Author: eskaftun

Have we been there yet?

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Photo: Amy Lietz We spent about five minutes at Gullfoss in Iceland. Does it count?
Photo: Amy Lietz
We spent about five minutes at Gullfoss in Iceland. Does it count?

Lately a thing has been going around social media: a map of the U.S. called “States I’ve Visited.” Visited states turn a vibrant pink, bragging to all Facebook friends how well traveled one is. It’s a digital, national version of a gift we recommended last Christmas, a map of the world you can scratch off to show where you’ve been.

I think these things are fun, and I’ve even given the physical versions to a couple of people as gifts. But I must confess I have a hard time filling them out for myself. My hesitation comes from an uncertainty about what it means to have been to a place. Continue reading “Have we been there yet?” →

A summer tour in the Holy Land

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Ancient yet modern, safe yet violent, Israel is a land of contradictions

Photo: Emily C. Skaftun An example of the ancient ruins of Roman aquaduct outside Caesarea, a port city built by Herod the Great.
Photo: Emily C. Skaftun
An example of the ancient ruins of Roman aquaduct outside Caesarea, a port city built by Herod the Great.

Since returning from a hastily planned trip to Israel this summer, everyone’s been asking me how it was. Did I have fun? And I don’t entirely know how to answer. Many of the experiences one has in Israel can’t be filed neatly under the heading of “fun,” but it is definitely a trip worth taking.

The most prominent feature of the region is religion; therefore your experience with Israel will vary depending on your religious beliefs. Continue reading “A summer tour in the Holy Land” →

Lit by poetry: Dinerstein’s “The Sunlit Night” illuminates

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Frances grew up in a tiny New York apartment with her parents and younger sister, where they all still live even though both girls are in college. “Everything about my family was small,” she tells us, enumerating the smallness of their aspirations, physical stature, and living quarters: “Our apartment unfurled itself…the sofa bed opening up for my parents, filling the living room until it was nothing but a man and a woman in bed, with no room left, the foot of the mattress reaching just to the knob of the front door.”

One can just imagine a loving family surviving such conditions, but the love is gone.

Continue reading “Lit by poetry: Dinerstein’s “The Sunlit Night” illuminates” →

Postcards: Wish you were now

eskaftun
image of an old car in Havana
My Dear Love,
Writing this is pointless, as you will never read it. If you had lived long enough to receive it, I’m sure I would have seen you already. The car stalled. I am marooned in what must be a dystopic future. This apparently once-great city is crumbling, as though this were not the future. The locals are familiar with automobiles of the sort the time machine is built into, but they cannot help me repair it. I will keep trying, but time being what it is I know that I have already failed. If I had not, surely my breakthrough—time travel works!—would have changed the world for the better. Surely, it could not have produced this world.
Yours in time,
Emmett
Postcard of bunks in Bergen's old bryggen
Dear Time Travel Tours,
I tried calling your toll-free number, but my cell phone just wouldn’t connect. I must have the wrong type of sim card. Anyway, I wanted to tell you that I am not a happy camper. Sure, Bergen’s Bryggen is impressive this way, bustling with traders instead of troll figurines and moose underwear. But the accommodations leave much to be desired, and the tourist activities are tedious and repetitive. Back breaking, one might even say.
I know it may take you centuries to get this postcard, but when you do, please send for me right away.
Ready to go home,
A dissatisfied customer
Postcard of a stave church in fall
Dear Tom,
My time travel adventure is going very well. I’ve watched pyramids being built and Stonehenge assembled. Following the builders has been tricky—wouldn’t have managed it in the old DeLorean time machine, even with hover conversion, so thank you for souping this baby up.
The builders are about to move on from this site. I overheard one of them tell the locals they were heading to China to build some more of these churches, and maybe a big wall. At least I think that’s what they said. It was hard to hear over the whirring of their warp drive.
Sincerely,
Doc Brown

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Are you feeling independent today?

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Photo: Pixabay Sparklers are okay, but I always crave big fireworks on Independence Day. Photo: Pixabay
Sparklers are okay, but I always crave big fireworks on Independence Day.

I have high expectations for the Fourth of July, which were instilled in me before I can even remember properly by perfect celebrations at my childhood best friend’s farmor’s.

Farmor lived next door to them in a beautiful house on a lily-pad-choked pond almost entirely encircled by houses in Seattle’s north end. Together with my friend’s three siblings, I spent many a summer day in that pond called a lake, swimming and diving off farmor’s dock and even fishing, but for some reason the Fourth was special. I suspect that reason was FIREWORKS. Continue reading “Are you feeling independent today?” →

Following the king for a day: eight observations in no particular order

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Photo: Emily C. Skaftun Press passes make me feel so official!
Photo: Emily C. Skaftun
Press passes make me feel so official!

1. The king is super punctual. I don’t know if the trains run on time in Norway, but the king certainly does. I was given a fairly detailed press schedule ahead of time, with some non-standard times (7:29 p.m.?). I was thinking of it as more of an estimate, but I’ll be darned if it wasn’t dead accurate.

