Caroline Olsson’s Turn light, inspired by artisan craft in her native Norway.

We’ve often featured Scandinavian creativity on EcoSalon, but it’s usually Danish or Swedish. Now the Norwegians are claiming their portion of the design smörgåsbord.

At this year’s London Design Festival, a whole separate space was dedicated to designers from Norway. One of these was Caroline Olsson, whose pieces are beautiful, simple and functional; modern, but referencing tradition.

Her latest piece, Turn, is a lamp with a screw to switch on and off the light, adjusting the brightness by turning the handle. This twisting dimmer looks like an old-fashioned vice, and Olsson says she was inspired by workbenches used in wood workshops in her native country. Turn is made from untreated birch and hand-blown glass, which gives it a natural, solid feel.

Curious, which won the Blueprint Award for best new product at last year’s London design fair, is a two-in-one light which can be used either as a retractable reading light, or a mood-creating table lamp. When closed inside its box, the shade of the lamp works as the box’s cover, with a soft glow emanating from inside. Olsson got the idea from old wooden pencil boxes.

These are sneak previews of tomorrow’s products: Olsson is looking for a company to manufacture her lights. But with the buzz caused at London’s design show, for a second year in a row, we don’t think we’ll have to wait too long to have them in our houses.

The post Elsewhere in Scandinavia, Caroline Olsson’s Artisan Inspired Lamps appeared first on EcoSalon.

Every day is better with a new track.

White Foxes by Susanne Sundfør

Every day we bring you one track for a little musical inspiration. Have a track you want to submit? Email us at contact@ecosalon.com.

Image: Susanne Sundfør

The post Daily Track: White Foxes – Susanne Sundfør appeared first on EcoSalon.

Testing out new foods and traditions in the Lofoten Islands. 

I was once a vegetarian.

For years, I didn’t eat meat. I cut it out for environmental reasons. I didn’t support the energy that was going into each burger, steak and chop, that I had been consuming, so I decided to stop eating it completely.

It wasn’t until 2007 when I took a trip to Australia that I made the choice to introduce it back into my diet. I was staying on farms and decided that since I was a guest in these homes, I would eat anything that was put in front of me. And I’m glad I did. I didn’t want to miss out on any experience that came my way.

Recently I have found myself in a similar situation, working for several weeks in the Lofoten Islands in Northern Norway. Before I came, I knew that I would be up to my ears with fish, something that has brought me much joy. From talking with local fisherman to trying my hand at the sport – without much luck, sadly – my interest has been peaked.

I have landed in the heart of the cod industry.

The Lofoten Islands supply the world with cod, and you can feel it. Lofoten is an archipelago that is surrounded by the Norwegian Sea to the north, and the Vestfjorden fjord to the south. The small chain of islands stretches a mere 200 kilometers in length, and is the home for cod migrating down from the Barents Sea when they are 5 or 6 years old. It is the largest population of cod in the world. There are roughly 1500 boats based in Lofoten, pulling in up to 1000 kilograms of cod a day with a single hook. Nets and trawling are prohibited here in an effort to protect the highly valuable population. The winter catch is dried and exported to North America, Europe, parts of Africa, everywhere. Your daily spoonful of fish oil, that’s coming from here.

Every harbor is home to countless fishing boats. Driving the coastal roads, there are fish drying racks as far as the eye can see. As for menus, well they’re full of seafood prepared in more ways than Bubba could list out – fillets, steaks, stews, you name it. Dried cod has become one of my favorites. Similar to jerky, it’s the perfect protein boost in the middle of climbing one of the many spectacular mountains here that jump out of the sea.

“Ooo Sarah! Cod tongues. This is a real specialty up here. Let’s get a plate,” said my friend Kristin when we stopped into a restaurant in Reine. I was surprised when my reaction was not nausea, but rather an excited, “Oh Kristin, yes! We have to try!”

