Knut – ToBatheOrNotToBathe

New Years Bath 2022

Suddenly New Year’s eve 2021 had arrived, and we imagined that a bath with fireworks in the background would have been nice. We celebrated the new year at Idun’s big brother Asgaut in Rissa, Fosen. The hospitality included consumption of both wine and aqua vitae with the traditional Norwegian “Pinnekjøtt”, and lead to the conclusion that taking a bath as the year turned to a new number wasn’t really a good idea.

So we postponed the New Year’s Bath to the first day of the new year – there are lots of bathing opportunities between Rissa and Trondheim. But the matter of hospitality came in the way again! The breakfast was suddenly a loooong brunch and we didn’t get going before the sun

was almost down. A sour eastern wind fortified the decision of postponing another day.

On the 2nd of january , however, we received an invitation to reopen the “bathtub” in the ice on Kyvannet again. Our bathing friends Taru and Klas had a plan, and we wanted to join, of course.

The “Bathtub” in Kyvannet is marked with yellow tape and light reflectors.

Before Christmas, the hole was marked with a wall of blocks of ice, frozen in milk containers. Unfortunately, some hilariously funny people had thrown all of them into the hole! We brought some new ones, but it requires quite a lot before it can be called a wall again (se lower left corner of the next picture!). Anyone is welcome to bring some more ice blocks and help build the wall up again. And we dare you to do that without getting “Another brick in the wall” stuck in your brain! Impossible!

The ice was rather thick (10-15 cm) and the hole hadn’t been open for a college of weeks, so it was quite a job reopening it. Taru has a good ice saw, and after using an axe to make a hole first, sawing wasn’t too exhausting. Protecting glasses and water proof clothing might be a good idea if you make the first hole with an axe instead of an ice borer.

The biggest problem turned out to be to get rid of the ice flake that now was floating in the hole. The ice is heavy and it would be quite much extra work if we were to saw the flake in pieces and drag them up. The solution was to push the flake down under the ice. An operation we weren’t really equipped for. No one had boots or anything to grab hold of the ice with. With use of the ladder, coordination and collaborate effort, we managed to do it after a while.

We were totally 7 persons bathing: 3 finnish and 4 norwegians.

Idun used the opportunity to take pictures and was happy with the work distribution: 6 workers and 1 photographer. The ladder was a little short and wobbly and floated up, so it was quite a balancing act to use it. Later it will get weighted down so it gets more sturdy.

Time to throw away the clothes and get in! We are beginning to have control of the planning. Layer upon layer of wool, changing to swim gear before leaving home, and foot pads to stand on for changing after the bath.

Good mood and colorful hats. This can be recommended! Really!

After the bath (we are talking around 1 minute, this time Knut stayed the longest – 90 seconds – it feels much longer, time goes slooow while you are ice bathing!) it is time to get dressed as quickly as possible, no time for fumbling with bras or complicated stuff.

And after the bath: Hot beverages. In Moomin cups, of course, to keep the Finnish “Sisu” spirit. Hyvää uutta vuotta!

Christmas bath in Korsvika

In olden times people knew the perfect spot in the Trondheim fjord to load and unload boats (“lade” in norwegian means to load). In the viking era Lade was the seat of the chief of the “Lade Earls”, a powerful clan which often opposed the norwegian kings. In the middle ages they anchored here to go to church – Lade church. There probably was a cross to mark this place, hence the name “Korsvika”, meaning “Cross bay”.

The plan for Christmas eve was to do the cleansing process in Sjøbadet in Trondheim (the sea bath), where there normally is a social and fun gathering. But corona keeps on bothering us – Christmas-21 was not for being social in big groups! So we went to Korsvika instead. There where 9 degrees Celsisus minus and a rather cold draft, so we almost considered postponing til Christmas day. It was starting to get busy as well – important to get back home in time for the couch, fire in the fireplace, hot chocolate and Cinderella on TV. But when you have managed to persuade 3 youngsters to get up “early” on Christmas Eve to take a cold bath, you have to see it through.

The mood in the car was a bit nervous. Especially the West-African Frenchman, who had never been to Norway before, wasn’t really looking forward to this. Numerous escape attempts like: ‘I can take the pictures’ had been neglected for days already. Despite that – outwards the moods were lively and we felt happy and a bit crazy: ‘At least the beach won’t be crowded today!’ … just to discover a few seconds later that there actually already were other bathers there – seven of them!

Korsvika, including the photo tripod of our prebathers.

This time we were well prepared: Standing pods, wool socks and wool mittens for everyone. Nothing to do but change and get into the water. Mom didn’t want to delay things and went out first. And soon the youngsters did follow.

Mom smiled bravely and tried to pretend it wasn’t cold. It was cold!

A quick dip and that was it. Where did all the youngsters go?

Quote after the Christmas bath 5 years ago: ‘Why do we have such awful traditions in our family?’

A great bath! On the way home we let Edith Piaf sing out our feelings: “Je ne regrette rien”! And my oh my how great to crawl in under the blanket with hot chocolate and see “Three nuts for Cinderella” afterwards. The Czech version, of course, with Knut Risans voiceover, even though 2021 was the year this movie came as a norwegian movie. BUT – then there was this thing about sand. We’re not too fond of sand in general, and sand in the house in particular. A cleansing bath in Korsvika on Christmas eve means another round of removing sand from every room in the house.

