Throughout this project everyone was exceedingly nice
– perhaps because of my broken Norwegian,
or the incongruence of a Portuguese bobbing in the
water looking as if that was the new normal…
or maybe a combination of those two.

detail of fisherman on traditional fishing boat, Norway (c) vasco pinhol

“in communion with Nature – aka “i pakt med naturen”“

Norwegians are known to be partial to social-distancing, to the extent of one ongoing joke in the beginning of this bloody pandemic mess being: “What now? Are we really supposed to reduce the distancing from 3 to 2 meters?”

This instinctive skepticism against physical expressions of sociability is, nevertheless, gone whenever Norwegians are in communion with Nature – aka “i pakt med naturen”. Fishing is one of those moments – the Norwegians I met fishing for cod were rather Portuguese.