Viking fantasy day in the woods, and a recipe!

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Every spring in the middle of May we have developed our own lovely tradition! The 17th of May which is the Norwegian Constitution day, is a day of big celebration all over Norway. Literally everyone takes part in parades, dressing up in their national costumes and have a great time together. It is a day of pride where people celebrate everything Norwegian, and people are happy, allthough taking it all quite seriously

Usually people flock to the city, but a few simply prefer to celebrate out in nature. In my experience it is a wonderful day to get the nature and the mountains mostly all to yourself, because on this day most people are simply elsewhere. It is a grand occasion to dress up in pretty medieval dresses or whatever your heart desires, and nobody would find you too weird for doing so, because wearing pretty old-fashioned garments is what people do on this day. You should never miss a chance to dress up, right?

We usually go for a hike, and also foraging, just alone or together with some friends. That previous year we went to this beautiful forest by the fjord with our friend Marina. I dressed up in a medieval/fantasy-ish style while she wore her viking garment. And we made sure to wear some flowers in our hair.

Afterwards we had a picnic, eating delicious healthy sweet potato brownies with dandelions. I’ll add the recipe at the bottom, it is my go-to-cake because all the ingredients works so well with my body.

Here are some earlier posts I made about 17th of May:

Celebrating our Norwegian Heritage out in nature
Våren som var
En nasjonaldag blant fjorder og fjell

We did some foraging as well, gathering a supply of wild garlic/ramsons. This flower below (primula) is also edible!

  • Grawwwrrrr!

At this time of the year, me and my partner are celebrating the time when we first met. This May we have been together for 14 years! Isn’t that amazing and wonderful? He is magnificent and splendid and endlessly fascinating! Love him so so much!

Dandelion Sweet Potato Brownies

Sweet potatoes are perfect to make healthy vegan desserts. I’ve used this recipe regularly the last years and I prefer it to all other chocolate cakes.

Ingredients

  • 2 sweet potatoes (700 g)
  • 1-2 cups of dandelion petals
  • Almonds (100 g)
  • 1 cup oats (100 g)
  • 12 tbsp cocoa powder
  • 10 dates
  • Stevia to taste
  • A pinch of salt

Instructions

  1. Forage dandelions and gather the petals, just drag them out of the green stem all at once.
  2. Peel the sweet potatoes, chop them and steam or boil them until soft (about 25 minutes).
  3. Preheat the oven to 355ºF or 180ºC.
  4. When the sweet potatoes are cool, place the almonds in a food processor and blend them to make almond flour.
  5. Add the oats and blend again.
  6. Add the rest of the ingredients and blend one more time.
  7. Place the batter into a baking dish and bake for 45 minutes. Baking time may vary depending on the oven you’re using. Then let it cool down.
  8. Make some glaze of your choice, mine is based on butter (vegan if you wish), cacao and natural sweetener (xylitol or erythritol flour sugar) mixed with stevia.
  9. Decorate with edible flowers and leaves from nature or the garden.
  10. Enjoy!


Happy 17th of May everyone! 😀

How do you celebrate your country’s national day?

Welcome to my new website! And 21 brand new blog entries

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Welcome dear Earthlings! I’m so happy you are here, interested in what I share. Thank you to every single one of you!

These last weeks I have finally moved my old blog to my very own website, and I am so excited! This is like a brand new adventure, and my aim is to massively improve my content, creating a better and smoother experience for my readers, and put a lot of effort and energy into creating something amazing.

Please bear with me, the design is still not totally finished. I’m working on the design and although it might look simple, it was a huge amount of work, especially since most of it is coded from scratch. My incredible boyfriend and partner Ruben did it all, he is a web designer and I am unbelievably grateful! It feels amazing to finally have my own space on the web, after all these years.

You will notice that from now on I will blog exclusively in English. Many of my older entries are still in Norwegian, some with an English translation. If not, I highly recommend using the Google Translate button in the menu to the right! Or other translation options which works for you.

