In the end of September, I returned to Gweedore and this time I was ready to move there forever. Lydia had to understand that piano lessons should be over, as I wouldn't be living in Norway anymore. Anyway, Vivian found a house for me in Upper Dore, which had the view of Errigal mountain and Clady river. I carried everything I had in Kirkenes along with me and of course, my grandpa's owl. The good thing with that village was that it wasn't as remote as Kirkenes, where you had to travel to Vadsø, in order to shop properly. To start with, Dungloe was fifteen miles away and Lifford about an hour away, travelling by train, and it was also Donegal's capital. Ireland was obviously much different that Norway and Scandinavia. Norway was full of dense trees and sometimes you would feel isolated between them, but this is something that I particularly loved. However, Ireland was a more open and warm country and, even though it was full of green meadows, you wouldn't be surrounded by an endless forest.
In the beginning, it was too hard for me to get used to the new place, as there wasn't any familiar person there. Vivian was living in Dorset, so she wasn't there to help me and I was only nineteen. And back then, when I was living in Tromsø, Johanna was the one who kept me company. It was the first time for me now that I was living in a foreign country, completely on my own and now I knew it was my new house. But what really impressed me was that since people were informed about my arrival in that place, they instantly wanted to lunch me, as I was the newcomer. This was something missing from Norway and reminded me of the attitude of Greek people, only that people in this village were no gossipers. On the contrary, they really cared about you and accepted you as a member of their great family.
After making myself feel convenient in my new house, I went away with Alexandria on a tour. This time things were a bit different, because we were seven people onstage along with Scott, who became a permanent member of the band. Dina had a deep voice with a soprano colour, because she had already had classical singing lessons. However, operatic vocals didn't sound that good in folk music (and of course we didn't want to copy neither Loreena McKennitt nor Nightwish), thus I begged her to sing the higher notes in a softer and more natural way. But this tour seemed to me, in general, a bit more different than the other ones. And the reason is probably that now I was an adult. This time the tour lasted long. We toured all around Europe and we went to the States too, so for a month and a half we were constantly touring. It was indeed tiring, but the whole atmosphere was perfect, because both Dina was singing in Finnish, so it sounded extraordinary and also our music was combined with our own traditional instruments. And of course, the most important was that we had become more popular, so we were more successful.
On the 25th of November, we played a show in Tromsø, because it was Johanna's birthday and I wanted to spend it with her. And then we played all around Finnmark: Lemmijoki (or Lakselv), Mási, Karasjok (Ivanna honoured us and played the violin with us onstage), Alta, Vadsø, Tana and the tour ended in Kirkenes. I stayed there for a few days to see my family and then travelled back to Gweedore. There were many things to be done in Ireland. Because, as you might know, the Celts like to celebrate Midwinter time, which for us in Norway and Finland is called kaamos. So, we organised a night event, where we would tell Celtic and Scandinavian stories, narrate Poems and sing nice folk song for children. I was playing the harp, wearing a strange hat and pretended to be the Bergetroll (Mountain elf), as what we did was similar to a theatrical performance. All this seemed to be really spectacular and we were having a good time. In the end, I was getting myself ready to go home, but I found some people having gathered around a girl, who was holding a box. But then I saw something different: the girl was holding a box which seemed like a raffle box and some people were dropping folded papers inside.
"What are all these people doing here?", I whispered to someone next to me.
"They are dropping their promises inside a box", he replied.
YOU ARE READING
INGRID (ENGLISH VERSION)
General FictionThis is the story I have been so long writing, in its English version. It is a fictional story and refers to the life and personal details of a supposed 40-year-old Norwegian musician, author and poet-ess. She is supposed to write her own autobiogra...