This particular dish speaks to the industry being so ingrained in the tradition and history of Lofoten. In the spring time, I’m told that you’ll find local children walking the docks asking fishermen for the heads of the cod. They’re the ones who cut out the tongues and sell to markets, restaurants, and individuals. This is how they first learn the fishing business, while still making a little money for themselves.

Cod tongues cut out by children? I can deal with that, but I was really thrown by the whale meat. It’s the season for it, you know, so it’s being thrown on every grill between Solvær and Værøy. When I first noticed it, I was bewildered. My friend Kristin picked up on my astonishment, and simply said, “Well you Americans. You’re all into your Free Willy stuff.” But this wasn’t about Keiko. I told her that we simply didn’t kill whales and eat them. Never. More and more people continued to sum this up to the children’s movie we all know and love. I kept defending our case for not eating whale as being about animal rights, talked with them about endangered species, all of that stuff. I just didn’t feel right about killing such an animal.

Norway Landscape Reel from Sarah Menzies on Vimeo.

After much conversation, I learned that in this region, it’s a species that is in abundance up here, and the regulations are strict. Deer and elk were compared to whale meat. I was also told about the role that the whale plays in the history of Norway, and the low quotas of meat caught annually that are barely being met each year. Still, something feels off about it. And you can feel the dilemma here. At the mention of whale, feathers are ruffled. Either people are strongly for it, or just as strongly against it. I’ve decided to not bring the matter up for fear of offending my present company.

This has forced me to think a lot about food choices. What are we eating in America that stirs up the same kind of controversy? Some could argue that clear cutting in the name of a Big Mac is just as offensive, and certainly more harmful, environmentally speaking. Seeing boats come into a harbor with the daily catch of whale meat gets me thinking about the low environmental impact. Did the whale live a free and happy life before meeting its end? I hope so.

Images: Sarah Menzies, Kristin Folsland Olsen

The post The Local Experience: Cod Tongue and Whale Steak in Norway appeared first on EcoSalon.

The Grand Tour and beyond.

We’re all familiar with the rolling hills of Tuscany, the cliffs of Santorini, the Eiffel Tower in Paris. But Europe is so much more than classic postcard images. As the continent’s Eastern half becomes more accessible, spots like the ports of Dubrovnik, the caves of Slovenia, and the Renaissance towns of the Czech Republic are becoming more popular as travelers venture off the traditional backpacker’s route. As everywhere, sustainable tourism practices are needed to protect this region’s intense natural beauty.

(above) Appenzell Innerrhoden, Switzerland

Pembrokeshire, Wales, UK

Telc, Czech Republic

Cyprus

Bua, Sweden

Reykjavik, Iceland

Istanbul, Turkey

Mariazell, Austria

Kiev, Ukraine

Crete, Greece

St. Petersburg, Russia

The Pyrenees, Aquitaine, France

Wick, Scotland

Aalesund, Norway

Berlin, Germany

Amsterdam, Netherlands

Eyjafjallajökull, Iceland

Capri, Italy 

Karkonosze, Poland

Postojna Cave, Slovenia

Paris, France

Margam Park, Wales, UK

Dresden, Germany

Barbarin, Spain

Berg, Austria

Florence, Italy

Copenhagen, Denmark

Dubrovnik, Croatia

Luster Kommune, Norway

Porto, Portugal

Boka Kotorska, Montenegro

Plitvice Lakes National Park, Croatia

Lanzada, Spain

Castelluccio di Norcia, Italy

Moscow, Russia

Skradinski Buk, Croatia

London, England, UK

Lake Baikal, Siberia, Russia

Neuchâtel, Switzerland

Santorini, Greece

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The post 40 Gorgeous Photos of Europe appeared first on EcoSalon.

Scandinavia was consistently inspiring in 2011.

After looking back on a year of Shelter posts, we realized that our obsession with Scandinavia was embarrassingly obvious.

