When I talk to people about my interests during the last grade of comprehensive school, they think I was totally crazy. But the truth is that during that time, I really liked fantasy books, Lord of the Rings, Andersen's tales and everything related to Disney, movies, comics etc. On the other hand, my childhood dream job was to become a geologist, in particular an earthquake scientist. I was fascinated by any scientific thing, the universe and the natural world, in general. I liked watching documentaries about science or nature on TV and learning about the world. That's why people cannot understand how possible it could be that one is interested in fantasy books as well as science. Well, this is something I cannot explain, but all I surely know is that one day I could be reading Andersen and the next about volcanoes.
Prior to my graduating from elementary school, I was solving maths exercises on my own. This was something I really liked to do and my classmates thought I had completely lost my mind, as no one likes solving maths exercises. For me, though, it was a way to escape from reality, especially when I would combine this along with listening to minimalist music or film soundtracks. I knew that nobody could distract me from that. However, to this day I cannot understand how advanced mathematics can help you in practical everyday affairs. Far from that, though, I have always believed that the more you learn in your life, the more sane your mind is. And of course, I would advise all middle-aged people start learning a foreign language, solve crossword puzzles or Sudokus or make up haiku verses. It's possible that you can prevent yourselves by having Alzheimer or dementia. Now, as for me, I liked maths, because it was the foundation of all science.
After my graduation from elementary school, I moved with my family back home, back to Kirkenes. You cannot imagine how relieved I was feeling. I had missed Kirkenes so much - I had missed everything there. Besides, I had never enjoyed life in Cefalonia. And here, of course, I would get to know this kind of people I had always wanted to. However, we didn't settle down at the same place that we did six years before. My parents bought a house in Bjørnevatn, a village about ten to fifteen kilometres away from the centre and about three kilometres west to the Russian border, again next to the forest and the lake.
Monica and I started High School in 2008, but this time we were classmates for the following reason. In our High School, there were two music teachers, one of each group of students: the one was a Greek woman whose name was Anthi and the other one Aunt Kati. It would be really uncomfortable if your teacher was your own aunt, and surely being classmates with your sister is less problematic. Your aunt wouldn't know how to behave to you, in case she was teaching you at school.
This time, things were quite different than Greece. Children were friendlier and less talkative - exactly what I wanted to find. I could make new friends there, without caring about what they were thinking about my 'odd' character. I met two girls, who were three years older and were also at my school. The one of them was a blonde, Laura, but we soon gave her the nickname Lulu, because those days she was tiny and shortie. The other girl was Dina, who had started to get a beautiful high dramatic soprano voice, as she had then started to have classical singing lessons. Both of them were then 15 and they had a passion for music. I remember myself back then telling them: "I have a friend, called Vivian, who is Irish".
The fact that I moved back to Norway was something really good for another reason too. I started piano lessons too, but Kati was not my teacher anymore, because she said that I had achieved such an advanced level, that I had better have another teacher. Thus I enrolled to a music academy, which Dina also was classically trained in. That's why sometimes we were makind duets, appearing together in concerts as well as the final examinations of the academy. I had even considered seriously starting busking in the street along with my instruments. I intended to complete my musical education, so that I could use my skills in the future, in case I couldn't find a job. You see that those days I didn't even think about my future as a full-time musician. I was absolutely sure I would become a scientist, at least in a survey field. And of course my parents have never pressured me to become something I never wanted to. I would aways decide what was best for myself and for my future. However music was something I have always loved and have had a passion for.
Until that time, I really loved to listen to Progressive Rock as well as Celtic music and very rarely would I listen to other genres. However, since I made friends with other people, they influenced me in such a way, so that I started to explore other styles of music too. The first person was Dina, who was having classical singing and opera lessons and she even liked listening to that kind of music. I liked it too, because I was myself a pianist, but until then I would listen more or less mainly to Chopin, symphonic pieces and movie or video games scores. Opera wasn't something I had really emerged to. But Dina would very often visit me at home, playing operatic arias on YouTube and sometimes she was singing along and....oh, God, she had an amazing but extremely LOUD voice, which was smashing glasses!
