We're traveling again and meeting people! We arrived in chilly beautiful Helsinki this morning. We spent the day walking around and taking in the city, Louise already out with the camera.

We are looking forward to an action packed weekend.

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Tomorrow we are meeting Petri Luukkainen, a documentary film maker who just released this amazing movie about him and his stuff... here's a trailer of his film... We can't wait to meet him.

Time flies when you're having fun! Everyday Stories is 1 years old, and in this past year we've met so many inspiring and interesting people, and have shared 14 stories online. In order to celebrate this past year, we have made a video combining excerpts from all the stories online to date. Also, we have this brand new blog. On this blog you will get to stay more up to date with the people whose stories we are sharing.

Margrethe Valler got up really early one day last week to be interviewed on Oslo radio Østlandssendingen. Se think she did a great job explaining the everyday stories project as well as the two interviews we did in Oslo. If you understand Norwegian, listen to it here. If not, you can still listen and just imagine what she's saying. Thanks Margrethe!!!

Friday was our last day of this tour. And we had the warmest most beautiful sunny weather. Thank you Sweden!

We started our day interviewing a fascinating man, Mattias Thambert. Mattias is very passionate about saving furniture from the Stockholm recycling waste stations, fixing them up and putting them back into the system. 

 So, day 6 of the first part of our Nordic tour. We arrived in Stockholm and had a day walking around the city, where we ran into these band players, and looked at some very cool 2nd hand shops...

No interviews today, but still some time to meet inspiring people in Oslo.
We started with a coffee at café Saba, this lovely café and multicultural community centre with Helene Gallis. Helene is great, so full of energy and instead of talking about problems, she just goes ahead and does things. Judging from the 2 times we met her, we get the feeling she knows almost everyone in this part of town. It is so very cool how she cares about her neighbourhood, and how she works to strengthen the community feeling in her multicultural neighbourhood. There are definitely challenges areas that have many nationalities, and many individuals that have suffered traumas and are excluded from many parts of society. Helene is so passionate about the subject and she creates fun and real solutions, such as giving the children who have little space to run around and play a space to be in.
 

Another good day in Oslo, where we got both sun and rain, and visited new spots. We got to meet Sherry Hakimnejad, a social entrepreneur who focuses on the social part of sustainability. With her company Kompass, she is working on a project with youth who have dropped out of school and who face challenging circumstances in life.  Sherry uses methods of growing food with them, and making food together to empower them and to help them connect again. We went to a site where they are starting to grow food in a completely industrial space.

We spent all day with fabulous Maiken. We met her family, she told us about her permaculture projects, we visited urban garden plots and tasted edible flowers...

Then we went to a workshop that Maiken was giving at this great TøyenHageKlubb where we learned more about the concept of permaculture. The place is great, and really about creating a green and social space for the neighbourhood.

We were greeted in Oslo by our lovely friend and amazing host Sissel, where we get to stay while we are here.

Her home is like a blast from the past, with beautiful old furniture coming from her family. We've already had some local Norwegian food and when we were talking about the importance of food and tradition, Sissel jumped up and showed us this fantastic book that her mother made for her. And it includes all the traditional food recipes from her part of the country, including her grandmother's meatball recipe and more. All made from scratch.

Louise and I are going on the first part of our 5 country Nordic tour. We have 4 interviews booked and plan to meet tons of other interesting people in Norway and Sweden. We are also looking forward to meeting our Norwegian project partner Margrethe Valler who helped us get in touch with the two ladies we'll interview in Oslo! We'll keep you updated here on the blog (and probably also on facebook and twitter), so you can follow our adventure from your home!  And if you have any suggestions of things we should see or do along the way, leave us a comment!!

This Nordic tour is made possible by the wonderful support of the Nordic Culture fund