Elfes through the history - A very rough guide

Christmas is getting nearer. And for absurd but proffesional reasons I've had the pleasure of getting close up and personal with elves.
Elves is off course closely linked to the name of this blog, Volvur. "I didn't know that" you might say in pure and honest surprise, and few will claim that your lack of knowledge is something to be mournful about for more than a brief moment. Just a bit shorter than the time Thor will use to raise his hammer. But before Thor gets too confused of the analogy let's get back to business. Elfes.
Thing is, there is a US retail chain, Office Max, that for the last 3 years have done a so called viral marketing campaign with tremendous success called Elf Yourself. And since marketing is my profession it was easy to find arguments to delve into this phenomenon that has made more noise in America than Thors famous hammer.
The result will be revealed later in this comment. Again let me try getting back to the elves.
Here goes, a rough guide to the history of elves. For many young and poorly educated soul in the northern hemisphere, elves comes from Midgard/Middle Earth (Tolkien, Lord of the Rings or Hringadrottins Saga in Icelandic or Ringenes Herre in Norwegian). This is off course incorrect. Tolkien, was in many aspects inspired by norse mythology. As with the name of this blog. Volvur also stems from norse mythololgy and is the name of the seers (volves in english?), the women who spin threads from the world tree Yggdrasil and tells us about the past, present and future. Hmm, people spinning threads from the world tree like a web of knowledge you might ponder, kind of like a ancient world wide web? Indeed so.
Yggdrasil has it's roots in three of the norse worlds nine homes. Alfheim, or the home of elfes is not one of them. But it is the first historic reference of elfes. Not the Middle earth of Tolkien or the green silly anglosaxon modern christmas version.
But my ramblings stems from the modern version. So with this thin thread of historic elf trip, here is my anglosaxon happy christmas video to all friends and family.



With hopes of this being a merry inspiration to keep smiling through all the hectic pre-christmas activities that steals all the positive thunder from eating birds, pigs, figs and other findings in mother nature. A slightly early, happy christmas from the family at Sagene, Oslo, Norway, temporary home of silly elfes.
And by the way. I have no idea of how the americans clearly succeded in ruining yet another wonderful myth by making them into silly xmas ornaments.

PS For those who understands the norse inspired language norwegian. More marketing info on the campaign Elf Yourself can be found on my marketingblog.

A different holiday story from Italy and Croatia

In many ways I behave like a big child. And I really like that. A childlike behaviour keeps you young at heart and helps keeping the creativity flowing through the brain.
As a result I went perhaps a little overboard on my wife and I on holiday this September. We went from Naples (Napoli), to Amalfi, to Lecce, to Bari, to Hvar and ended in Dubrovnik. A great trip.
And I made this very different picture story from parts of the trip. Do yourself a favour and click on the Full Screen icon (the one that looks like a screen in the bottom right corner) so you can read the text more easily. Enjoy!

Adventures Of The Cavalieris

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More typical info from the trip might be posted on the blog later. In the meantime some lovely pics have been published on Flickr from the various cities.

A beautiful outdoor wedding in Iceland

Perhaps outdoor and wedding sounds like a strange combination with Iceland. Include a forest and it might sound like I´m doing advanced storytelling. But it is true and quite possible, and definately beautiful.
My brother in law, Loftur and his now wife, Edda, invited my wife and myself to be part of their wedding. Of course the medal had a flipside, it was named Labour, but to be honest, working a couple of days in a lovely forest to prepare for a wedding under the midnight sun is quite allright by my standards.
Here is how you do it:
Invite some close friends and family to arrive a few days before the actual wedding.
Use all your contacts to get hold of all you need like, aaahh say, a tent, flooring, chairs, heatlamps etc.
Make sure your phone is fully charged in case of urgent help needed.
Invite some more people if it seems that deadline is coming a bit too fast.

Our family has experience in this area. This was the third consecutive successful outdoor wedding we´ve held on the east coast of Iceland. The first two was in a greenhouse so this was different but the work crew was up for tha task.

None of us being experts on putting together a tent to hold several hundred people meant that the first night of montage included a lot of plundering and confused looks. After a couple of phonecalls it all came together quite nicely.




Here are parts of the crew having a short break.


And then we started on the decorations. May I point out that this is from the night before the wedding and at times I believe that more than 20 friends and family were taking part. isn´t that just great? At least I think it is lovely.




Allright, just to show that I have a slightly artistic side. Here is one of my artpictures.



And then they got married under the tree´s. Call me a easily touched but I think that is seriously romantic. Just dont quote me on that...



Out of respect for privacy I´m not publishing photos from the actual party were faces can be seen. If you were attending the wedding and want to see more pictures, send me an email to get access to more pictures.

For everybody else. Pleas make sure you either have a outstanding weddingplanner and a huge amount of cash, or very good friends and family (read a healthy workforce) before you step into this kind of event. In the end it is totally worth it, if ever you should be in doubt. The memories, the memories...

Best beach in Cicily - San Vito Lo Capo

There are many great beaches in Cicily, but personally I cannot think of anyone that matches the one in San Vito Lo Capo (Cape San Vito). It´s sandy, it´s long (kilometers) and the whole town is more or less in walking distance to the beach. SVLP is located in the northwestern part of the island, between Trapani and Castellamare del Golfo (appr 30 minutes drive to each).
Beware that the town is packed in the holiday season (July & August) and rooms can be difficult to find. In other words book in advance or expect to sleep in a tent.
Nuff talk, here are the pics to prove the statement.

This is an italian style beach, all included, apart from the cost of renting a sunchair, getting a piece of fresh cold coconut and well everything that can be given a price. But hearing the mamas shouting at the kids are for free.

The strange thing about the cost on the wonderful beach of San Vito Lo Capo is how regulated it is. It almost feels organised for some strange reason. Hmm, why one wonders.
Speaking of which (renting and costs that is), here is a image of our captain on a lovely boat trip to Scopello. Leonardo was steady as a mountaing and had salt running through his veins from all the years on the sea catching tuna. Now he had become tired of the blood and gladly toured the tourists for a magnificent sightseeing tour.

The best part with Leonardo was that he used his old fishing boat with a limited capacity. A good advice is to avoid the bigger sightseeing boats as they don´t give you the same personal feeling and the possibilty to take a dip whenever you feel like it. Like my wife did on the exact same spot as Catherine Zeta Jones did when they recorded Oceans Twelve in the same area.

If you feel the urge to book a stay in this picture perfect town you might want to check out my hotel review over at Tripadvisor to get the hard facts on hotels as well.