Norway in a Nutshell

Taking a two day train and boat trip after spending a week on a ship looking at fjords and another week on the ground might seem like a bit much.  I like to think of it as dessert.  In fact, if you have only one day to see the fjords in Norway, this is the way to do it.  I stretched it into two days to make it a little more civilized, but you can leave Oslo at 7:00 am and arrive in Bergen at 11:00 pm having seen the best of Norway. As we cruised northward on the Hurtigruten ship, they laughingly told us that everything was “the northernmost [fill in the blank] in the world or in Europe.”  The northernmost store in the world, the northernmost gas station in the world, etc. etc.  Obviously, Norway’s mountains cannot compete with the Alps, so everything on this trip was “the highest [fill in the blank] in Northern Europe.  The train ride from Oslo to Bergen, which absolutely is beautiful, is the highest train in Northern Europe.  All right.

Seriously, the train ride is beautiful as it climbs from the lowland of Oslo over the mountains to Myrdal.  At Myrdal, we transferred to the Flamsbana (Flam Railroad) which descends steeply to Flam which sits on the tip of the Sognefjord.  The Flamsbana is the steepest regular gauge railroad … in the world?  in Europe?  in Northern Europe?  Who knows?  Anyway, it is so steep that it has three independent braking systems.  And what other railroad has a five minute stop for a photo op at a gushing waterfall?

My only complaint with the two train rides was that there were too many tunnels.  Those darn Norwegians are too modern and efficient.  I wanted to keep looking at the scenery. On the Hurtigrutten cruise, I said it was like sailing endlessly through Yosemite Valley, which I think is one of the most beautiful places in the world.  Why not? I realized this week.  Yosemite and the fjords here were made by the same process of glaciation.  According to the official description:  

The Aurlandsfjord is a 17-kilometre arm of the world’s second-longest fjord, the Sognefjord, and starts in Flåm and ends at the mountain Beitelen, which separates the Aurlandsfjord from the Nærøyfjord.  Together with the Nærøyfjord, the Aurlandsfjord is one of the most picturesque fjords in the world. This stunning fjord is a part of the World Heritage area and is surrounded by high mountains that reach heights of over 1,400 metres.  The Nærøyfjord is the narrowest and best known of the many arms of the Sognefjord. Surrounded by towering mountains up to 1,700 meters high, this arm of the Sognefjord is amazingly beautiful. With its steep mountainsides, hanging valleys, towering peaks, snowfields, waterfalls, and small hamlets, this fjord is perhaps the most outstanding natural attraction in Norway. The Nærøyfjord is 20 km long, only 250 meters across at its narrowest and a mere 12 meters at its shallowest.

I agree completely.  From Flam we took an e-boat (the future of fjord cruising) up the Sognefjord that again felt like cruising endlessly through Yosemite Valley.  Doesn’t this look like North Dome? The mountains rise straight out of the fjord and even in late July, had patches of snow on them. So there were dozens of towering waterfalls on both sides. Periodically there would be a small town on a flat stretch on the bottom, and every so often, a lone house perched halfway up. It was stunning.

After the cruise, we took a bus back to the Oslo-Bergen railroad and continued on the train to Bergen where I got to spend another half-day with Jane.  First, however, I took the funicular up the mountain overlooking Bergen.  After dinner with Jane and her family, I took a quick flight back to Oslo.  And that is Norway in a Nutshell.

On my last day in Oslo, I got in a quick visit to the Royal Palace.  How many royal palaces does one have the opportunity to see in one’s lifetime?  When Norway finally became an independent country in 1905, they decided to become a monarchy but had just one problem: no local royalty. They needed a royal family and also needed protection from Sweden.  So they invited the grandson of the king of Denmark to be their king.  His advantages included a wife in the English royal line and a son and heir already in existence.  He had never been to Norway and did not speak Norwegian.  Minor problems.  He and his family moved to Norway and he changed his name from Carl to Haakon VII and changed his son’s name to the very Norwegian Olav.  And today, the royal family is beloved in Norway. Seriously, you can’t make this stuff up. Finally, I made a quick visit to the Nobel Peace Center.  Although the other Nobel Prizes are awarded in Stockholm, Sweden, the Peace Prize is awarded in the Oslo City Hall.