I have posted 20 brand new blog entries for you! Most of these posts are drafts from my old archive which never got published, so the quality of both text and images might vary quite widely. Still, I hope you might find some of it interesting or enjoyable. I have been finishing up everything old, so that I am ready for something new! They are all now publised back in time, but I’m going to make it easy for you to find them by linking them below:

21 brand new blog entries:

Lady of the Wood Anemones
Foraging for wild garlic ~ And a recipe!
Foraging for fairyfood
How We Celebrate Easter in Norway
Meet Ori – Our new kitten
Moth elf Photoshoot
Woodelf Photoshoot
Deep Into the Mushroom Forest
Steinvikholmen (Castle from the 1500’s)
Bilder av meg som barn (Pictures of me as a child)
Snapchat fun!
The viking hall at Borre
Exploring Budapest
Romantic Vajdahunyad Castle
Budapest: Museum of Applied Arts
En inspirerende permakulturhage (Visiting an inspiring permaculture garden)
Dypøkologiens 8 punkter og Arne Næss (Deep Ecology, described)
Sopplevelser (mushroom foraging and adventures)
Good days in the summer garden
Vikingskipsmuseet (The viking ship museum)
Christmas market at Trøndelag folk museum

My instagram

I know we all have a busy life. But please please please do comment! It means so much to me to not just speak to a huge empty void. It makes me nervous to spend hours to days creating a blog post, and then hearing nothing from you. Just seeing that hundreds of people are reading my blog every day is unsettling, when there are no comments at all. On my previous blog I often had at least 20 comments (sometimes the double), in those good old days. Please don’t be afraid to say something, I don’t bite 😉 You are all very welcome to this space!

For new readers I highly recommend taking a stroll back in my archives. Many of my earlier blog posts were written in Norwegian, but with an english translation. If you do not find a translation, google translate might do a decent enough job, although sometimes it makes the things I say sound absolutely ridiculous 😉

I’m excited to hear; do you have any feedback for my blog? Do you like it? Anything you think I should change? Anything not working as it should?

Beltane: 7 things I do to celebrate

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It’s that time of the year again! The first flowers are popping up, the first leaves are springing out, the birds are chirping all around and everything is just about to turn green. It is the time of Beltane, or as we call it here in the north, Valborg. For us it is a good time to welcome spring and saying a definite goodbye to winter. We can still have freezing temperatures during night though, in Norway it is actually recommended not to plant or sow seeds outside until late May. Here I will give some tips about how I create an enchanting night at 1st of May! But first I have to say, you can just as well choose a date which fits your schedule better or which coinsides with a weekend.

  1. Decorate
    Every autumn I take down most of my garden decorations. Before Beltane I try to put it all back. The garden furniture, the fairy lights, the statues, the bed canopy, the festive flags and other deco. I make sure our campfire place is in good shape, with enough firewood. Then put out pillows and blankets and lanterns.

    2. Invite good friends
    Ok, since I live very remotely I must admit Beltane is often spent alone, just me and my partner. But that is wonderful as well, a chance for a truly romantic evening! Ideally though, we would spend the time with a small group of friends, and occasionally do.

    3. Dress up!
    Just experiement with what you have. When Beltane arrives and I feel all romantic and want to wear pretty dresses, I make sure to keep warm as well. I always wear white on this day, usually the only day during a year that I do. I combine the white with something green. Other spring colors could be nice as well. And I make sure to always wear flowers in my hair! This time we put on elf ears just for the fun of it. You should never take things too seriously.

    4. Make good food
    On a campfire evening, the food I make often consists of a rich salad, stick bread, cheese bites and whatever I have at the moment, and something good to drink. At this time of the year I always have birch sap available! I guess a good spring soup would be appropriate (based on nettles and wild garlic), and you can forage for spring greens to add to the salad as well. And I love to make milk based on rowan buds!

    This time we made sweet potato brownies for dessert, in hollowed-out oranges baked on the fire. Success! Recipe at the bottom of this blog entry.

    5. Light a campfire/bonfire
    Find a nice spot out in nature. We just do it in our garden as we have a lot of space and it’s easiest when we have a lot to carry.

    6. Put on good music
    I bring either a cd-player or a bluetooth speaker for my music. I personally like to listen to enchanting and festive music, and at least some of it will be inspired by spring. I have an abundance of such music, but if you need a tip, I would say things like Loreena McKennitt, Faun or Wardruna. Or bring your own instruments, like drums and flutes!

    7. Have a great time
    Do what you love. Hang out with your friends. Chat. Pet your cat. Dance around the fire. Gaze at the stars. Think about the beauty of spring and the summer to come. Let your body reconnect to nature and feel grounded after a long winter. Let go of your worries and feel the joy coming from nature all around you, the excitement and anticipation and the love in the air!

