We slept in Kåre’s home that night. It was Midsummer’s Night Eve, a time for celebrating the summer solstice in Scandinavia. Even with the shades the drawn, our room never darkened. Peeking out from our bedroom window, we could see bon res flickering throughout the night from the shores and hills of the surrounding islands.

After a Norwegian breakfast of oatmeal, Swedish pancakes, and coffee, Kåre led Karen and me on a trek up the mountain behind his home. Although he was approaching his sixty-ninth birthday, he was surprisingly agile. At times, we struggled to keep pace. As we traveled up the unmarked trail, I found myself once again thinking about trolls and the “The Three Billy Goat’s Gruff.” More realistically, I was hoping I might catch a glimpse of a ptarmigan or an arctic hare. We saw both.

When a covey of quail took flight, I was delighted, but Karen was startled. I turned around and she was gone. Frightened by the utter of their loud, flapping wings, she reversed course and scurried back down the mountain. I was disappointed for her because the view from the top was spectacular with scattered islands and placid waters stretching up and down the coast as far as the eye could see.

My grandfather was only thirteen years old when he stood on the same vantage point watching Fridtjof Nansen sail past at the start of his historic polar expedition in 1893. I would learn more about the young boy’s fascination with the heroic Norwegian explorer when we visited the Fram Ship Museum in Oslo prior to boarding our ferry for the return trip to Newcastle.  John’s keen recollections of the ship and Nansen’s journey correlated almost word for word with newspaper articles about the expedition that were posted on the walls of the museum. One of my most treasured possessions is a photograph we took of John at the helm of Nansen’s ship.

When my brother and I were young, we found a large model of a sailing ship in the attic of my grandfather’s milk house. I have since realized it was the Fram.