On one of my walking tours I did a double take when I saw this row of bicycles.  It turns out that this is a bicycle parking lot, and the metal sculptures are for locking one’s bike.  And finally one more thing I have never seen before:  A Roomba for mowing the lawn.

Oslo

My shortened bike ride was still quite nice as we stayed in resort villages on the shores of the Oslo Fjord, and rode through the surrounding countryside.  Finally, on Friday I arrived in Oslo with the opportunity to see more than the inside of the airport.

Norway’s history is a bit odd as it was allied with Denmark and at odds with Sweden for most of it, so the independent country is little more than a hundred years old.  Oslo’s history is interesting in a different way.  Logging was a huge industry here and all of the old buildings were made of wood.  Oslo thus suffered no fewer than fourteen major fires.  Finally, they (that is, a Danish king) decided to move the city center and rebuild with brick and stone.  (Duh!)  As a result, there are almost no buildings here from before the eighteenth century.  

In recent years, Oslo has undergone a second rebuilding.  Using its oil money wisely, Norway has invested in modern buildings while also repurposing old buildings such as factories.  Highways have been moved underground so the city streets are fairly uncrowded and there is little street noise.  A tax on cars coming into the city helps keep the streets uncrowded.  As a modern European city, there is a modern, efficient system of trams, buses, and metros, as well as several streets dedicated to walking, miles of bike lanes, and buses and trams that go everywhere.

A silo repurposed as a dormitory

Modern building complex called the Barcode

As a very modern city in a very affluent and modern country, Oslo, like China, is a nearly cashless society where everything is paid not with a card but a phone app.  At one food court booth I went to, you order and pay on your phone and the one man working there sends a text when your food is ready.  He would not let me either order or pay in person.

Two other weird food facts that I am not sure that I believe.  According to one guide, the most eaten food in Oslo is …. wait for it … tacos.  Really?  Also, with a population of only six million, he said that Norway consumes eleven percent of all Pepsi Max worldwide.  I feel like I am not doing my share.  The explanation for this factoid might be that we drink way more Diet Pepsi in the US, but that is not available here, just Pepsi Max which is also sugar free.

Another weird factoid ... I'm not sure if it is a sign of modernity ... The first time I left my hotel room, I checked the door and it did not lock.  I kept opening and closing it, but it would not lock, so I went down to the desk to report the "problem."  The very nice man at the desk explained that as a safety feature, the door locks after about thirty seconds.  In case there is a fire and you run out without your key, you can run back in for something (or someone?) you forgot.  Oh, sure.  I'd probably want to run back in if the room were on fire.  I guess after fourteen major fires you think about emergency measures.

I took a walking tour of Oslo on my first day to get myself oriented, and then a couple more walks in interesting neighborhoods.  There are a few older sites like the medieval Akershus Fortress and the old City Hall, but not surprisingly, most of the sites are modern.  The Akers River flows through Oslo for ten miles with green area and walking/bike paths along the entire way.  I should have realized when the guide said there were dozens of waterfall that we would be walking uphill the whole way, but it was still worth it.  Beautiful area in the middle of the city.

The highlight was a tour I took of the Oslo Opera and Ballet House.  Just ten years old, it looks like a glacier and you can walk on the various roof levels.  It is designed to be for the people, both inside and out.  The tour took us through the inner workings and backstage area.  Half the building which is not usually seen by audiences contains opera, ballet, and orchestra practice areas, administrative offices, and a huge costume design and storage area.  The backstage was huge because there are actually three interchangeable stages including one that revolves and can be lowered into the basement and two other stages that can be put in its place with entire sets on them.  Also, the ballet floor is suspended in four pieces and can be lowered into place.  Who knew that operas and ballets have different floors?  Makes sense.