Sweet Potato Brownies

Sweet potatoes are perfect to make healthy vegan desserts. I’ve used this recipe regularly the last years and I prefer it to all other chocolate cakes. I like to put a cacao glaze on top, when I make it as a regular cake.

Ingredients

  • 2 sweet potatoes (700 g)
  • Almonds (100 g)
  • 1 cup oats (100 g)
  • 12 tbsp cocoa powder
  • 10 dates
  • Stevia to taste
  • A pinch of salt

Instructions

  1. Peel the sweet potatoes, chop them and steam or boil them until soft (about 25 minutes).
  2. Preheat the oven to 355ºF or 180ºC.
  3. When the sweet potatoes are cool, place the almonds in a food processor and blend them to make almond flour.
  4. Add the oats and blend again.
  5. Add the rest of the ingredients and blend one more time.
  6. Place the batter into a baking dish and bake for 45 minutes. Baking time may vary depending on the oven you’re using. Then let it cool down.

What I did here was to hollow out oranges, and pour the batter into them. I first added some orange flesh/peel to the batter. And a pinch of vanilla. Then put them in the embers of the fire. The orange peel should protect them from getting burnt, but if you want you can also wrap them in tin foil. We also sometimes bake bananas on the fire.


Here are a few pictures from another Beltane celebration we had, equally lovely and magical! I wish I could have shown more from after it got dark, but alas I am not that good with cameras yet.

I would love to know: What do you on the eve of Beltane? Or what do you dream of doing?

For more inspiration, check out this earlier post about celebrating Beltane! Click here

Happy Easter, and what I’ve been up to this winter

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The winter is coming to an end, and we are ready to welcome spring! At least when Easter is over, we can all surrender to that spring feeling. I recently published a blog post about how we celebrate Easter in Norway, as one of the many new blog entries for the launch of this new blog.

It can be read here: How we celebrate Easter in Norway

So how have I been? I probably had the most unusal winter of my life! For reasons I will soon announce. I’ve been trying to manically finish numerous projects, and I have had a few health issues which has limited me a lot, for extended periods of time. I’m in a period of big change and transition. But I’m also doing really well! One year ago was one of the darkest times of my life and I did not see a way forward. It have all changed now, in the most beautiful ways, and I’m just unbelievably grateful. I can assure you, there is always hope, and a better way of life available if you make it through to the other side.

Easter holidays are late this year, most of the snow is gone and my family has been visiting for a few days. The weather is wonderfully warm and sunny! Our ducks are overjoyed that the snow is gone, running around like crazy all over our huge garden. The cats as well, they prefer to be outside most of the time, listening to the abundant bird song 😉

We had a few roadtrips in the beautiful area where we live, I’m just so in love with all those mountains! Beautiful no matter what time of the year we go there.

We also went to spend some days in the mountains with my family, it was lovely and sunny and cold. This year I’ve not been able to do much skiing I must admit.

  • With my brother
  • We came upon some igloos. Have you ever slept in one? I did for a week in -20°C once!
  • My love, in homemade winter outfit. It’s as if Link in Zelda had a winter tunic?
  • Very Much Snow!
  • Oh deer!
  • Ready for Easter!
  • Eating a piece of healthy sweet potato brownies.

If you’re into collagen or gelatine, I recommend this type of easter snacks. I’ve been using it to recover from injuries, and these are tasty as well! I made the white by combining gelatine, coconut cream and natural sweetener like stevia and a pinch of erythritol. The yellow yolk consists of the same, but I added some orange juice and curcumin! You have to wait to add the yellow yolk until the white is cold (put in freezer or fridge).

These mountains in the fjord where we live is really gorgeous!

Went ice skating with my love, it’s been some years since last time!


-How have you been?
-Do you have any favorite winter activites?

Faerie Magazine: The Tolkien Issue

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As I had a one year break from posting anything on my blog, I never got to tell you about last years spring issue of Faerie Magazine, where I got to contribute with an article. It is literally the most beautiful and well-made issue of a magazine ever created by mankind 🌱🌼🌳 I say this completely unbiased, as I unashamedly occupy 12 pages in it with my photography and writing, giving elven Home advice and telling about the elven tea party 😉 I just blush a little bit by thinking about it, but it was an honor! This edition was all Tolkien themed, and features so many amazing people. So many have asked where they can buy it; you just go to www.faeriemag.com and click either ‘subscribe’, or ‘buy single issues’. Either prints, or digitally 👍💜🍃 UPDATE: The printed version is now sold out, but you can still get the digital version by clicking here!

