Olafur Eliasson, perhaps my favourite contemporary artist, has an excellent solo exhibition at the Martin-Gropius-Bau, in Berlin, which runs until the 9th of August. Visiting the exhibition was a large motivation for my recent trip to Berlin.

A number of works were on display, all magical, awe-inspiring and breathtakingly simple in their execution. You can read more at the exhibition website.

Below is a video I recorded of one of the pieces, where you travel through two rooms completely engulfed in fog. Lights in the ceiling give the rooms different coloured hues, although you’re not quite sure where the light is coming from and it it can be quite overpowering, in the sense that at times you feel like you are walking directly into a light source. Your fellow exhibition-goers appear from no-where as ghosts. It’s very still and quiet.

I won’t ruin the surprise of the other pieces, but they are also highly experiential and you can’t help but smile and wonder at them. Sadly, video and photographs don’t capture the experience, you really do need to see them first-hand.

Olafur Eliasson’s Innen Stadt Außen from Clint on Vimeo.

All photographs copyright of the artist.

The video was from a trip that involved skiing in -29°C weather (factoring wind) and passing through -38° valleys. Arriving back to Oslo at -18° or so seemed positively tropical.

I picked up a few cold weather tips and trivia that I was quite unaware of as an antipodean, and that I shall pass on here:

1. Wear wool close to the skin, then add a polar fleece and finally a jacket. Add multiple layers of fleece if need be. Don’t waste time with synthetic thermal underwear, go for wool-based.
2. Driving a car geared-down heats it up, keeping the fluids flowing and boosting cabin temperature. That said, it’s actually possible for a car to overheat because its engine cooling fluids are frozen up. Antifreeze only goes so far…
3. Use non water-based creams/gels such as Vaseline, which don’t freeze so easily.
4. Fleece wind-stopper tubes that fit around the neck are very useful, and if that isn’t enough, upgrade to the balaclava.
5. A bus can take a moose’s head clean off.
6. Thin Merino-wool inner gloves are surprisingly effective, especially when you need to take off your outer gloves to use your fingers.
7. Mobile phone batteries do not last for long, but warming them up can return a charge.
8. Hand-warmer chemical packs are quite the useful thing to slot into ski boots to keep your toes alive.

In this kind of weather, I would pay top dollar to be able to walk into on-mountain cafes and for someone to take my boots, give me some pre-warmed slippers and warm my boots up while I sip my hot chocolate. “Boot valet”, if you like. Are there any ski resorts out there that have such a service?

Christmas in Åndalsnes

As I’ve previously documented, Norwegians have a complicated relationship with alcohol. The state pursues a policy of making alcohol difficult to obtain and expensive, while citizens pursue a policy of going to grand efforts to obtain cheap alcohol and consume it in the most damaging way possible. There is an unspoken myth that in Norway, with its handsome and wholesome land and people, such substances are a naughty thing and nobody should have any need for them. This of course is completely counter to actual Norwegian habits. Thus there is the contradiction whereby people live quite happily with a state policy of temperance, showing little support for liberalisation, yet at the same time rate quite highly when it comes to drug consumption ¹ and bingeing ².

Avoid this local beer

State-sanctioned temperance is still in vogue here. On reading up on it a little ³, it appears that the policy is a relic from the temperance movement that swept the Protestant countries in the early 1900s. The small oddity is that Scandinavians didn’t actually drink a whole lot of alcohol around the time prohibition was introduced, nor do they today. Back then, the average Swede drank 5 litres of pure alcohol per year, the average Finn 1.5 litres, while the average Frenchman swilled an impressive 22 litres ³. Prohibition fits well with the Scandinavian culture of solidarity and social democracy. Drinking alcohol to excess lessens your ability to contribute to society and improve the lot of everyone, and people tend to more readily accept governments’ paternal “care”. Denmark now has most liberal policies of the Scandinavian countries, and unsurprisingly, vastly out-paces its Nordic cousins for pretty much anything you can drink, smoke, snort or inject. Yet other European countries that are even more liberal, such as the Netherlands, have quite low rates of consumption.

That significant traces of the temperance policy are still around in 2009 has been attributed to Scandinavians perhaps preferring quality over quantity: while they don’t drink a lot overall, they like to binge when they do. This can cause more health problems as well as other negative effects of alcohol consumption. For example, 80% of violent crime in Norway is linked to intoxication (Sweden is slightly higher at 86%). This is far beyond that experienced in Germany (24%) which consumes twice as much alcohol per capita than Norway (12.9 litres per person versus 5.8 litres ⁴). There seems to be an implicit – yet knowing – understanding that citizens have a certain … tendency … and would kindly request the government do its best to look after them and limit harming themselves or others.

“Karsk” is a classic Norwegian long-drink. Put a coin in the bottom of a cup and fill it up with bitter filter coffee until the coin disappears. Continue filling cup with moonshine until the coin reappears. Skål!

I am curious as to why Scandinavian countries are driven to such excess. My informal observations haven’t really led me anywhere and in my casual skimming of the literature I haven’t found a satisfactory answer (though some of the more interesting-looking papers are behind pay-walls, unfortunately). Any thoughts? I don’t mean to wag my finger at Norway for inebriation. Far from it. My home country has high levels of per capita consumption of alcohol and drugs, as well as bingeing. Rather than pretend that such matters don’t really happen however, Australian society is out and proud; undoubtedly pride and machismo has a large part to play in our over-consumption. The Australian pub is an institution, the lifeblood of many a town, and if you don’t drink, you are bloody-well un-Australian!

What I find fascinating about Norway is the contradiction between state policy and people’s desires and how this manifests in behaviour. This meditation on alcohol consumption is a preamble (and place-holder for statistics) to my next post detailing the prime showcase of Norwegian drinking behaviour: the round-trip ferry to Denmark.

1. European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addition, (2009). Annual Report: The State of the Drug Problem in Europe.

• Norway has the third highest drug-induced mortality in Europe, highest amount of methamphetamine seized in Europe and third highest use of amphetamines in 2008. Below EU average for cocaine use, happily.

2. Deutsche Hauptstelle für Suchtfragen e.V. (DHS) (2008). Binge Drinking and Europe. Hamm, Germany: DHS.

3. Kurzer, P. (2002). “Can Scandinavian member States play a leadership role in the EU? The case of alcohol control policy”, Scandinavian Studies, Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study.

4. Wikipedia. List of countries by alcohol consumption, retrieved 02.12.09.

Note this post is not a thorough examination of the literature or statistics.

The Vienna Central Cemetery. Established in 1874, it contains the earthly remains of 3.3 million people, some of whom are well-known.

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