Tone - Life as a Teenager in Norway
Paige's relative in Norway has sent photos we would like to share with the Heritage members of our Sons of Norway Chapter. Her name is Tone, which is pronounced as we would say the word "tuna" but we won't share her full name to protect her privacy.
Tone is 14 and has an older sister. She is like many Norwegians with a love of nature and a cabin in the mountains. She has taken riding lessons at a riding camp and has included photos of that and some of her hikes and trips in the mountains.
Maybe sometime she will explain why riding on the horse backwards is seen!
Teenage Life in Norway
Tone takes English in school, and had to write a paper about a hobby and she shares it with us here:
My hobby
My hobby is riding. I ride on horses of course, but there are many different types of horses. Norway’s national horse is Westland horse. I ride on a riding school and the horses there are Island horses.
They are quite smaller than Westland horses, but I have ridden on Westland horses before (the riding school where I ride had one before too). I did that when I was at Langedrag on camp school.
When I rode at Langedrag I started to be interested in horses. I have always wanted to ride, but that’s when I got really interested. I started right after Easter about one and a half year ago. The reason I started was because a friend said that she was starting and I heard that, therefore I said that I have always wanted to ride. She said that I should start, therefore I asked my parents and then I started.
When you ride you sit on a saddle with your legs in the stirrups and you hold the reins in your hands. I have taken four riding courses at the riding school. Two beginner courses, one some practice course and no I go a practice course.
At the course I go now, we are eight pupils. We have one riding instructor at the course. She usually has someone to help her instruct as well. When you ride there is different paces you can ride in.
The paces of Island horses are walking pace, trot, ambling pace, toelt and gallop. When you trot it bumps very much, therefore it is best to ride easy.
To ride easy might sound easy to do, but it is not. You have to stand up in the saddle every time the horse’s shoulder is going forwards. It might be difficult to understand, but it is not very easy to explain either. Once you have practiced a while it is not that hard to ride easy anymore.
There are very many things you can do when you ride. You can ride on a hike in the forest. We do that on the riding course. Sometimes we ride without a saddle in the forest, we trot and gallop.
In the forest there is a gravel road and there are many small paths which lead in between the trees. You can also ride show jumping. In show jumping you jump over a jump.
The jump can either be high or it can be low. You have to be very careful when you jump because if you sit down in the saddle, it is painful for the horse. You can not pull in the reins either. You have to stand up in easy seat and hold your hands a little bit forward.
It is also something called dressage. When you ride dressage you ride many different exercises. You ride backwards, you ride sideways and a lot more. Another thing is Gymkhana. We use to have that at the end of each course.
Gymkhana is sort of a steeple-chase. The riding field is divided in two halves. The riding instructor set up some cones and some obstacles for us. We are divided into two teams or we are just one and one. We have to go zigzag between the cones.
I can tell you about one time we had gymkhana. There were cones in the field, one jump we had to crawl under (without the horse of course) and two buckets. One of them was filled with water and apples in bites, and the other one was filled with flour. That time we were not on teams.
We had to go zigzag between the cones, crawl under the jump, put our head in the bucket filled with water and apple bites, and we had to grab an apple with our mouth and give it to the horse. After we had done that we had to put our heads in the other bucket, which was filled with flour, and look for a candy with our mouth.
After that we had to go around a cone, which was placed at the end of the riding field, and go around it (without the horse) ten times. When I was finished with that I was so dizzy I could barely stand, but I got up on the horse and back. I actually won the contest; therefore I got a riding crop as a prize.
On the some practiced course we had something called voltige (this is the Norwegian word for it because I do not know the English word for it). That is like gymnastics at the horseback. When we have voltige we stand, sit backwards, lie on the horseback, sit in side-saddle, sit with our hands up and to the side, sit with closed eyes and you can do more too. I did this at Langedrag also.
Last summer my friend and I went on a riding camp for a week. We went on riding hikes twice each day. Every time we were going on a hike, we groomed the horses and saddled them up. That was good because we do not do that very often at the riding course. Every riding hike lasted for one and a half hour. That is twice the time as one riding lesson at the riding school.
I love to ride because it is fun to ride fast and jump and do different things. Also it is fun to see the many different things the horse can do, like walking backwards and sideways.
