GET TO KNOW US

Meet Our Family and Journey

In the fall of 2024, I went backpacking with my family to Southeast Asia. I was given leave from my job as a teacher at a secondary school in Askøy, and Haakon (my husband of 22 years) quit his job as a sales manager. We took the youngest, Luka (10), the eldest, Mia (16) and Theo (13) on a journey of discovery.

Our trip was carefully planned until December, and since then we’ve traveled wherever the wind takes us. The itinerary so far has been Thailand – Cambodia – Vietnam – Thailand again – Malaysia.

Siv (42) trained as a lecturer and journalist. Extremely fond of TV series and movies, reading books and drinking wine. Haakon (42), on the other hand, prefers beer, football and music. He is a trained sound engineer and former rapper.

Mia (16) misses her first year at Bergen Katedralskole, but takes the travel year as a private student and can jump straight into VG2 when we return. They are passionate about music, and their favorite right now is Chapell Roan (but are quite omnivorous when it comes to music). They devour everything Marvel-related and love musicals.

Theo (13) is into football, and football, cars and then more football. He likes good old-school rappers like Biggie and Eazy-E – much to his dad’s pride. Theo also likes Playstation, but he prefers FIFA. His dream is to play for Man U.

Luka (10) is the family wildcard. He’s an unparalleled taming machine and is already a workhorse. He’s our duracell rabbit who’s always up to something fun. Luka loves football, and every training session is serious business. The only time he’s down is when he’s playing Playstation.

As a family, we have always valued openness, diversity and equality. We believe in freedom of religion and have great respect for different beliefs and cultures, even though we do not belong to any religion ourselves. Our outlook on life is characterized by humanism, with a focus on empathy, tolerance and inclusion. We recognize gender diversity and believe in the right to define yourself, whether you feel like a boy, a girl, both or neither. With many of the same values at our core, we have found strength in facing the world together – with curiosity, respect and an open mind.