The best Christmas gift?

There will be bathing in 2021 as well! With swim cap anno 1955.

And with that we wish all our followers a merry Christmas!

Grythølsfossen

Grythølsfossen, Grythølsfossen, where art thou? After we in our previous post found a waterfall right by the road along Nordelva, we weren’t quite convinced this was Grythølsfossen. We had time and decided to drive a little further. Until the road was not a road any more.

So off we went by foot. After a while we realized there was no waterfall in sight down that way, only small rapids and some quiet side areas. We turned around.

Back at the car we suddenly saw a sign pointing to “Grythølen” (The Cauldron pit)! And just a couple of hundred meters down we found this Eldorado:

But can we take a bath here? The sign says: “Fly fishing only”!

On the other hand: they have put up a nice little shed for changing? So if we pretend to fish flies while we are bathing it must be OK?

Right in front of the shed there was a little bay where the stream didn’t seem too strong, so we decided to try. Veeery careful, but as the picture shows: someone really wanted to just dive in.

In the end, both of us got in:

Not a good bathing spot for families with children!

The discussion whether swimming closer to the waterfall would have been safe, is still ongoing as a theoretical discussion at home. We do not recommend trying! Still a great experience, even with only this little dip. We could feel the powers of the stream!

Finally a little video, showing the flow and powers of the stream:

This was an example of an experience we never had found, if not for our little bathing project! Neither this waterfall, the mini-Dynjandi in the previous article or the road leading down to these are on the map. Asking the locals is often a good idea!

A bath in the dark

Corona restrictions were again reducing our freedom, but some arrangements were still allowed (December-21). We had expected a cancellation, but the concert with Travelling Strawberries on Ladekaia was carried through. Ladekaia is an eatery and concert venue located at the hiking path Ladestien. This old german baraque and quay from WWII has a charming, rough style. The renovated baraque got Trondheim Municipality’s price for “Good practice in housing design” in 2016. It can be highly recommended if you want a coffee and cinnamon roll on your sunday trip or a dinner and concert in the evening. The place has a big outdoor serving area, where you can admire the view of the fjord or study the WWII structures, including railroad tracks on the quay.

This is how nice the place looked this December evening:

But first a bath! We didn’t want to create attention and chose not to jump from the quay. East of Ladekaia there is an idyllic little bay where you can take a bath undisturbed, even without reserving a spot with your towel hours in advance:

From the bay Ladekaia looks like Soria Moria Castle from Norwegian fairy tales:

We had learned a little trick from Taru and Klas on our last bath: bring something warm to stand on. Our seat pads are hereby renamed standing pads!

Everything OK so far. But those small rocks… We should have brought neoprene socks or sandals as well, this wasn’t too comfortable for the feet. The advantage could be that we forgot that not only the feet where cold?

The big suspense was in the picture production. Would the GoPro manage to capture any of the nocturnal activities? The answer was: not quite! But that wasn’t really the camera’s fault, more a case of “human failure”, as the nice way of saying it goes. Firstly, we had underestimated distances and light. Secondly, the camera tipped over before we got into the water, without us noticing! This time we are therefore unable to provide real bathing proof, only photographical gems like this:

Notice the ray of light in the water going diagonally upwards to the right. That was from the flashlight meant to light us up during the bath. About half of the people present thought we most likely almost certainly for sure had pictures, so we didn’t need another round in the water.

A (not taken on purpose, he just went in the way) picture of Knut, at least proving that we actually where in the bay at some point:

And the bath itself? With crystal clear water, the surface plane as a mirror and veeery shallow until some meters out: Magnificent!

Next: Time to go to the concert and eat christmas food. Music from The Julekalender, Beatles and others and as extra treat in the end: “O helga natt”. Not a dry eye in sight.

Great atmosphere!

…until we checked the pictures and realized we didn’t have any of the bath! Of course we concidered taking another round after the concert. But bathing in cold fjords in the darkness after wine and aqua vita is something even we don’t recommend, so we got right into a taxi home.

Some tension two days later though, when we realized we forgot the backpack somewhere! But thanks to good service from TrønderTaxi we could pick it up on Monday, with GoPro and everything intact. Towels and swimming gear were a little smelly, but we can’t blame anyone else for that. That’s how the days go by…

Welcome!

We are two people who have been married for some time now. And we both have always enjoyed taking a bath when opportunity presented itself. So after some trips to Iceland (more about that here: Covid travelling) we decided to try blogging about our experiences. The blogs will be a mix of some hopefully interesting facts and descriptions of the baths.

In the beginning, this blog will have mostly baths on Iceland, with some in Norway in between. We hope to extend the scope as time goes by!

We haven’t planned for this to be a guide book, more like an inspiration to maybe travel with another incentive than just checking off points on the typical tourist bucket list. We found that our focus on finding bathing spots brought us many experiences we otherwise wouldn’t have had. You might find another idea that brings you the same joy or simply gets you to look at your local area in a totally new way.

Have fun!

But first, please read our Disclaimers and warnings!