The pilot's cheery voice ended, '...and in Oslo right now the ground temperature is -22°C.' There was a little murmur of anticipation around me on the plane: the British enjoy a challenge, and the Norwegians presumably enjoy the cold.
I don't. What's more, I wasn't dressed for it. That wasn't simply incompetence, though I am a serially incompetent packer. I was only going to be in Oslo for three days, to cover the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize: unquestionably an indoor kind of thing to do. The most I would have to do outside was a couple of pieces to camera and a dash to some pleasant nearby restaurant. But I hadn't expected -22°C. That's the problem with looking things up on the web beforehand: you think it's gospel. The web had said -3°C max.
And so I was wearing a neat black suit, and had an overcoat and a scarf in the locker above me. My silk long johns were packed away in my suitcase, and the only real concession I had made to the temperature was to bring a decent hat. Men of a certain age — I'm 66 — tend to go in for hats. Is it because, after all the hatless decades, we want to imitate our fathers, who put their hats on just to go to the corner shop?
My hat is a feeble attempt to add a little much-needed glamour to my life. It comes from Swaine Adeney Brigg, at the top of St James's Street in London, who will supply you with the 'original and first' Indiana Jones hat, as made in 1980 for Harrison Ford, with its brim pulled down (for that desirable explorer look) and narrowed at the sides (good for camera angles).
If I'd known it was going to be so cold in Norway I would have brought my elaborate fur hat bought in the far Canadian north, for which some beautiful animal had sacrificed its life. But that is a pretty strong fashion statement, not to be displayed in a temperate, liberal-minded place like London. I would also have brought my sealskin mittens, which come from the same general area (things made by indigenous people, in this case the Inuit, give you a certain protection from criticism). I might perhaps have brought my Siberian felt boots, which are the warmest things I have ever worn on my feet. But I would have looked a very definite charlie at Heathrow. And unless the temperature is really life-threatening, I would have looked one in the sophisticated streets of Oslo, too.
When you first step off an aircraft, the unheated air bridge is often an indicator of temperature. Here, the cold shafted through to my thighs and knees instantly. Yes, -22°C sounded about right. Yet I've known far worse: a couple of years ago, when I was making a film in what used to be Frobisher Bay in Canada (hence the hat and mittens), the temperature began at -39°C and sank to -70°C out on the open ice when the wind blew.
But the most intense and depressing cold I remember was in Sarajevo during the siege of 1992. The temperature there was consistently -19°C at night, and at the Holiday Inn (where all the windows had been blown out as a result of mortar attacks and been replaced with thin, clear plastic sheeting), I kept almost all my clothes on as I wriggled into my high-tech sleeping bag, pulled the bedclothes over me and tied a scarf round my head and jaw like an old market woman. It was still too cold to get to sleep quickly. I spent two months like that, with food heavily rationed and occasional sips of whisky brought in by thoughtful newcomers.
Oslo is a delightful city, with a lot of attractive turn-of-the-century architecture. Unlike increasing numbers of places in Europe, North America and Asia, it gives you the feeling you've gone somewhere that is different, specific, of itself. Norwegians have a well-developed sense of themselves, which other Scandinavians find amusing. A Danish friend once told me a no doubt ancient and familiar joke, about an international prize that is offered for writing an essay about elephants. The British entry is about hunting elephants (you see how antique the story is); the French entry is about how elephants make love; the Italian entry is about cooking elephant meat. The Norwegian entry is called 'Norway, Beautiful Norway'.
Well, they're right. Norway is one of the most beautiful countries anywhere, with — for a tiny population — a magnificent inheritance: Vikings, Normans, Grieg and Ibsen, the fjords, the Arctic. I spend a lot of my time going to countries that I want to come back to with my wife and son, and Norway is in the front rank.
The cold soon diminished to single figures, so I wasn't too inappropriately dressed after all. I slipped on a patch of icy pavement — Norwegians seem a lot less worried about ice than other Europeans are — but otherwise the trip was a delight from start to finish. Since the BBC was paying, the unthinkable prices didn't hurt quite as much as they might: £150 for a people carrier from the airport to the centre of Oslo, meals that regularly cost double or even triple the BBC allowance, £10 for a coffee and a beer.
At such times I always think of Woody Allen's line in Manhattan from the taxi he and his girlfriend are travelling in: 'You're so beautiful I can scarcely keep my eyes on the meter.' Even Oggy, my producer, who looks after the money and is remarkably sanguine about everything, suggested that ordering a second berry-flavoured vodka would create difficulties with the BBC.
But what the hell? It was so very warm and convivial inside, and so cold outside in Norway, beautiful Norway.
John Simpson is the BBC's world affairs editor and can be seen around the globe on BBC World News, available in 200 countries and territories worldwide, and on selected British Airways flights.
