Sean C. Morgan
Esben Selvig and Thomas Gullestad came all the way from Norway to Oregon looking for weirdness. They went gold panning instead.
The two host the Norwegian television program “Dansken og Fingern” (“The Dane” – Selvig – and “The Finger” – Gullestad) and this season they are traveling the United States to meet with relatives and friends of Norwegian celebrities under the season title “Uncle America.”
Along the way, they’re getting to know the states they visit.
“What we found is Oregon is the state of weird,” Gullestad said, whether talking about zombie squads, Bigfoot, UFOs or alien contact.
Oregon, Sweet Home in particular, has some good gold panning too.
“We’re sitting on one of the longest open corridors for gold mining in Oregon,” said Rita Houston, owner of Oregon Prospecting and Rita’s Relics.”
That’s why Selvig and Gullestad dropped in on them Thursday about 18 miles up Quartzville Road, to film a segment for their program.
They contacted Houston a couple of weeks earlier after finding her website, she said. Her husband, Steve Houston, ended up coordinating with the program.
“The show is actually about Norway ancestry,” Gullestad said. They start in Norway with a celebrity and then look for the relatives of those who migrated to the United States between 1830 and 1930. During that period, more than one-third of the Norwegian population immigrated to the United States.
“Going to different states, we try to find what’s typical about the state,” Gullestad said. They spend a week in each state and have already been to Florida, South Dakota and New York. They alternate between two weeks in the United States and then two weeks in Norway.
After an afternoon panning for gold, Norwegian TV host Thomas Gullestad pauses for a photo with his gold panning hosts. From left, they are Ken Keenon, Rita Houston, Steve Houston, Gullestad and Nick Cross.
According to the show’s Wikipedia entry, Gullestad (“Fingers”) was previously a deejay in a rap group. Selvig was a singer in a hip-hop group.
“Why we have come here to dig for gold is gold is the only thing of stable value when everything goes to hell,” Gullestad said.
During Gullestad and Selvig’s program, now in its second season, they challenge each other constantly. Most of the first season, spent in Norway, was about those contests. Last week was no different. The contest: Who could pan more gold.
Steve Houston salted a small amount of gold into the hosts’ pans and sluices to make sure the hosts would find something.
“I didn’t need to,” he said. “I shouldn’t have bothered.”
They had a great day panning for gold.
“There was stuff we didn’t even pan out,” Rita said.
That didn’t stop attempts at shortcuts in the contest.
Gullestad said Selvig cheated and he lost.
“When you cheat, make sure you win,” Gullestad said.
“Esben doesn’t know Thomas cheated too,” Rita Houston said.
But keep a lid on it. He doesn’t really need to know. And never mind about the nugget of Fool’s Gold Gullestad asked the Houstons to slip secretly into Selvig’s pan.
The seeding wasn’t necessary because the visitors found a lot more gold than Steve provided. He estimated that Gullestad probably found about 2 grams of gold. The pair found about $200 worth of gold.
They started the day on the Morning Show on KATU in Portland, Selvig said. “We challenged the town of Portland to come up with the weirdest people they have.”
After gold panning, they planned to talk to a UFO abductee, a UFO expert and a zombie squad. They also planned visits to more mundane places, like a preparednesss center and then a fund-raising event with two relatives of Norwegian celebrities. They also were scheduled to attend a lutefisk, a traditional Norwegian dinner of fermented cod. Some 400 to 500 people were expected to attend.
This week, Selvig and Gullestad were planning to visit Minnesota, the most Norwegian state in the union, Gullestad said.
Both enjoyed their visit to Oregon.
“Love it,” Selvig said. “Beautiful. I think it’s the most beautiful state we’ve been to.”
Portland is very European, like a small San Francisco, Gullestad said. “It feels like coming home.”
The vegetation is different, but it’s green and fantastic, Selvig said. “Everything is bigger, even the gold nuggets.”
And Sweet Home?
“I love it,” Selvig said. “If I was ever to shoot a drama series, I’d definitely do it in Sweet Home.”
They didn’t get too long a look, Gullestad said. They dropped in at Oregon Prospecting and Rita’s Relics and then traveled through town to get to the Quartzville Corridor, where they and the Houstons met up with Ken Keenon and Nick Cross, who had gone out earlier to set up the gold panning site.
Cross and Keenon both got into metal detecting and gold panning about four years ago, and they’re planning a trip to Alaska with Steve Houston, using detectors to hunt gold on a private claim.
Keenon said he first heard about the “Dansken og Fingern” program last week.
“They just mentioned it to me and I said, ‘Sure,’”
He and Cross were busy all morning preparing the site.
The four locals had a ball working with Selvig and Gullestad, they said. Language wasn’t a barrier because every member of the crew and the hosts spoke good English.
Even though they spent a lot of time on camera and off-camera speaking Norwegian, Rita Houston said she could get an idea of what was going on from their gestures, tone and faces.
“They had really great personalities,” Rita said. “They were really fun to work with. They were easy to work with. I had a great time. They were a great crew to work with. They made it fun.”
The Houstons have worked with TV crews before, Steve said, but that Oregon crew was much more serious the whole time – not nearly as much fun.
And it was easy to forget the mic was on, Rita said. A little off-color humor might end up making it an after-primetime show.
“We got to laughing so hard,” Rita said. “It took a little bit to regroup.”
“At the end of the day, it was probably one of the best days going in the hole,” Rita said. “The weather was good. The weather was perfect for it.”