The day we went was very foggy as we left Trondheim, taking a streetcar out of town to get into the Bymarka, a wooded recreational area to the west of town. This is a big place, with an area of about 80 square kilometers. I took a picture of Trondheim as we left it, and you can see the fog hanging over the city:
We stepped off the streetcar at a small station in the wilderness and started off on a trail towards the mountain. During the winter, this trail is used for cross-country skiing. They even have street lamps lighting it in places (Narnia's Lamppost, anyone?) The scenery was beautiful, and there were little enclosed fields as we walked past. Here is one filled with fog, I liked the look of the fog hanging in the air with sun beams shining through:
The hike had hardly any snow present, but it was quite cold out so there was iced over pools of water. In some cases the pools were deep enough and the ice thick enough that you could walk on it and the ice would not crack. You could then jump up and down a little on it and have it crack little by little underneath you until water began seeping through. Ah, taunting nature. In some places, the ice froze in weird formations, like the picture below shows. This occurred several times, and the ice was not in sheets, but its a spidery web of bars of ice. There's no water below the ice either. It was weird and different, so I too a picture of it.
It was also cold enough to freeze the some of the water in the ground, so that you would be walking over frozen mud unless you would break through the iced mud-crust and sink into the soft and unfrozen mud below.
We reached the top as the day approached sunset. The morning fog had cleared away by midday. Since the daylight savings switch, its already dark here by 4:30, and the days are still getting shorter. I took a picture at the top of the mountain as the sun was setting. The day gets cooler and fog starts collecting over the fjords. The top of the mountain is over the fog layer, so you get to look down on a sea of clouds. While Trondheim may not have the same kind of fjords as the ones that are constantly photographed in the fjord country of Norway, it still is quite beautiful.
Looking East on top of the mountain, you can look down into Trondheim as the sun sets, and the moon rises in the background:
Looking South from the mountaintop, on another arm of the fjord as it's covered with fog, with mountains in the background:
This is much of the same view as the picture with me in it, but after the sun has set more. Looking North-East from the top of the mountain. I know this picture does not do the scene justice, and a HDR image would probably be much more pleasing to the eye. I don't have such abilities, so instead you get bits of the sunset and fog, and an underexposed hillside.
Just a picture of the sun setting behind mountains and obscured by clouds:
The work/research I'm part of is starting to pick up, and I'm started to do things besides reading. The tests will have a simulation built from finite elements to do some numerical modeling of the experiment, as well as to calibrate to test data after it has been generated. One of the jobs that was assigned to me was to calibrate a numerical material model of the steel that we will be testing. The goal is to have a mathematical model for the performance of the material so that once calibrated, virtual simulations can be done at much less cost than full scale laboratory testing.
I've never done something like this and am a little out of my element, but with the help of the other students as well as the Professor, I'm plowing through it (making many mistakes, of course). I'm also finding some time to work on my thesis that I owe Professor Stanton back at the UW, to keep it moving towards completion.
When not working or hiking or sleeping, I have spent a good deal of time walking or running around Trondheim, just exploring. I brought very few books with me, but I do have some audio books on my iPod that I've been listening to as I walk. While listening to Frank Herbert's Dune, I came to the conclusion that Vikings are merely Fremen who are from a harsh, cold and icy environment instead of a hot desert one. Now I am listening to Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. It's been interesting how similar many of the names in the saga seem to be Scandinavian inspired.
I'm sorry that it was so long between updates, I'll try and be more frequent with updates.