This year saw a steady stream of sustainable innovation, progressive thought, and great design coming out of Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and their not-officially-Scandinavian-but-Scandinavian-in-our-hearts cousins, Finland and Iceland.

Here’s a list of eight things that set our hearts a-flutter about Scandinavia this year.

They know how to strike the perfect balance between indoors and outdoors. Rooms at the Juvet Landscape Hotel nurture a relationship with nature, while remaining minimalist and sophisticated.

They can pull off a girly microbrewery. The Mikkeller pub in Copenhagen underwent a feminine design transformation at the hands of Femmes Regionales. The result was delightful.

They make rest stops not so scary. Norway’s government-sponsored a National Tourist Routes program engaging architects like Margrete Friis and Peter Zumthor to design lookouts, concession stands, restrooms, picnic tables, and other sustainable rest stops along scenic country roads.

They champion post-secular worship and design. Helsinki’s Chapel of Silence provides a place for urbanites to meditate in silence, without religious affiliation. It’s also gorgeous.

They design treehouses that look like UFOs. Sweden’s Treehotel consists of five eco-hotel campsites designed by leading Scandinavian architects in the woods of northern Sweden.

They give their factory workers, even the fast furniture ones, five weeks of paid vacation per year. Workers at IKEA’s Sweden plant also get paid $19 per hour, and the whole country offers free healthcare, elderly pensions, and a host of other social goodies. Compare that to workers in IKEA’s Danville, Virginia, plant, who get paid $8 an hour and are often forced to work overtime at the risk of being fired.

They can look perfectly at home in a house with white floors. A peek inside designer Tine Kjeldsen’s home in Denmark reveals the perfect combination of exposed wood, raw metal, plush plum upholstery, and flawless white floors.

Their idea of luxury involves cycling, yurts, and designer hot tubs. As it should. Activities and design at Southern Norway’s eco-friendly Canvas Hotel celebrate their motto: “You don’t stop playing because you get old, you get old because you stop playing.”

Image: Leong Him Woh

The post 8 Ways Scandinavia Impressed Us This Year appeared first on EcoSalon.

Norway’s Nasjonale Turistveger is taking the highway rest stop to a higher level.

American rest stops are often associated with abductions, rapes, snipers, drug trafficking, and the obesity epidemic. Unless you happen to be traveling through Vermont, they’re cautionary places to quickly attend to your business without talking to strangers. That could all change if we, as a nation, adopted more of a Norwegian attitude towards road trips.

In 2005, Norway launched The National Tourist Routes, a government-sponsored campaign to combine sustainable tourism with bold architecture. They’re working with architects, including Margrete Friis, Peter Zumthor, PUSHAK arkitekter, Code Arkitektur, Manthey Kula, Snohetta, and Jensen & Skodvin, and asked them to create gorgeous, nature-aware, rest stops, observation decks, and other small-scale projects, which are dotted along scenic drives that trace the Norwegian countryside from the southern town of Jaeren to the northern city of Varenger.

Clearly, we here at EcoSalon have a bit of a Scandinavian fetish going. We heart their food, their (local) labor practices, their eco lodges, their eco writers. We’re pretty obsessed. Here are eight more reasons we love them, nine, if you count the picnic area above designed by 70ºN Arkitektur.

The Norwegian Uthus

Canadian-born, Norway-based architect Todd Saunders designed this structure. It’s a toilet. On the side of the road. Overlooking a fjord. Yeah.

Observasjon dekk

This is the adjoining observation deck at Aurland.

Naturskjønn rute

The Trollstigen, in rural Norway, is what you would call the scenic route. This lookout was designed by Reiulf Ramstad Architects.

Butikker

Also found at the Trollstigen lookout, these roadside concession stands are by Reiulf Ramstad Architects, as well.

Piknikbord

This one-person picnic table was designed by Jensen & Skodvin Architects.

Fugl tårn

A bird watching tower by 70ºN Arkitektur for when you feel like pulling over and observing some birds, of course. The entrances to the towers are screened off with high walls so that no human silhouettes are cast, thus disturbing the main attraction.