Are you a reader of Faerie Magazine as well?

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Deep Into the Mushroom Forest

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I’m saying goodbye to autumn and getting ready to embrace the winter with this blog entry about mushrooms. These amusing little creatures are a huge part of my life, but I write about them far too rarely. I’m a mushroom expert, me and my boyfriend run a mushroom farm and sell our produce for a living, I do mushroom dyeing and I love to make artwork featuring fungi. In my fairytale-style home, mushroom figurines are to be found everywhere. A pot of dark medicinal mushroom tea is always brewing in my kitchen, to enhance my health. Additionally, one of my favorite things to do is frolicking around in the forest looking for mushrooms and foraging for whatever else I can find.

1 UP! Amanita Muscaria

I’m in distress in periods where nature abounds with edible treasures and I’m too busy to be able to gather any of it, I then feel that something is terribly wrong, not doing what all my ancestors has done before me, something which runs strong in my blood. Being out in the mushroom forest can be absolutely euforic, making you forget all the troubles and sorrows of the world. It is like the most exciting treasure hunt, like finding gems in all kinds of colors and shapes and sizes.

I love always learning something new. And with mushrooms you always would, even if you lived for a 1000 years.

I don’t only love to pick mushrooms, I also love to capture them with my camera. Here are some of my most recent pictures, taken in the deep and dark norwegian forest, enjoy:

  • Always picking mushrooms in comfy, flowy clothes.
  • Met some old breed norwegian viking sheep, female and male, looking badass.
  • Bloodred webcap, I pick these for dyeing.
  • Gypsy mushroom
  • Moss troll.
  • On this spot I always find a bunch of wild champignon, they are incredibly delicious compared to the ones in the shops.
  • The gold of the forest.
  • Believe it or not, this is Lactarius rufus.
  • I awakened the moss dragon!
  • Can someone please produce coat hangers like these?

Hope you enjoyed accompanying me to these mossy woods!

I would love to know, any other mushroom enthusiasts out there? 🙂

Moth Elf Photoshoot ~ Amongst Mighty Trees and Mountains

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I had the great honor of doing this collaboration photoshoot with the amazing costume- and clothing designer Costurero Real (https://www.etsy.com/shop/CostureroReal). I was wearing a moth cape which instantly made me feel magical and slightly otherwordly. I’ve had a fondness for moths since I was a kid, and always cherished their presence. Also, I have a tendency to be a creature of the night myself, even though I also like to wake up early. But creatively nothing can compare to those late night hours, when I finally feel calm enough to make and create from my soul. Also I love the moon and the stars!

This cape can be found in many variations, like various butterflies and even flowers. It has a metal frame which makes it easy to dance with and move around. It is so light-weight I’ve started attaching it on top of my backpack while hiking in the mountains, for some low-key shots which often turns out awesome. I’m just really happy with it!

These pictures were taken during the same days as the previous ones I posted, but with the moth wings this time. Location: Eikesdalen, Norway.

Mating season had started for the deer, and you could hear them all around in this valley. Sounds awesome and terrifying like a flock of wild beasts if you don’t know better.

The trees in this valley is just so magnificent! Wherever you go, you can stumble upon these tree giants, full of interesting shapes, and remarkably big to be in Norway. I’ve befriended a whole bunch of them.

And then we camped, in the frosty autumn night!

Woodelf Photoshoot

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I guess you could call me and my boyfriend for some kind of modern day woodelves. We met 13 years ago and decided to move into the woods together and lead a life inspired by fantasy and fairytales. So that is kind of what we did, besides all those not-as-romantic parts of adulting and that life in general can be freaking hard.

I firmly believe in following your passion and your calling, and for me that includes some kind of a fairytale homesteading-life trying to live in harmony with nature, living with animals, growing my trees as big as possible, raising healthy, happy and wise kids (not come that far yet unfortunately), inspiring others to follow their dreams and to care for the planet, as well as having fun and being creative which is also crucial to my wellbeing. That is one of the reasons why I still love dressing up. Honestly I don’t really dress up, I just prefer to wear kind of unusal clothing. At least it was far from normal when I first started wearing them all those years ago. Only thing is, I don’t normally wear elf ears, even though I really love them. I must admit I frequently put them on throughout the week when I’m at home though.

