Some days ago I went to the post office to pick up my package. I thought it was just a return package from Italy. Anyways, when they gave me my package, I saw it was sent from Kautokeino. I knew immediately why Linda from Arctic Femme had asked me about my address earlier. Inside the evelope I could find my new years gift, namely my first guksi. Everyone’s first reaction is following: 

“You’ve got what, Aida?” “I’ve got my guksi.” “Guksi, what?” 

If you read in Wikipedia, you can read that guksi or kuksa is a traditional work of Sami handicraft (duodji), a drinking cup made by the Sami people of northern Scandinavia from carved birch burl. Originally guksi were widely used in Arctic areas as a personal drinking cup. Linda could tell me that everything tastes better from this cup. I tried to drink mountain tea from it, and it tastes much better. Someone says that a well made guksi would last a lifetime. I hope mine will.

* more about duodji or Sami handicraft:

I’ve been trying for days to find different places on net which fit our website profile. Here are some other places where you can find us: National Geographic, TripFilms, TreakEarth, Google Earth Gallery, PhotoSight, Picasa Album, Youtube, Gamme, Arctic Femme. I got different tips for how to promote blog better and how to improve google rankings. In my opinion, the best way to improve is to write quality and valuable articles that people like to read. Anyways, I put gorida’s information on Technocrati, Eblogzilla, BlogCatalogs and AveBlogs, and I’ll work on links exchange and our adventure links in coming days. In the meantime, you can have a look at National Geographic’s top ten adventure stories of 2008. I enjoyed reading 6000 miles to Moscow.

picture of the day:

Magnum, ‘not much to do’

An Odysseus in skirt, as defined in Anka Ryall’s book, is a wanderer who breaks out of traditional female categories in order to make the world her own, but who at the same time is unwilling or unable to abandon her femaleness. This week I’ve been reading excerpts from this book. A friend of mine scanned a text about Isabella Bird. I am namely writing a short post about Isabella Bird on Arctic Femme’s blog.

According to Anka, Isabella’s book about adventures in Rocky Mountains exemplifies the history of travel and travel writing from a female perspective. I really find these feminists very annoying when putting together anthologies of women writers, painters etc. It’s probably necessary with these categories on some fields but not in writing. ‘A female perspective’ or use of category as ‘women’s literature’ is just A Great Lie. A great literary mind is just a writer who cares about writing and nothing else or as a writer Cynthia Ozick once said: ‘Literature universalizes, it does not divide. A writer is a writer.’ And, Isabella Bird is a good travel writer:

 /…/ The beauty is entrancing. The sinking sun is out of sight behind the western Sierras, and all the pine-hung promontories on this side of the water are rich indigo, just reddened with lake, deepening here and there into Tyrian purple. The peaks above, which still catch the sun, are bright rose-red, and all the mountains on the other side are pink; and pink, too, are the far-off summits on which the snow-drifts rest. Indigo, red, and orange tints stain the still water, which lies solemn and dark against the shore, under the shadow of stately pines. An hour later, and a moon early full—not a pale, flat disc, but a radiant sphere—has wheeled up into the flushed sky. /…/