Adventure of a lone traveller or "Channeling that Viking temperament"

Oslo, January 2017

I've just left the Viking Ships Museum, and filled with a warrior-like disposition and renewed strength, after having already wandered around half the city, I set out for the conquest of a new territory at a fast pace.

I am a strong and independent young woman.

I don't need any public transport.

I have studied the map of the island. For whom did you take me for?

Clearly, for someone who's bad at math and orienteering and cannot evaluate distances.

SHUT UP.

Feeling like Lagertha, I battle the snow and the I-don't-know-how-many-degrees-below-zero temperature, and looking for new places to discover, I take the first road I encounter. After a few steps, I find myself in front of two road signs: one indicating to go somewhere following the street ahead, the other... well, the other is pointing to an unknown direction that does not match any road, street, path. It looks like it's directing you to some secret parallel universe "Just follow the lead".

Well, ok, I do have doubts but whatever. Vikings are fearless, and so am I.

But you are no Viking, you little Mediterranean human being.

Well, I am inside, ok?

Ok. So I take the road to nowhere, leaving the only two shops of the island behind.

Five minutes into this, and I lost every perception of human existence. There's only me, the fog, the snow, the ice.

But being the stubborn lady I am, I will not be let down by the lack of civilization, so I keep going, convincing myself that it is the road I checked on the map.

On my left, down below and half hidden by trees, there seems to be some kind of stream. Frozen, of course. And with loads of (frozen) canoes piled up on the ground or stuck in what will become water again, in a few months. 

What if I fall? What if tumble down and freeze, and my traces will be lost? What if I freeze, and I'll be found in spring and defrosted and somehow still alive?

Will it be the great scientific discovery of the possibilities of cryogenic sleep?

Not that I wanted to show it, but I start feeling kind of doubtful so, against my will, I take out my phone and check the map.

If only I had a usable phone. An operative phone. A phone with a charged battery.

But no.

The damn thing is dead. And my iPod is of little use, without a Wi-Fi.

I had two choices: keep going or cowardice. The latter is not even a choice, so onward I go.

I have no idea how many miles, kilometres, yards or whatever length measure I walked when MIRACLE! A house!

Maybe I'll knock and ask for directions.

"Really? Knocking at random Norwegians' doors?"

Ok, maybe not.

Suddenly, a noise, a voice, an engine, HUMANITY IS BACK ON TRACK!

Men at work! And houses!

AND THE MUSEUMS! THERE, RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME! 

I run to... no. I kind of boot-skate towards the whiteness in front of me, that I soon discover to be... nothing. Water and air.

I reached the opposite end of the island.

Without a phone, without transport, with a very little idea of where I was going and a huge feeling that map-reading was not my future.

Ok, maybe you are a bit Viking inside.