Bike Bygning/Meditation Room

A bike shed situated at Grunnfør on Austvågøy in northern Lofoten with a view towards Vesterålen. Here, you can seek shelter from the wind, which can get intense, and meditate. Also by 70ºN.

En annen toalett

You won’t find a footpath or toilet like this on the New Jersey turnpike, but you will at the Tungeneset rest stop. The service facilities, access ramp and picnic area are by Code Arkitektur. Landscape architecture by Aurora Landskap.

God bless America and all, but Norway puts this….

…to shame.

Images: Nasjonale Turistveger; ArchDaily; Good; Maryland Route 5

The post 9 More Reasons Why We Heart Scandinavia appeared first on EcoSalon.

Progress isn’t always as beautiful as we want it to be.

Creationism and Photoshop: two manifestations of our cultural obsession with perfection. It’s appealing, the idea that highly complex things or impossibly beautiful things just exist, just like that, with no work, no effort, no trial and error.

The reality is arguably very different. Beauty takes effort and time. A swanky lifestyle costs money. It took a billion years for a single cell organism to appear and another three billion before they figured out how to work together in multicellular style.

The story of human development is no different. It has taken time and hard work. Hunting and gathering transitioned slowly to industrial agriculture, wooden wheels took hundreds of years to become cars, cultivated cacao beans eventually, thankfully, morphed into Green & Blacks.

And so it is with renewable energy. Ten years ago, the power output of individual turbines was still being measured in kilowatts. This year, a whopping 10MW turbine is being erected in Norway. Bell Labs first modern solar cells, invented in the fifties, were about 6% efficient. Today, there exists a 40% efficient photovoltaic panel. Yet as anyone with even a passing interest in the environment knows, people who do not share that interest also do not like renewable energy. The message is very clear: Do. Not. Want.

Renewable energy is, apparently, not efficient enough and when all the lights go off and we’re left sitting in the cold and the dark, environmentalists will rue the day (shake angry fist here) they had the audacity to suggest such a foolish notion.

Of course there are problems with renewable energy. There are problems with everything. Nothing, not even a carefully airbrushed face or a fully formed world created in the blink of an eye, is actually perfect. Yet it is rare to hear such dismissive scrutiny cast against any other kind of technology.

When the first car was invented, nobody claimed it was useless because it didn’t go far enough on one tank. When the first mobile phones came on the market, no one refused one because they couldn’t get their emails on it. When it comes to electricity, there is a level of expectation to blame for this attitude. For the most part, we all grew up with electricity available abundantly and immediately. The thought of anything jeopardizing that is scary. But that can’t be the only issue at play here.

Our coddled culture of convenience is so rife that people find it genuinely traumatic to put paper in one bin and tins in another. In this respect, a perfect society is the next step on from a convenient society: if it doesn’t suit immediately, reject it.

We have also lived through an unprecedented exponential technology boom. It is completely normal, now, to walk into a shop on the high street and walk out again a few minutes later with more computing power in our back pockets than it took to get to the moon, and for less money than it costs to make dinner for your friends.

When that’s the world we live in, why wouldn’t a wind turbine work perfectly straight away? If the entire solar system can be created in just seven days and I can talk to satellites in space with the gadget in my pocket, why wouldn’t one solar panel power my entire suburb?

Somewhere along the way we have lost our patience and our perspective. But worse, we have lost our resilience. The threat of famine or war or flood is more terrifying now than it has ever been because we can no longer even cope with the most minor of inconveniences, the smallest imperfections. The idea of something that isn’t flawless immediately has become unthinkable.

Yet whatever anyone says, fossil fuels will run out, nuclear cannot power 100% of everything, and renewable energy is working. Just look at the astonishing successes Spain, Portugal and Germany have had with a rapid expansion of the industry. It is happening slowly and imperfectly. It is taking effort and money. There is no way of instant airbrushing. But like the evolution of anything, it will get there in end.

