That's it, I'm moving to Norway!

I thought new Zealand was beautiful, but check out these amazing photos of Norwegian landscapes! (clicking the link opens a slideshow, or you can open a static page here)

This week's blog is brought to you by the Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia

What does 10,582 km² of salt look like? Really beautiful, it turns out. Google has these pictures, and there's this. The Wikipedia page on the Salar de Uyuni is here.

Beware the Viking raiders

A bunch of adventurers are test-sailing a traditionally-built Viking longboat from Roskilde, Denmark, to Dublin, Ireland. They will spend 6 weeks working in the open boat on the North Sea, with one square metre of space per person.

Samuel Johnson famously said, “Going to sea is like going to prison, with a chance at drowning”. Well add to that the possibility of catching pneumonia with no shelter from the chilling wind, rain, hail and sleet they are likely to encounter. So why are they doing it? This is "the first time in nearly a thousand years that a fully laden Viking warship will sail across the North Sea." Imagine being part of that.

Read all about the trip here, on the BBC. And there's more information here.

Rakiura: the wilderness of Stewart Island

On the subject of landscape, Craig Potton Publishing has recently put out this sumptuous Rob Brown book on Rakiura/Stewart Island. Brown took the jewel-like photographs over many years while tramping Rakiura's back country: beaches and forests, mountains and tussocklands. The pictures are accompanied by a thoughtful text on Rakiura's history and his experiences there.

I was fascinated to read that all the photographs were made on medium-format transparency sheet film in a fully-mechanical camera, and with the use of a hand-held light meter. He certainly hasn't taken any easy options! He says what with the heavy sheet-film in his pack and all the lenses, it was sometimes a conflict between carrying enough food or enough film. He says it's less painful to be hungry than to run out of film. :-)