Locked Down in Norway

By Susanna Blakely

I arrived in Norway for my exchange and the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU) in January. All was nice and normal until March. Within a couple of days, the university closed down along with all airports.

So, since then, life here in As has changed quite a bit. Before lockdown, the campus had a very active social life with parties, events, classes ranging from swing dancing to bird identification and trips to surrounding centres. If someone had have told me a few months before that soon I couldn’t travel anywhere, would be doing all my classes online and be excited about the big trips each week to the supermarket, I would have thought that they had have mixed up when April fool’s day was. It’s slightly crazy just how fast everything can stop.

The first week of lockdown was a little hectic as I wasn’t sure whether I was going back to New Zealand or staying, or whether it was actually possible to leave. The majority of flights were being cancelled. However, I chose to stay here as it seemed safer than trying to get all the way back when I had friends who were having single flights to centres in Europe cancelled and delayed for days. So, I’ve created my own bubble here.

Ås is a half-hour train ride south of Oslo and is a small, rural university town not too different from Lincoln. Its surrounded by a mix of cropping, pasture and forests and the great thing is that you can walk where ever you want. Spring has begun here. Little flowers are popping up everywhere, and the trees are starting to come into leaf. It is expected to get up to 13°C this week, so it’s practically tropical. To fill in the time without weekend trips or social events, I’ve been learning how to knit thanks to YouTube and had a few unsuccessful but hilarious attempts at watercolour painting. At least the houseplant propagation is going well, so I now have ten plants to try and navigate when studying.

At NMBU, lectures are still going as usual, but all held over Zoom. Amid the walks, movies, phone calls and baking sprees, I’ve been having difficulty remembering that I still have a normal uni workload of lectures, readings, group projects and assignments. Not to mention the challenge when the internet over all the student accommodation and campus cut out for a few hours when we had lectures and online tests. But I guess it comes with the teething process of switching everything to being online.

The situation certainly isn’t what I expected when coming on exchange to Norway. It isn’t all ideal. It’s been disappointing saying bye to three-quarters of the other exchange students who have had to go home. I’m literally on the other side of the planet from home, and at times it’s challenging being bombarded with a whole lot of news and information. Yet, there are many fantastic things like rambling through the forest, having late-night campfires, swimming in the fjord, movie marathons and make amazing friends from across the world. We are all getting through this together and have to make the best of things as they are. Anyway, at least in Norway, there is still toilet paper and hand sanitizer on the shelves.