In early 2021 I made the decision to leave full-time life in the U.S.
The next 7 months were spent getting rid of nearly all my material possessions, leaving an apartment of 13 years and resigning from a 20-year career.
On September 22, 2021, I boarded a flight bound for Norway.
On Friday, September 24th, I landed in Oslo with my bike, yoga mat, guitar and suitcase.
I'm writing this from a small farm on the North Sea, just east of Mandal, the southernmost town in Sørlandet (Southern Norway), where I’m staying with a friend temporarily. As a tourist in Norway, I can stay for 90 days during a period of 180 days.
That clock starts now.
If you're wondering "Why Norway?", I have Scandinavian roots and had first visited Norway in 2016 for a month, as a WWOOF Norway volunteer. I returned again in the summers of 2018 and 2019, and I had planned another visit in 2020—though, like so many plans, that trip was nixed due to COVID.
About a month before I was due to leave for Norway for the first time in 2016, I started to really dig in to my family's history, and was able to connect with my blood relatives, still living on the same farm that my gt gt grandfather left in 1861 - in Marifjøra, Sogn og Fjordane.
In short - Norway was calling, and I was prepared to answer.
Marla
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