During the 1989-1990 Yuletide season, my dear friend Stefan Posthuma and myself made a trip to Norway. Norway was the home of a bunch of cool (I say ‘cool’ but I think most regular folks would call them ‘nerdy’ or ‘geeky’) guys who appeared to be fans of what we were doing with the Atari ST disk magazine ST NEWS. They wrote articles for it as well, and we exchanged so-called Crazy Audio Tapes¹Miscellaneous ramblings recorded on audio cassettes, including mundane stuff like the sounds of us cooking food, or singing along to various metal songs.. really.. it couldn’t get crazy enough!, Crazy Letters²Extended ramblings in written form, exchanged in digital form on floppy disk – they got longer and longer, and often included hypothetical visits to Norway and ravishings of Gro Harlem Brundtland… and even a Crazy Video Tape³A 1989 one-off (because prohibitively expensive to make a copy to send to Norway) experiment, which was basically a Crazy Audio Tape but with added video – a 55-minute stream-of-consciousness ‘masterpiece’ including some quite inebriated bits, and one declaration of love…. These were basically podcasts, blogs and a Youtube video avant la lettre. We’d been in touch with them so much – but had never physically met – that we decided we wanted to visit them. And so it came to pass that we went to snowy Ørsta on what we called “The ST NEWS Norway Quest”. Where we saw lots of cute dogs, ate (and found out we disliked) brunost, were exposed to the concept of car dating and saw more snow and hard water than we could shake a stick at. It was there that we met main Norwegian guy Ronny “Ynnor the Divine One” Hatlemark and his sister Elin, Torbjørn “Lord HackBear” Ose and his cousins Morten and Ole J., Frøystein “Frøykid” Hustadnes, Karl-Anders Øygard and Gard “Drag the Insanely Witty One” Eggesbø Abrahamsen. We exported Plantiac⁴A.k.a. the Divine Fluid, a kind of Dutch drink (“Vieux”) that Stefan and me were very keen on! and Mucky Pup music to them, and we imported Vendetta (the German band) music back.

Now I already indicated these guys were a smidgen geeky. And to use the word ‘smidgen’ is perhaps not entirely correct. Torbjørn was a hacker/cracker (he managed to crack the allegedly uncrackable Thalion Sound Demo), Karl-Anders later went to work for Opera (the browser) and Frøystein wrote the most insane articles you’ve ever read⁵Unfortunately, we also seemed to have irreparably damaged our relationship with him by assuming he was at least 10 years younger than he actually was, and giving him a brightly coloured plastic toy truck as a token of our appreciation 😉. Gard, however, was in a league of geekiness entirely his own (perhaps together with his brother, Jardar, whom we didn’t meet that winter). I think Gard was 16 at the time, and of very diminutive stature, but his mind was a-buzzing with all kinds of left-field, out-there, original and/or sometimes plain weird concept and thoughts. To give you an indication of how silly he could be: he sent us a picture of himself ‘topless’ (a portrait of him with the top of his head cut off) for inspiration. He also made a music video when still in high school (which was actually shown on Norwegian television!), and later started his own web server and his own disk magazine (“Scriba Communis Responsi”).

Although I kept in touch with some of the other ‘Nutty Norwegians’ (Torbjørn helped me with the .CPX module for my Atari ST virus killer, and I stayed at Ronny’s place during parts of my 1993 and 2019 summer holidays), Gard was the most persistent factor, especially after mid 1995 when my internet-virgin self started traversing the wonderful world of electronic communication. His endless patience and generosity should have been reasons for a sainthood, Nobel Prize, Pullitzer, Oscar, whatever. Without him I would not have been able to set up my first few web sites (nor host them), and I would have made many more an internet faux pas. He was My Main Internet Guy, my Google, my Web Roadmap, for years. He also made a Crazy Video (the 3-hour “OUCH Home Video”) that he sent to Stefan.

As sometimes tends to happen, I took most of that for granted. I may never actually have said “thank you” beyond letting him stay at my place one or two nights in 1995 (when he was job hunting in the Netherlands) and 2011 (when he was cycling through Europe). Like Phil Collins (and no doubt others before and since) said, you never know what you’ve got ’till you lose it. And that happened on August 13 2016, when Gard quite unexpectedly died, leaving behind four children and his wife. Though I have to admit I’d been less in touch with him then than during my fledgling internet years, it was a huge loss. He was the best guy ever – always there to help you, never expecting anything in return. He was creative, witty, and weird in the loveliest way. Life sometimes gave him lemons, but he always came out on top. His death was ironic and almost literary – he had the biggest heart, and then his heart stopped.

Yesterday was the day his passing happened 10 years ago. I wrote this blog because I don’t think that day should go by unnoticed. He was a great guy, and the world is not a better place without him.

For those of you who would like a more detailed glance at what the 1989-1990 “ST NEWS Norway Quest” days were like, click here (there be very crazy dragons!). If you’d like to read the heart-felt text Jardar wrote to commemorate his little brother’s passing yesterday, click here.