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Hello to Nina Linn (and lovely Ingrid to!)

The Linns in Norway.

Fjording Ahead
Happy Easter to everyone at S. Matthew's from the Church in Norway!
Easter has been very different to Easter in Sheffield, but it's been fun. The boys broke up on the Friday before Holy Week, and on the Saturday we set off on a four-day holiday round Western Norway. Initially we drove (interspersed by ferries across fjords) up to a remote area north-west of here called Bremanger. The sun shone brightly as we drove up, and all was truly idyllic, although by the height of the snow beside the road we could see what could happen. On Sunday evening it began to snow and continued throughout the night with the result that, when we woke up on Monday, there was deep snow on the ground, and we were in the middle of nowhere, feeling distinctly urban and British as we crawled along the country lanes. Before returning to Bergen we visited the Art Nouveau town of Ålesund and the town of Førde, close to the Sognefjord. We also went on pilgrimage to the Ivar Aasen Centre. You haven't heard of Ivar Aasen, but I dedicated three years of my life to him, writing a Ph D thesis about his grammars. Yes really!
Although there are four full-time priests in this parish, two were off sick over Easter, one was leading a trip to Africa, and the other appeared to be away. The full-time organist decided to have Easter off, so the fort was held by a retired priest and yours truly. Maundy Thursday was a lot less involved than at St Matthew's, and, despite the fact that all Norwegians disappear to the mountains for Easter, well attended. On Good Friday the local paper, Bergens Tidende, had sent journalists out to do a piece on what families do at Easter. Imagine their glee when they turned up in the organ loft at Åsane Old Church to find the whole Linn family in situ. They interviewed Ingrid, and there was a nice photo in the paper the next day, entitled 'eager little churchgoer'! Nothing on Easter Eve, but a big service on Easter Day, at which Widor's Toccata received a standing ovation!!
Now we're back at work and school and looking forward to Fr Simon's visit – I wonder if the Paavoo Declaration provides funding for pastoral visits?? The end of our stay is getting perilously close, and the prospect is made worse by the fact that it is at last getting lighter and sunnier.
Thank you to those of you who keep us up-to-date with life at St Matthew's. We look forward to seeing you all in the summer. 
Andrew & Jo Linn

A- Fjording Christmas

Happy New Year to all at St Matthew's! We hope you had a happy Christmas, and we look forward to seeing you all later this year. Christmas was fun here. We feared it wouldn't be the same, away from all the familiar traditions, and it wasn't the same, but we feel we got the best of both worlds in the end. We managed to recreate a plausible Christmas dinner, including Christmas pudding from the local supermarket and a jar of Walker's mincemeat from the “exotic food” shop. We've never had a locally harvested Christmas tree before, and consequently we've never known one shed so few needles.
The festivities started early, with a grand festival to accompany the switching on of the Christmas lights on the first Saturday in December. The boys were up on the main stage with their choir, singing to an audience of around 10,000, and we got to laugh at close-ups of them on the big screen. The musical highlight of the Christmas season was the church Christmas concert, a choreographical tour de force, featuring some 120 singers. Alasdair sang the first verse of Silent Night beautifully as a solo (it's all immortalised on CD), and it was a memorable event for all of us. On Christmas Eve the same service had to be repeated five times and the church was full at each one. Like much of Europe, the main event is Christmas Eve, when everyone gets into their glad rags to go to church, before tucking into Christmas dinner and opening the presents. We had a grand service on Christmas Day (known as 1st Christmas Day) with lots of Willcocks and Rutter carol arrangements, no doubt capitalising on having a compatriot of theirs on the organ.
On New Year's Eve we went to some friends and had a marvellous evening, concluding at around 4 a.m., but yours truly had to drive off into the winter weather to play for a midnight service – not many people were queuing up to play for that one. It was actually quite moving. The priest and I worked our magic to ensure that it finished at midnight on the button, upon which fireworks erupted everywhere, as every local resident sought to blow up the neighbourhood more effectively than everyone else.
We've just had a few days in England, seeing the grandparents, and now it's back to school and work, looking forward to the days getting lighter from now on.
Andrew, Jo, Alasdair, Magnus & Ingrid Linn

