SHAWN JANTZEN
Travel Writer

I started my study abroad experience in a sleepy little town in northern Norway. I chose this place rather by accident and it turned out better than I could have possibly imagined. Norway is a forgotten country among North Americans but the beauty and tranquility of this place is nothing short of inspiring.

Alta, Norway, has 17,000 people and is a seemingly quiet and boring town, but this is simply not true. It is home to an onslaught of famous and emerging bands, it is home to four recording studios and it has world renowned bands playing at the local disco every week. There is always something to do: one day you could be snowmobiling through awe-inspiring fjords, the next partying with Aksel Svindal, the Norwegian gold medallist in the downhill slalom.

My speciality is engineering — specifically mechanical engineering — at the U of S. It is a very structured and disciplined program that pushes students to perform at their very best. The program I chose in Norway was drastically different. My classes consisted of natural resource management, regional economics and my personal favourite, winter outdoor life activities. These classes have a relaxed atmosphere and the students are very involved in the discussions and class activities.

These courses involved many excursions to places that I would not otherwise have seen. During our natural resource management course we visited a modern stockfish facility on a remote island. This is an industry that has been around for more than 2,000 years and remains virtually unchanged since the time of the Vikings. Through our university we have also gone on many other excursions that have allowed us to see winter tourism for ourselves. We had the opportunity to visit North Cape, the ice hotel and chill out in a Lavo, which is a traditional Sami house.

A Norweigan word Friluftsliv— which means “life in the open air” — exemplifies Norway’s culture, atmosphere and connection with nature. Everyone has the right to access nature, camp and make a fire wherever they please, even on someone’s private property. The concept of Friluftsliv has many academic applications requiring everyone to have knowledge and experience for surviving in the wild. Our winter outdoor life class was set up for international students so that we could experience the Norwegian concept of Friluftsliv for ourselves.

Winter outdoor life was an academic experience unlike anything I have ever experienced before. This course taught me everything from cross country skiing in the mountains to surviving a cold winter’s night outdoors in conditions approaching -30 C.

During our excursions we learned how to make fires in any condition. This was essential for keeping warm and for cooking freshly caught fish from the fjord.

My favourite and most interactive experience was the opportunity to be a musher and drive a team of six dogs through the mountains. The dogs respond to your every move and are motivated by your every action. If you’re excited and want to go fast the dogs are excited and want to go fast, too; just remember never to keep your hands on the sled.

This opportunity has allowed me to grow culturally as well as academically due to the great degree of diversity between cultures of international students.

I have learned a lot about Russian, German, French, Italian and, of course, Norwegian culture. This experience has allowed me to see many different issues in a new light, especially with the dawn of the European debt crises and the bailout of Greece by Germany and France. It feels like I’ve learnt more on this exchange than I have in the past few years plugging away through engineering text books.

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image: Shawn Jantzen