Anyways, here are part one of a photoshoot we did in a most wondrous valley half an hour from where we live. The place is simply imbued in magic and is one of my favorite places in the world. Here you can find big trees which are usually a rarity in Norway as people here have a long tradition of cutting down all the trees and never let them live more than a 100 years. So finding such a valley full of biological diversity is really refreshing. Also the valley has one of the tallest waterfalls in the world. A perfect place for elfing around and having adventures. Was running around in that valley for two days without meeting a single person, the only thing I found were a ring of solid gold which is now in my pocketses.

Oh wait, I told you it was a beautiful place, let me show you some landscape pictures I took that justifies it a bit more:

Do you have a place you love to visit and just be yours(elf)?
Do you think it is easy to follow your dreams in this world, even though those dreams are unusal and maybe kind of weird?

How We Celebrate Easter in Norway

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Easter is one of the most important holidays in Norway, and is basically a time where countries in the northern hemisphere celebrate the arrival of spring after the long dark winter. Norway however, spend this time clinging to and honoring the last of winter, because even after half a year of snow we are still not tired of it, or so it seems. Easter is also a great excuse to spend time with family and friends and having a long break from work and school. Norway actually have the world’s longest easter holiday, which means schools are closed for around 10 days, and most people go on vacation. Shops are closed for many days as well.

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Easter is mostly a christian holiday of course, but most people now associate easter with the earlier and more pagan traditions of celebrating the coming of spring. We decorate our homes in bright colors, branches with catkins and dyed eggs, little birds and chicken and hares. Flowers are abundant (usually yellow and white spring flowers), especially daffodils which in norwegian is called Easter lilies.

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My sugarfree healthy nut balls with orange peel and curcumin, yellow inside!
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Easter holidays traditions however, seem kind of strange if you come to think about it. It is basically a spring celebration, but what we really do is saying goodbye to winter. It seems like we norwegians can’t get enough of the snow. Because our main easter tradition is heading to our primitive mountain cabins far up in the roadless mountains, going skiing every day.

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This is my brother and me.

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This is kind of what you are supposed to do during easter, but of course many people would rather stay at home doing other activities. I did however grow up with these tradtions, which meant usually spending 10 or more days at our mountain cabin without electricity. It is located in the valley of my ancestors, so many relatives have cabins here as well. Usually there are metres of snow, so the only way to get around is by skiing.

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Every year I find it harder having time for easter vacation, because adulting is hard. This year I was lucky to spend 4 days doing hardcore skiing in the mountains, meeting my family which I see only a couple of times a year, and even spending one of these days snowblading (it’s a cross between snowboarding and slalom which I also do, but more fun and creative). All that fresh mountain air and strong easter sun was so refreshing!

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Of course easter is not complete without a large cozy family lunch with the everpresent eggs, lamb steak and decorations in bright colors, mostly yellow. There are chicken figures everywhere. And don’t forget the oranges. Tradition has it where the easter bunny comes with eggs on Easter Sunday and hides them around. The children are often up early and go hunting for these brightly colored paper eggs filled with goodies.

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When easter is over and we have travelled home from the mountains, we Norwegians will wholeheartedly welcome spring. The snow will usually start melting away and we can soon glimpse the first brave wildflowers.

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What is your easter traditions?

Winter twilight wonderland

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Some times you just long for lots of snow, and birches, spruce and pines covered in heavy layers of white. Visiting my grandmother has always been a guarantee for winter wonderland experiences, living with endless forest and wilderness at her doorstep and in a cold area of Norway.

I just love winter, and while many here in the north dreams of warm sun and white beaches at this time of the year, I’m just here with my cross-country skiis, snowboard, snowblades, sledge, ice blades, warm and beautiful winter coats… as well as my fireplace, cozy blankets and flickering candles. Waiting for even more snow. And finally having a little bit of time for reading, planning and creative projects.

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It is still weeks until the sun returns where I live, and then just for minutes before it is gone again, this is how it is to live amongst mountains. You’ll have to climb one to feel the warmth of the sunbeams touch your skin. But you can still see the sky turning pink, purple and orange at dusk and dawn, some absolutely beautiful and harmonic color shades.

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This is the little hut I often stay in while visiting my grandmother. Quite a lovely little place, with a green roof full of wildflowers in the summer.

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Simply me.

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Do you like snow? Do you have a lot of it where you live? What’s your favorite things to do in winter?


#vinter #snø #natur #friluftsliv