2. Covering an event as official “press” is boring. Continue reading “Following the king for a day: eight observations in no particular order” →

Kvikk Lunsj v. Kit Kat: A comparative analysis

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Photo: Emily C. Skaftun I decided to see how Kvikk Lunsj and Kit Kat stacked up, literally and figuratively.
Photo: Emily C. Skaftun
I decided to see how Kvikk Lunsj and Kit Kat stacked up, literally and figuratively.

Emily C. Skaftun
Norwegian American Weekly

Around this time last year I learned of the Norwegian Easter phenomenon that is Kvikk Lunsj. It seemed that the country went wild, yearly, for this… what was it? I’d never heard of it.

The name threw me at first. It’s a lunch thing? Like maybe an energy bar?

Coworkers scoffed at me. I did more research, turning up photos. Oh, it’s a Kit Kat! Continue reading “Kvikk Lunsj v. Kit Kat: A comparative analysis” →

Tomato, tomat, tómatar

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Photo: Henrik Omma / Wikimedia Commons You say “tomato,” I say tómatar.
Photo: Henrik Omma / Wikimedia Commons
You say “tomato,” I say tómatar.

It’s been a while since I worked in education (teaching composition to mostly indifferent first-year college students), and even longer since I was a student in the full-time sense, so today when I think about education I think about language. You see, about a year ago, having begun work at something called the Norwegian American Weekly, I started learning Norwegian.

I never picked up much beyond “tusen takk” and “klem” from my Norwegian family Continue reading “Tomato, tomat, tómatar” →

Fire & ice: winter tours in Iceland

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Photo: Emily C. Skaftun Bárðarbunga from the air
Photo: Emily C. Skaftun
Bárðarbunga from the air.

I recently took a week off to visit Iceland. Iceland in winter. We’d been to the country before, right around the summer solstice, and loved it. So part of the impetus for this trip was to see how we felt about the place when it wasn’t summer—when it was covered in ice, and when the sun barely made an appearance. Continue reading “Fire & ice: winter tours in Iceland” →

Postcards from Cuba

eskaftun
Postcard of huge waves breaking at the Maricon
Dear Mr. Powers,

We’ve had high seas this week, obscuring the line between land and water along the Maricon to the point that, if not for the lamp posts I might have driven right into the ocean. The lamp posts, and the fearsome waves. And . . . something else. At first I wasn’t sure what I was seeing; the spray seemed to detach, as though animated. I came to believe they were ghosts. One of the spray-ghosts drifted to the roadway and enveloped a car, which then veered right off the road into the surf. The ghosts had gotten a taste for blood.

If this keeps up, the waterfront will become a ghost town—literally. I’ve read your books, and I feel you may know how to face this menace.

Yours truly,
a fan in need
Postcard of cigar rollers
Dear mom,

Today they took us on a “tour” of a cigar factory. They promised it would be fun, and educational, and we’d leave with a free, freshly-rolled cigar. But then we heard squealing tires as the bus pulled away, and a heavy slam as the door was bolted shut. We were told that we live here now. Fortunately I had bought this postcard in the giftshop on the way in. I’ve rolled it into the leaves, and I can only hope that whoever buys this cigar will notice the flawed texture before lighting it on fire, and furthermore that that kind soul bothers to pay for postage.

If you’re reading this, please send help.

Yours desperately,
Vicki
Image of a couple kissing in front of an idyllic blue sea
Darling,

I love you. This time apart has proven to me the lengths to which I’m willing to go to keep you in my life. It’s true that I came here on a dalliance. Nevermind what I told you about traveling for work; I had a lover. We spent a few days kissing and rolling on the white Caribbean sand. But I soon grew tired of her. When she “suggested” that we do away with you, it pulled at my heart strings. I told her that of course we would, and I embraced her as tightly as I ever had. And then I dashed her head against a low stone wall and pitched her into the waves.

Now nothing will keep me away from you.

Love,
Your Devoted Husband
Postcard of canons
Dear Senora Nunez,

You said I was crazy! But I always maintained that the minute you stop having canons ready, that’s when the hordes will invade. Just look what happened when the earthquake knocked down a section of the Great Wall of China: Mongols everywhere. So what if it’s been 200 years since we last saw the invaders? So what if most of the townspeople have moved away and there’s little left to defend?

Recently I announced that I was decommissioning the canons, and within a week the place was swarming with attackers. Good thing I’d lied.

Please come home. It’s safe now that our enemies have been defeated.

Yours,
Colonel Nunez
Postcard of a cyclist in front of a big Cuba sign
Dear children,

Has it happened where you are? I woke up the other day in black and white. Everything was in black and white, I thought: my house, my clothes, my bicycle. Out on the street it was the same. The old cars and the once-bright buildings were stark as an old photograph. The only thing still in color was the flag—everywhere a flag hangs, the red white and blue remain vibrant. Is it the same in America? Are you left with only the primary colors of patriotism?

If not, this month instead of money, please send some colors home.

Sincerely,
Your loving father

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