Solfestuka - Ta Sjansen

The weather was finally perfect!

There is a yearly tradition of Solfestuka (the "return-of-the-sun-festival"), to arrange a rip-off of a sledge competition famous to all Norwegians, called "Ta Sjansen" (= "Take the chance"). Normally it includes a lot of water and much more contestants and audience, as well as a ski-jumping arena, but we make the best out of our facilities at Svalbard!

The people from Barrack 9 made a sledge resembling a Finnish sauna.
It was named some Finnish equivalent of "Put More Water on the Sauna".

After a week and a half of not seing the sun at all, the last day of the festival got perfect weather, which made the setting for the sledge competition "Ta Sjansen" just perfect. Silje, Charlotta, Dorothea, Sanna and I were in the organizing committee, and had arranged activities for kids (dog sledging, sledge competition, painting in the snow), food and drinks for the audience, prizes, judges, speaker, preparation of the hill to be used, and so on. So when the day turned out just perfect, we were as happy as an organizing crew can get :)

The Finnish group won the prize for the most creative sledge.
They actually had a stove on the sledge, which produced steam when they poured water on it! It was fantastic :)

I think at least half of Longyearbyen's population must have attended this event. As we arranged it at Hiorthamn, across the fjord from Longyearbyen, we had sun all day :) People were walking/skiing/dog-sledging/going by scooter/hitching a ride/going in the sysselmann-beltwagon which was in shuttle service to and from the town all day, out to Hiorthamn, it was really cool that so many people turned up! There were 5 sledges all in all, and the Finnish sledge really charmed the audience, even though it wasn't the fastest down the hill. Actually, there were no bad crashes, so we had a problem deciding what to do with the prize for "worst/best crash". But Dorothea, Raggi and Charlotta's sledge worked so poorly that the judges decided to give them the prize instead :)

Another of the sledges

The audience seemed happy, the kids were happy, Sysselmannen was happy, the judges were happy, the organizing crew was happy, all the contestants were happy... so it was all good. I fell asleep at 10 that evening, and missed the big party at Huset, but that was okey. At least it enabled me to go on a ski trip the next day on my new skis (and skins/feller) to Trollsteinen :)

Charlotta - a happy organizer :)