The Fortress town of Fredrikstad.

I am going to let this post travel. Hang on the path of thought is going to be bumpy.

Let us start with a quote from a fascinating person who has relatives, which, if they were roots, would support a giant tree and in a way they have.

If the world were an orange with 18 segments meeting at the top ( the North Pole), roughly 8 of them would be in Russia,Canada would have 4, Denmark 2, and Norway, Sweden, and the U.S. just one a piece. Only a sliver of Alaska on the Beaufort Sea, lies above the Arctic Circle.

Alex Shoumatoff 1946 . He is a journalist and author, but what a fascinating family he has! A small taster if you have little time to press on his name. Shoumatoff’s paternal grandmother, Elizabeth Shaoumatoff, was painting Frank Roosevelt in 1945 when he collapsed before her and died.

Now that we know how land is shared out at the poles, let us now think about three of the countries: Denmark,Sweden, and Norway.

Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish people can read each other’s languages without great difficulty their main obstical  is the difference in pronunciation. Learners tend to find Norwegian easier to pronounce and Swedish easier to read.

Here are two jokes:

How do you sink a Swedish submarine?

You dive down and knock on the door.

Do you know why Jesus never was born in Sweden?

Because they didn’t find three wise men.

The Norwegians joke about the Swedes, the Swedes, about the Norwegians and the Danes about both.

We are in Norway parked outside the fortress town of Fredrikstad. It was here with one of the fortresses right behind us that the Norwegians were compelled to cede the province of Bohulson to the Swedes.

With the withdrawal of the Ostfold regiment in 2002, some 350 years of continuous military presence was at an end. Let’s look at some of the buildings.

The brick ones were expensive to build and belonged to the army. The wooden ones burnt down a lot, making  the old town slow to thrive even though it is on the Glomma River Estuary. Today, no fires are allowed in any of the buildings. With the army no longer present, the buildings are commercial or residential.

This information was told to me by a shopkeeper. Her husband was born in this area but married and had a family in South Africa where their children still live. In four years, she has learnt Norwegian and qualified as an English guide for this town so that when not working in a shop, she helps English speakers enjoy the town she evidently loves.

A few moments in photographs in Fredrikstad the Fortress town.

Some thoughts using the word fortress:

Temptation, if it is not to conquer, must not fall like a bomb against another bomb of instantaneous  moral explosions, but against the string walls of an impregnable fortress strongly built up, stone by stone, beginning at the distant day when the foundations were first laid.

Maria Montessori 1870- 1952. An Italian physician and educator best known for her philosophy of education and her writing on scientific pedagogy. She first wanted to be an engineer and then changed to medicine, where she was one of the first women to attend medical school graduating with honours .

Prayer is a strong wall and fortress of the church. It is a goodly Christian weapon.

Martin Luther

We were chatting to some locals who said this time last year was really cold, but as you can see from the pictures, the sky is unreal blue!

Take care, and thank you for being with us a while.

Sandy 🙂