18/1 – First monday trip with the Norwegians

Introduction:  Jegersberg is an area placed between Gimlekollen, Søda and Justvik and it starts right behind the University of Agder in Kristiansand. In Jegersberg it is possible to use the area for biking and hiking in both on small roads, paths and in the forest. Besides that there are many opportunities to camp and overnight which is because of the Norwegian ‘Alle mands ret’. The area that we put up our tents was a small ravine with forest around, a lake right by and even a primitive toilet.

«First time with the Norwegians Friluftliv class and we are going skiing, yayy..»  

They started to introduce them self and then we had a couple of warm-up games, here we got to laugh and forget that we didn’t know each other that well. In the beginning the game wasn’t that hard, we played ‘stiv Heks’ which was really fun. People ran around, laughed and streamed, and when they said ‘switch, theres going to be a new catcher’ I took it, and I was sprinting around, and got caught up in it, so I was exhausted. It was so much fun and I think that the organiser group were very good at taking the different roles within the group, it was clear that there was the coordinator and team-worker and all the other Norwegian that didn’t plan this day, were all very good at being in between of the Resource Investigator and the team-worker. It gave a good energy to the hole group. After a while they said, ‘take your skiis on, and then we are going to play with the same with skiis’. That was very fun and it seemed like everybody forgot about technique and balance, but they still improved including myself.

Then they diveded us in to two group, and we made a relay on the skiies, I remember that I thought that this was really great, but also really traditional games, but then I got caught up the competition and I tried to think of the technique.  There were a lot of laughter and it was a good challenge, it was funny to watch how our own group got more cohesion of cheering and laughing with each other. Afterward my group went to the other coordinators group and here we were going to ski downhill and over a small jump.

I think the Norwegians expected that we wasn’t as good on skiies as we were, but even though we had fun, the fact that we just were on the skies help all of us getting better at the technique and balance.The day was one of those days where the focus should have been on learning tons of new stuff, but instead it another focus more important: Getting to know your classmate much better and challenge yourself with a bigger hill or bigger jump. The cohesion in our big group became stronger and the groupdynamic got more grounded..

Reference:  

Group Communication, slide 6-15

Group Cohesion, slide 2-10

Norwegian Friluftsliv, slide 20-24