A few months after shooting the first leg of the 2013 Subaru Forester's trip around the world, AOI Pro contacted me and asked if I'd like to go to Norway to shoot the next leg. I jumped at the chance- I've always wanted to go to Norway and after I moved to Australia I considered the chances of ever going to be close to nil. Even though there would only be 4-5 hours of daylight a day, -20C most days and it would be something like 28-35 hours of travel each way depending on flight times and delays and it would be right before Christmas, I had to go.
2013 Subaru Forester Norway by Joe Wigdahl
2013 Subaru Forester Norway by Joe Wigdahl
2013 Subaru Forester Norway by Joe Wigdahl
A break in the clouds, Norway.
Buried road markers
A long road through the mountains
Frozen lake at dusk.
2013 Subaru Forester Norway by Joe Wigdahl
2013 Subaru Forester Norway by Joe Wigdahl
2013 Subaru Forester Norway by Joe Wigdahl
The crew lost in the fog.
The “Blue Hour”
Aside from my clients who were from Japan, the entire crew and production were Norwegian and I had the good fortune to meet and shoot alongside a motion crew headed by Norwegian D.P.
. Shooting in the -20°C temp didn't really bother me as I had lived in Chicago for 10 years and had done shoots in colder temperatures than that. The Norwegians had a lovely habit of standing around and eating waffles and cheese toasties and drinking endless cups of filtered coffee on our downtime and that kept us cozy enough. I was more worried about the fact that we were shooting in Norway the week before winter solstice and daylight would be short and it would mean that not a minute of shoot time could be wasted. Most of the time the motion crew had the car so I had to get whatever I could get without bugging them which meant using long lenses and hiding in the woods while cameras were rolling. When I did have the car to myself I would usually get about 10-15 minutes to get as many of my hero shots as I could before they took the car away from me. To make things more challenging, I completely lost my voice for 5 days of the shoot. I would have to whisper hoarsely to my assistant and then he would have to frantically yell something in Norwegian or English to get things to happen while we still had the car for a few precious minutes. Several times we were ready to start shooting when a cloud or some fog would pass by and everything would get totally lost in white. Nothing had edges or shadows and there was no sense of depth whatsoever. It was like being in an infinite outdoor cyclorama and shooting would become useless. Suddenly a cloud might lift and we'd shoot furiously for 5-10 minutes before it was gone again. On the last day of shooting we had an incredible sunny day and got the chance to see the "blue hour" in which the landscape gets a stunning steely-cyan/blue hue just after the sun sets.
My dad's side of the family is Norwegian- that's where the name Wigdahl comes from. We grew up with lots of relatives in the "Yassir, you betcha, I'll bring some casserole to the pot luck!" Scandinavian diaspora of Wisconsin, Minnesota and North Dakota. During the holidays at the Wigdahl's we ate mashed potatoes and meatballs, pickled herring and lefse covered in butter and sugar. My grandparents had little troll figurines around the house and my family drank coffee from the time we woke up to just before bed. We were told that Uff da! was basically the Norwegian all-purpose curse but my Norwegian friends from Norway told me that it's basically equivalent to shouting "Jeepers!" or "Gosh darnit!" But growing up in New Jersey and being of Norwegian descent meant that we didn't really know anybody else who was Norwegian so we took our grandparent's word (and maybe Garrison Keilor's) for what being Norwegian meant.
Aside from the curiosity of knowing where one's ancestors comes from, I think my brother and I were always sort of plagued by the question of "How much of this is my fault and how much is it genetics?" hahaha. Scandinavian music that makes it abroad seems to be either insanely heavy death metal or club music. Scandinavian films tend to favor the silent, expressionless, melancholic hero bathed in dusky blue light. The dusky blue light was true but everyone I met in Norway was really lovely and chipper and constantly offering me a cup of coffee. My assistant did point out that the snowsuit I was wearing while in Norway was the kind of snowsuit that homeless people wear- so that might be a reason why everyone was so keen to offer me coffee and a waffle but I was stricken by generally how friendly the Norwegians were and how perfect their English was and it made traveling a breeze. I kept thinking what a shame it was that I couldn't spend some serious time in Norway to meet more people and to see how this incredible landscape could transform from white to green.