Fjording ahead at 40
OK, so I admit that I've reached the big 4-0, but to put as much distance as I possibly could between me and the horrible reality of it, we headed off to Trondheim for the weekend. It's around 600 km from here to Trondheim, which is regarded as mid-Norway, and a further 1200 km to Tromsø in the North, which gives an idea of the enormous size of Norway, with its population of only 4,5 million. Trondheim used to be the capital of Norway, well until 1217 that is, and it feels grand even now, with wide streets and some fine buildings. The star of the architectural show is Nidaros Cathedral, the only really cathedral-like cathedral in Norway. It is here that the kings have been crowned, and it was an important medieval place of pilgrimage, linked to the remains of St Olav, Norway's patron saint. It's still a place of pilgrimage for organ-anoraks, with two organs, a large instrument from the 1930s by Steinmeyer and an important early 18th-century organ with a splendid case. The weather is now distinctly Nordic, and it was a relief to get back to the balmy climes of Bergen.
Bergen is in the grip of football fever. Brann, the local team, whose stadium is a stone's throw from our house, have won the Norwegian premiership for the first time since 1963. Watching England blundering out of the European cup and the Blades falling apart under Relegation Robbo, it is good to be somewhere where the footballers know what they're doing. There was much excitement at church yesterday evening, as one of the Brann players dropped in to show off his medal and talk to people. One of the priests asked me if the boys liked football. I took the opportunity to introduce him to the saying 'Is the Pope Catholic?'!
We're just about to embark on Advent and the annual round of concerts and services. In the weeks before Christmas, we'll be churning out school and nursery services at the rate of around four a day here! We'll miss the Advent Carol Service next week, and wish you all a blessed Advent season.Andrew Linn

North Sea News

On Sunday 16 September I was presented with my ‘letter of service’ from the Bishop of Bergen and am now fully engaged in my organist duties. This month I thought you might be interested to hear about the church and parish I am employed in and which we as a family are attending.
Åsane is the biggest parish in Norway with around 38,000 inhabitants. The size of the parish is reflected in the number of people employed by the parish church, which has a team of 20 employees in posts of various sizes. There are four priests, but the parish priest also works 50% of his time as the area dean. There are 1.76 organists (of which I comprise 20% of a post), two secretaries, vergers, nursery staff, cleaners etc., not to mention the staff employed centrally in the deanery office. Some more statistics will give a further sense of the size of the operation: 270 confirmation candidates, 9 baptisms this coming Sunday alone; 5 services on Christmas Eve; 12 choirs. People are very friendly and have welcomed us all warmly - they even applaud my humble voluntaries, so they’re just as polite as St Matthew’s folk!
There are two churches in the parish. The Old Church dates from eighteenth century and until the 1980s served what was a sparsely populated rural parish outside the city of Bergen. On Christmas Eve 1992 it was burned down by Satanists as part of a spate of church torching in Western Norway. Thanks to good insurance it was rebuilt as an exact copy of the original. This small, beautiful church is now used primarily for funerals and weddings, as it isn’t big enough to accommodate Sunday congregations. The New Church, consecrated in 1995 and located in the big shopping centre at Åsane (right opposite IKEA!), is a multi-purpose structure, built in the round and flanked by offices, meeting rooms and the youth centre. It is a dramatic church building, beautifully decorated and with a superb acoustic, which makes it a popular concert venue. There are also services in outlying locations, and from time to time I have to go to one of the colleges in the parish to play the piano for the services there.
My principal duties are to provide cover for all events taking place on Fridays and to play for one Sunday a month. Fridays usually involve at least one funeral, and most funerals come with a visiting soloist from the roster of roving soloists held by the funeral directors. So far these soloists have turned out to be a very professional bunch and rewarding to work with. I choose to play for an additional two Sundays a month and cover Saturday weddings from time to time - employment law dictates that I have to have a free Sunday each month! The organs are good (for the anoraks amongst you): a smallish Danish organ built by Gunnar Fabricius Husted in the Old Church and a 24-stop Ryde and Berg organ in the New Church. If there are any downsides to all this, they haven’t emerged yet, but a parish worth its salt is bound to have its problems, and I’m sure they’ll become clear in due course. The fact that I’m paid considerably more than at St Matthew’s just helps the feeling of well-being!
All this isn’t to say that we aren’t missing you. We’re sharing in events vicariously via the website, and we’re very grateful to those of you who are keeping us up-to-date with the news.
Andrew & Jo Linn