Image: tibchris, CGP Grey.com

The post Patience: It’s Not Sexy, But It Works appeared first on EcoSalon.

A weekly roundup of EcoSalon’s top stories.

Places & Spaces: Canvas Hotel is a visual vacation, never mind a cyclist’s dream hideaway. Based in Southern Norway, the adventure starts the moment you arrive.

Lady Gaga on EcoSalon? In Shade Grown Hollywood: The Conscious Mind Of Lady Gaga, writer Kathie Butler says “Lady Gaga is on the way to becoming an icon of post-feminist sexuality. But is she a confident cultural attaché to our own fantastical fantasies? Or she is more of a mouthpiece of modern times, a voice raging against homophobia and discrimination?” We explore Lady Gaga, aka Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta’s level of consciousness.

With Japan still reeling in the wake of an 8.9 magnitude earthquake that sent a 30-foot wall of ocean water onto the Fukushima-Daiichi plant on the coast of Japan, we find ourselves asking if there are more viable options than nuclear as we watch radiation leaking from core reactors. In The Nuclear Option, writer Stephanie Rogers reviews the pros and cons.

In her weekly Green Plate, writer Vanessa Barrington’s column Is Urban Farming The Next Green Cottage Industry? asks if urban farming is a viable career for our younger generation and a dependable source of food for city dwellers.

This week, our editor’s column The Insider’s Guide To Life: Bite Me dives into female bullying, giving important tools to empower one to bite back. Ost writes: “Who on earth are these people? Tina Fey called them Mean Girls, and they are everywhere, no matter how grown up we get. Naively, I had approached my very first bully with the plucky optimism of a community fundraiser. Soon, she needed me and my reliable niceness, and when you get to that point it’s a short trip to toast. I was but the earnest wheat germ, she, the flaring toaster.”

EcoSalon was just nominated for Best Style Twitter Feed! Like us enough to cast a vote? Then go here!

The post The Friday Five: Vol. 5 appeared first on EcoSalon.

I think I’m going to move to Norway.

Not since I backpacked Europe alone and met lots of handsome towheaded Norwegians who insisted on braiding my hair have I felt this desire.

I blame all this on Blondes Make Better T-Shirts, to their easy going sense of humor in the face of some pretty terrible global issues like clean water and global warming and making light of it on a simple t-shirt (not to mention I’d just love a trip to Norway).

The line is actually co-designed by two women, one based in Norway, the other in New York (both blondes of course) who cut their t-shirts from a fabric made of 50 percent recycled bottles mixed with organic cotton and a Promodal made from 40 percent Beech Tree, 60 percent Eucalyptus.

To add to their sustainable messages and fabric, the gals are proud to use water based inks on their t-shirts, which are silk screened in L.A. and 100 percent sweat-shop free.

You might be asking yourself at this point, “Um Amy, where are all these environmentally friendly and funny t-shirts you write of? The one you’re showing is cute but has lipstick on the collar?”

Well, dear readers who love these giveaways, if you go over to Olivine, one of the cutest boutiques you’ll find online, you’ll see a whole array of t-shirts from the blondes with messages that include “Help Global Warming. Donate a Swimming Noodle to a Polar Bear,” “Save the Blondes. Too Many Animals Are Dying Out,” and “Save the fjords, give the blondes a place to hang out.”

The above tee is from their “Oops” Collection and features a pair of non-toxic red-lipsticked kissers that by mistake went unnoticed as the wearer pulled on her tee.

Interested in trying to win it? Then leave a creative comment below with a slogan you would put on one of their t-shirts. Here’s mine: “Two blondes walk into a bar. Save the blondes.”

For more blonde fun, watch their video:

(Legalese: contest rules and FTC compliance.)

The post Blondes Make Better T-Shirts Giveaway appeared first on EcoSalon.