The Five Best Days in Ten Years of Gunnar Askeland's Puddle, Ranked
Gunnar Askeland has pointed one camera at one dip in a Bergen courtyard every morning since October 2016. We watched about forty hours and picked the days that mattered.
The puddle is behind a bakery, in a dip in the tarmac the size of a door. The camera sits on a bracket bolted to a drainpipe. Every morning at 07:10 it records forty seconds. Askeland has missed four days. He says two were flu.
There are more than 3,600 clips. He has watched all of them, he says, "some of them twice, by accident." Here are the best five.
**5. 3 March 2017.** A gull steps in and stands there for four minutes. It does not drink or wash. It looks at the lens once. Askeland kept all four minutes and cut nothing, which is his policy, but you can tell he wanted to.
**4. 19 November 2020.** The puddle has frozen to a skin. A dog crosses it and the skin breaks in a clean line from corner to corner. The owner apologises to the camera in Norwegian. Then she apologises again, quieter, to the puddle.
**3. 8 August 2022.** At 07:10 the sky is pink and the puddle holds all of it. This is the only morning in ten years it looked like a painting. Askeland does not like this day. "Too much," he says. It is the clip people ask for.
**2. 2 February 2019.** The streetlight is out. The only light comes from a kitchen window on the second floor. Someone is frying fish. A rectangle of yellow lies on the water and a shadow moves across it, back and forth, for forty seconds. Nothing else happens. It is the most tender thing he has made.
**1. 14 June 2023.** A man in a wedding suit walks into the courtyard. He is carrying his shoes. He stops at the edge and looks down. He straightens his tie using the puddle. He puts his shoes on and leaves. Askeland has never found out who he was. He has asked at the bakery. They remember nothing, only that the oven was late that day.
**Not ranked: 11 September 2021.** It was a puddle. Grey water, grey tarmac, no wind. Askeland's log entry for the day reads "Water." He says he included it on purpose. The tenth anniversary is on 14 October next year, and he has said the camera stays where it is.
