Folktales

Bluesky

Norway’s folk high schools originated, long ago, as a means of ensuring that young people growing up in the largely untamed rural north of the country got some kind of education. The idea was that kids needed more than their traditional skills if they were to have the option of moving to a city, entering one of the newer professions or otherwise connecting their home villages t the modern economy. Today, though, those schools serve a different purpose, because it turns out that sometimes, kids educated in the predominant academic style of today could benefit from some traditional skills.

Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady’s film follows a group of teenagers through two semesters at one such school. It sets the mood with a scene out of myth: Odin walking through the winter forest to the roots of Yggdrasil, the world tree, where he finds the Norns who weave our fates and asks them for secrets; they tell him that he will have to find happiness all by himself. It’s an elusive thing, perhaps close by but just out of sight in the mists and tangled trees. One of the teenagers it seeking it very deliberately, trying to recover it following the sudden and horrific loss of her father. Another abruptly loses it upon starting at the school, finding himself distressed by pretty much everything, and most of all by hard work. Will his quest be successful or is he forever condemned to inhabit the misery he makes for himself?

“I think to be a young woman is chaos,” says the first, yet finds a kind of order, a fresh rationality in the very practical business of far northern life. Every day is hard work, but gets tangible results. They are learning new skills, and they are also toughening up. The first glimpse we get of them is in their natural habitat, as it were: dancing in a club. Perhaps they thought of themselves as fit. Long walks and swims in icy water soon shatter that illusion. The young man, Romain, is unhappy, complaining that his feet are always cold and wet, longing for the comforts of home. Other students try to do things for him but the instructor clamps down on this. What will happen, he asks, if Romain falls off a sled one day in the middle of nowhere and doesn’t know how to take care of himself?

It’s not all grim. The students have fun getting to know the dogs, some of them forming close bonds with the hard-working animals. They also get to lark about a bit, sliding around on toboggans and wrestling semi-naked in the snow. it’s clear that some are forming friendships of the sort that may last for a lifetime, but our two main protagonists, at least, are also learning deeper things about themselves – things that many people will never learn. They are reassessing their limits and, perhaps, discovering their courage.

It’s an inspiring thing to watch. It’s also educational, even when consumed from the comfort of urban surroundings, and there’s a romantic quality to it which gradually gets under the skin of all the participants. Even when we’re focused on the mud and can barely see through the trees, wild Finnmark looks beautiful. Mythic scenes aside, Ewing and Grady approach their storytelling in a quiet, unobtrusive way which almost gives viewers the impression that they are the ones choosing to follow this particular path through it all. It’s a journey you won’t regret.

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