Another friend, responsible for my musical education was Timo. That guy was listening to a lot of metal music. Thus for three long years, I was hooked on Metal. However he prefered even darker and harsher kinds, like Death Metal, Black Metal, you name it. It's true that this had a huge impact on me. We used to buy Metal Hammer magazine and we would often sit at the back of the classroom, reading the magazine under the desk. Of course, that was something which our teacher wasn't really fond of, so she would even say: "Well, Ingrid, this is something I would never expect from you". Then I would turn red and I would humbly apologise, as negative criticism against me was something I hated. What is more I had always been the good girl. Very often, Timo would come by and we were listening to Metal. Thus, as you can see, my main influences were completely unrelated to each other: metal and opera. Funnily enough these are two kinds of music, which I don't ever want to touch - at least, not anymore.
My best friend, Ivanna, was teasing me, because I was listening to Metal. She believed that metalheads were dickheads and considered Metal to be just like religion. As I can still remember what she said, nowadays I believe that Ivanna was exaggerating a bit, though at some points she was right. Timo wasn't even any good influence, at least for me. I don't want to accuse anyone and all I'm talking about is out of pure experience, but I have observed that many black metal musicians and fans keep a somehow neo-Nazi ideology. This was something that our music teacher at school had also pointed out to me, as she had noticed I had started to get really into Norwegian Black Metal, she didn't like Timo at all and she was afraid of my losing my own innocence. Of course, then I would be pissed off, because I believed that Metal is the best musical genre in the whole world. On the other hand, Norway has its own musical genre under the name Norwegian Neo-Nazi Black Metal, something which Varg Vikernes played too. Later in life, Timo started to have a nationalistic ideology, by voting far-right wing parties and making accusations against immigrants and Asians and all he was talking about was an ideal, pure and European race. For those reasons, as well as many others, I stopped being friends with him. I have a completely opposite opinion, I am an anti-nationalist and accuse nationalism as well as blind faith for all global problems. Not Metal itself, as a genre, but hooked metalheads, who behave as religion fanatics do, belong, to my view, to this category. And I have never wanted to be like them, that's why I have always been keen on world/ethnic music, that is music of the folk, which is created by no particular person, leader, or no single creator, but it's just the result of a collective work.
Nowadays, I can say that I even like Metal: Stratovarius, Sonata Arctica, Nightwish, Bathory as well as Agalloch. In fact, Agalloch was the band that has highly influenced the sound of my own band's debut album. In particular, they have this song The Great Cold Death of the Earth, which for some reason had really impressed me and reminded me of things that I had always loved. It was this era when my friends and I would meet at home, when winters were chilling cold. We used to bake chestnuts, sitting around the fireplace and listening to Doom Metal. I suppose that during that time the best days of my teenage years had started. In many ways, I was trying to replace my shitty years in Greece, by enjoying my life as much as I could. My friends would also be jealous of me, because I was living next to Elvenes lake, while their own homes were at the centre of Kirkenes. That's why they would often spend the night at my own place or I would stay at theirs, especially when I had to study a lot and they would check on me. As you can see, living at a village or the countryside, wasn't anything embarassing in Kirkenes.
Since those days, all of us were suckers of nature. Thanks to me (and because of that, I have to feel proud for myself), we had started building small objects of wood, stones, plants and anything we would find in the woods. Of course, we never touched any single living organism and in fact, a few years later I became a vegetarian. What is more, later I started volunteering on a non-profitable organism in Australia, where we would take care of wild birds. But this is something we will later come to. At school, I had joined a photography club (picturing landscapes mainly, and outside places). I was interested in many things, and even though I wasn't that sociable, I was having a good time with my friends. Lulu and I used to have a good fun together. When I was 15 and she was 18, I had taken a sharp, blue high hat and a branch of a tree and I had gone to Elvenes lake along with Lulu, screaming YOUUUUU SHALL NOOOOT PAAAAASS, just like Gandalf in Lord of the Rings. Then, one day I added FLY, YOU FOOL (In fact, Gandalf said to the fellowship Fly, you fools, before the shadow pulled him in the vacuum. But I was talking only to Lulu) and then I pushed Lulu and threw her inside the lake. However it was May and in Norway it was rather cold! Nowadays, whenever I drive near that place, I crack up laughing, because I remember how innocent and goofy we were in our teenage years.
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