Ingrid and Spaghetti

Fjording the English Channel
I've now got regular access to a computer, so I thought it was probably time for an update... We left Sheffield on the morning of 10 August with mixed emotions, excited by the adventure to come but also anxious about the practical hurdles which lay ahead. After an easy journey up to Newcastle, having abandoned the boys' bikes at the vicarage because the bike rack wouldn't stay in place, we set off on board MS Queen of Scandinavia at around 2 o'clock. Ferry is a very pleasant form of transport and we enjoyed the various on-board facilities. It was exciting to wake up the following morning to see the Norwegian coastline, and, after a hearty breakfast and stops at Stavanger and Haugesund, we arrived at Bergen at around 4 p.m. Andrew believed he knew his way around Bergen, and armed with this confidence we arrived at our new home some considerable time later... Our home-from-home covers two floors of a larger building and is about half an hour's walk from the city centre and from the university. The Bergen Brann FC ground is only ten minutes away! We quickly felt at home, even more so when the boxes we had sent from England arrived a few days later.
The weather during our first week was truly dreadful, and the floods we had left in Sheffield arrived in Bergen. Much of this week was taken up with bureaucracy, queueing at the immigration office, the national register, the bank, and so forth. This experience has been a real eye-opener to life as an immigrant. We arrived at the immigration office at 9.30 one morning to find they were already on case no. 40, but that our ticket was no. 99, which meant an hour and a half of waiting. Most of the immigrants appear to be Polish and Lithuanian migrant workers, making the most of the opportunities provided by being in the EU. There are however plenty of people from much more troubled parts of the world seeking new lives here too. Norwegian bureaucracy is no worse than anywhere else, but we have found the queueing, the conflicting information, the soullessness of it very challenging, and we are pretty clued up, we speak the language, have a very simple case and come from an "old" EU country. Imagine what it could be like.

While this was rather boring, especially for the children, we managed to have a fun first week too, with plenty of trips round the area, fuelled by cakes and ice cream, and we now have the itinerary for any visitors all worked out! Last week the boys started at school, which they absolutely love. I'd always been led to believe that music was the international language, but it's not a patch on football! Alasdair has already been back to a friend's house and has been invited to a party. Andrew has started work at both University and Church. The church post has now been confirmed, and last week I played for my first funeral, taken by the Catholic Bishop of Oslo! The boys have joined the boys' choir, and Jo is looking forward to taking Ingrid to toddlers' singing this week. So, while the bureaucracy will rumble on (our application for a residence permit could take up to four months to process), we are getting stuck in to things and thoroughly enjoying ourselves.

Andrew and Jo Linn.

Fjord Your Information
As many of you know, the Linns are about to move to Norway for just short of a year. A big thank you to those who were in church on 5 August for your kind words and wishes. We plan to send regular bulletins to keep you up to date with what’s hot and what’s not in the Lutheran Church, but we thought we’d write something now before we go to explain why on earth we would want to move away from the heaven-on-earth which is St Matthew’s!
Andrew has just finished a period as head of department, and the deal is that heads of department get a year’s research leave at the end of their stint to allow them to get their research activities back on-track. Thanks to the award of a Study Abroad Fellowship by the Leverhulme Trust, he is able to spend his year of research in Bergen, and this is of course a fantastic opportunity for us to have a family adventure into the bargain. He will be studying the development of Norwegian language policy over the past forty years. Some of this will be archival research, but he will also be carrying out a number of interviews throughout the year.
Alasdair and Magnus will be attending Kronstad School in Bergen, which is the local junior school. It is extremely friendly, and all Alasdair’s future class mates have already written to him to wish him welcome. School starts on 20th August, and the school day runs from 8.30 am to 1 pm. Jo has frozen her job at the Children’s Hospital, to which she will return next year, and is looking forward to keeping the rest of the family facing in the right direction during our time in Norway, but she hopes also to get involved in some of the clinics at Bergen University Hospital.
While it hasn’t been finally agreed yet, Andrew hopes to have a 20% organist’s post at Åsane Church, to the north of Bergen. This is a very active church with something in the region of 12 choirs (these are the responsibility of the full-time organist). His job is just a playing job, being on duty one week-day and playing on Sundays and for weddings as necessary. It will be very important in terms of settling in to get involved with a church family as quickly as we can, and we are all looking forward to this. The main church is a dramatic circular building, dating from 1985, and there is also a small 18th century church, which burnt down and which has been rebuilt as a precise copy of the original.
We do hope that you will come and see us. Bergen is very accessible, either by ferry from Newcastle, or by direct flight from Newcastle (jet2.com) or Stansted (Norwegian.no). Bergen is a very beautiful and ancient city, which also describes itself as ‘the gateway to the fjords’, so it’s just right for a holiday!
I’m sure you will all support Fraser Wilson as he begins his work at the organ and with the choir. We are very lucky to have him, and I know that I am leaving the music in very safe hands.
If you want to get in touch with us over the coming year, our contact details are:
Camilla Colletts gate 3, N-5052 BERGEN, Norway
Email A.R.Linn@shef.ac.uk
Andrew and Jo Linn