, before the competition, I read Clintons letter, of course they wanted to film it.  It was a great letter, I was pretty proud of myself that I was able to read the whole thing without getting so choked up I couldn’t speak.  I only cried a little.  He sent me a tiwaz charm for victory and it obviously worked today.  He also sent me pictures of little Solveig, the letter was heartfelt, and very inspiring.  He is a good man my son, and I love him very, very much.  I let several other people read the letter as well.Today we got on a bus and went to the Island of Bru in Rennesøy.  The theme this week is Norwegian exports, hence the oil experience.  We arrived at a fish processing company, last year Norway exported something like 400,000 tons of salmon.  The red team had a 10 second advantage from winning yesterday.

As a team we had to pull 8 live fish out of a big vat using only our hands.  Then we had to run them over to a table, bash them on the head, cut their gills and let them bleed for three minutes, then gut them, put them in boxes and load them on a truck before the other team, piece of cake!

We wound up with 9 fish instead of 8 somehow, but that was ok.  We figured the team that got all 8 fish in the bleed out tank first would win…I was very surprised that the red team finished that 45 seconds ahead of us.

We made the time up cleaning gutting, and packing like champs!  I gutted four fish myself.  All of a sudden Austin was running our last box of fish to the truck…it looked like we won, but it was confusing.  Then the red team brought their box up like 10 seconds after us and Henriette announced that they had won…what??  Then the camera cut, and it was determined that we had in fact won!!  We just had to re-film that last part.  I felt bad for the other team then, it’s tough to think you won and then have it yanked away, but I was happy for us.

I am so, so, so happy we won today.  Tyr prevailed!  It means I will for sure be here for 17 Mai, and possibly the russ.  It means I am that much closer to meeting my relatives. Gebo, or the spirit of gebo was alive and well on our team today; we all contributed, and we all received.

Gebo just keeps on giving; tonight after dinner Brita announced that tomorrow I would be taken to a “nice” place.  That was her way of saying that I was going somewhere significant, something connected to my family.  Wow, I don’t know if I’ll be able to sleep tonight.

When we first came to Stavanger I had wondered if something like this would happen…but three days went by and no one said anything, I had given up, I figured they had found no trace of my family…they got me pretty good.  I am so happy.  Tomorrow will be one of those days; one of those days that you think back on years later to make yourself feel good, one of those days that my grandchildren will probably get sick of hearing about.  Yep, one of those days.