New Podcast — Norway: Vikings, Bears, Boats, and Bergen + Endnotes
Our new show and Mel's favorite book- and travel-related links of the week
Our new episode Norway: Vikings, Bears, Boats, and Bergen is in your podcast player right now! We took an adventure-filled trip to Norway last summer — Fjord safari! Brown cheese! Bears! — and we drop a bunch of tips for what to do when you visit Viking country, along with books we love so much.
Visit our show notes to listen to the new episode and dig deeper into breathtaking photos, entertaining videos, our recommended books, and everything else we discuss in the show.
Yes, Norway has cities that are well worth a visit — Hallo, Oslo! Hei, Bergen! God morgen, Tromsø! — but nature is right there at every moment.
Where the coast of Norway meets the Norwegian Sea, there are more than 1700 fjords — stunning waterways lined with sheer rock cliffs and dotted with dramatic waterfalls, storybook villages, and friendly goats and sheep. The best way to experience the fjords? By boat, of course: a dinner cruise, catamaran, sailboat, kayak, ferry, whale watching boat, or a breathtaking ride on a fjord safari.
Inland, you can meet the locals of past and present. Stop by the fascinating Viking Village to time travel to 1000 CE (and learn to throw an axe!), or spend an afternoon among the bears, reindeer, wolves, lynx, and leopards at the Bjørn Parken (Bear Park). You can feed a fox!
When you're ready for a meal, too, sink your teeth into Norway's national snack: the hot dog — with lingonberry jam and french-fried onions — or try the ubiquitous and one-of-a-kind brunost (brown cheese). Caramelized, savory, and surprising, it's just what you want on a cracker or waffle. And don't sleep on the smoked salmon, pickled herring, or shrimp plucked from the nearby icy waters.
In this episode, we get excited about all the exhilarating, unexpected, delightful adventures Norway offers — and talk about why the Norwegian government employs financial planners and moral philosophers. Then we recommend five great books we love that took us to Norway on the page:
a Gothic historical novel
a riveting story of WWII bravery
a thriller about a wilderness hike gone wrong
a fresh take on Norse myths
a quirky novel set in the Lofoten islands
Listen on your favorite podcast app or on our website. We hope you enjoy the show!
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A Quick Update on Our Summer Holiday
So… you might recall that we were meant to go on a summer holiday to Italy, Croatia, and Paris — including a Duran Duran concert in Roman ruins in Pula.
Cue the sad trombones.
Despite diligently masking and spending as much time as possible outdoors, COVID-19 got us on day three of our trip. No concert, no museums, no trip to Paris. We spent ‘Paris Week’ lying in bed, reading and pouting. When the emotional scars have healed, we’ll probably share a few highlights from Ljublijana, Slovenia, and Trieste, Italy, a.k.a. the towns we visited before we were struck down. For now, here’s us, feeling happy on the Piazza dell'Unità Italiana in Trieste:
Mask up out there, friends! This virus is really not messing around.
Endnotes: 16 August
There’s still plenty of summer fun time left, and a backyard get-together is a great way to enjoy the warm evening temps of August. Your friends and family, a cooler full of drinks, an array of snacks, and a fire to hold back the dark… what’s more fun than that?! Here are easy guidelines for how to host a backyard bonfire and Martha Stewart’s 8 recipes inspired by s’mores.
You know what goes great with a cracking fire and sweet treats? Spooky stories! Atlas Obscura has advice from pro storytellers on how to tell a great campfire story — Outside magazine shares the best campfire stories from around the world and 3 true ghost stories for your backyard fire pit. (They’ve also covered the art of telling campfire tales to kids.)
These 17th-century papercuts, found under the floorboards of a house, are so charming. ‘Less than an inch wide in most cases, the works depict a hen stitched with pink and green silk thread, a fox, an elaborately folded star, and a couple donning clothing typical of the period. According to Dr. Isabella Rosner, the papercuts are exceedingly rare given that the craft was just emerging in the U.K. at the time and the material’s delicacy means it rarely survives centuries without intentional preservation.’
We’re very eager to read How It All Ends, the new graphic novel from cartoonist Emma Hunsinger (How to Draw a Horse). Treat yourself to her interview on Vermont Public Radio to hear her talk about the making of her new book.
From the Shelf to the Kitchen: Six Recipes Inspired by Your Favorite Books. Tasty recipes inspired by The Gold Finch, Pride and Prejudice, The Great Gatsby, and more. (Find lots of delicious recipes inspired by our favorite global reads in our Food+Fiction series.)
Related: How Sharing Recipes Brings Fans Together. ‘I don’t think I’ll ever eat a cake that truly lives up to the idea that [the author] put in my head, but in pursuing that ideal I went on a whole culinary journey. It inspired me to bake more often, and made me more confident in trying ingredients or techniques I wasn’t familiar with.’
Must-click headline: 10 Timeless Literary Bars Around the World.
The BBC asks (and answers), Is ‘raw-dogging’ long flights heroic or foolish? OMG. Just bring a great book.
Last week, I shared an image of a vintage copy of Alice in Wonderland growing mushrooms. Feast your eyes on this video! (Thanks to friend-of-SSoP Michaela for pointing us to the video.)
BRB, I need to go enjoy a macchiato in this Thailand café immediately.
So exciting! Photos of UNESCO’s 24 new World Heritage Sites for 2024.
Remember when our pal and travel writer Mark Baker was a guest on the Prague episode of our podcast? He wrote a new article about the best places to eat and drink in Prague.
Well, this is just a delight:
Love fiction set in the art world? This list from Hyperallergic is for you: Art-World Fiction We’re Reading This Summer. ‘Delve into the tales of a queer book conservator at The Met, an actress in the West Bank, a painter with a secret, and other characters whose lives intersect with art.’ I’m very interested in Endpapers and Enter Ghost.
Always here for a petty, artistic argument! How Golden Peacocks on a Dining Room Wall Destroyed a Longstanding Friendship in Victorian Society. ‘When James McNeill Whistler put the final, defiant flourishes upon two golden peacocks on art collector Frederick Leyland’s dining room wall, it was an act that would lead to the end of a long and lucrative friendship, and the rupture of Whistler’s success as a painter.’ Welcome to the Peacock Room!
If you daydream about adventures aboard a luxury train like we do: Here’s a first-person account of riding the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express from Paris to Portofino and a beautiful belle epoque train in Switzerland.
We explored the galaxy in our podcast episode Outer Space: We Are All Made of Stars. Find more great recommendations for space-bound books in this recent show from our friends at The Perks of Being a Book Love podcast.
On the simple, magical gift of memorizing a poem. ‘I won’t promise you that memorizing poetry will make your life better, but it will make you more: more in touch with language, with other minds, maybe with what you might yet become.’
And so sorry you got sick and missed part of your vacation!!! You’ll plan an exciting getaway for a quieter part of the year - there are too many tourists in Paris in the summertime!
Returning a couple of weeks after listening to tell you that I read (in pretty much one sitting) The Hike! It was on 'Prime Reading' on my Kindle so I thought I might as well try it out. Absolutely fantastically twisty and SO well plotted.
Hope you're fully recovered from Covid by now - such a bummer.