From the inside you can see people walking on the roof

When in Oslo … of course, I went to the Edvard Munch Museum.  His whole body of work was impressive but, of course, you have to see The Scream.  They have three of the four copies of it here but they only show one at a time, rotating them every hour to protect them from too much light.  Unfortunately, in the time I was there, I saw the print and the pastel, but not the painting.  Everyone knows the mask, but I didn’t remember that it is set against a vividly red sunset. Also, the original title was The Scream of Nature.  The androgynous figure is not screaming; rather, the figure is covering its ears so as not to hear nature screaming.  It turns out that Munch was frightened by the red sunset. Hmmm… okay.

Another artistic highlight of Oslo is Vigeland Park - the largest sculpture park dedicated all to the work of one artist, Gustav Vigeland. There are hundreds of sculptures of nudes, singly and in various somewhat bizarre combinations. Like this one of a pile of babies.

Perhaps the most famous of the sculptures is Angry Boy.

I also enjoyed visiting two of the museums on the Bygdoy Peninsula, which my handy transportation app told me to go to by bus and return by ferry.  The Kon Tiki museum is dedicated to Thor Heyerdahl who had a theory that the people in Polynesia came originally not from Asia but from South America.  As he wasn’t believed, he and his crew built a balsa wood raft and sailed along the ocean current (without steering) for 101 days and did in fact reach Polynesia.  He built and sailed other boats that he designed in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans.

Next door to the Kon Tiki Museum was the Fram Museum.  I had learned about the Fram at the Polar Museum in Tromso.  It was the specially built boat that was designed to go into the Arctic ice, get stuck there in the current, and thereby reach the North Pole.  I had gotten the impression at the Polar Museum that the expedition was a failure, but in fact the boat, which is in the eponymous Fram Museum, did spend three years in the Arctic ice stream, surviving with everyone on board actually gaining weight.  There was just a slight miscalculation:  the ice stream goes in a circle around the Pole, so the ship never crossed it.

It is totally amazing to me that so many people, and in particular, so many Norwegians, were willing to go on long, impossible expeditions to prove rather dubious points or to be the first one THERE.   An interesting exhibit showed the “race” in 1911 between Roald Amundsen and Robert Scott to be the first to the South Pole.  Amundsen got there first and left a letter for Scott to bring back to his family if he didn’t make it back, but it was Scott, who arrived a few months later and saw the letter, who did not make it back. Amundsen, who is still a Norwegian hero, may have also reached the North Pole first as other claims are dubious. He died himself on an Arctic rescue mission.

I am spending my final two days in Norway on my own expedition. Hardly a leap into the unknown, it is marketed as Norway in a Nutshell, and involves three trains, a boat, a bus, and a plane ride back to Oslo. Can't wait.

The Joys of Travel

 

Five years ago at the moment that I took this picture, I was the southernmost person in all of Africa.  Today, along with the others in my group,  I was the northernmost person in all of Europe.  Unfortunately, I never saw the view of North Cape as it was completely fogged in.  But hey, I was there.

I was right about the nationalities of the people on the cruise.  There were four buses to North Cape from the cruise dock:  two in German, one in German and Norwegian, and one in French and English.  Needless to say, I was in the fourth bus and it was less than half full.

I was a bit concerned about my connections getting to the cruise but never considered that the one flight from Kirkenes, our end point, to Oslo would be canceled because SAS is on strike.  Do you know how hard it is to get to anywhere from Kirkenes?  There are no flights except the one SAS flight that was canceled.  It is a 24 hour drive to Oslo but there are no rental cars available.   Kirkenes might as well be the northernmost place in Europe as it is just as inaccessible.  The cruise line has arranged an eight hour bus ride to Rovaniemi, Finland, because FinnAir is not on strike.  Rovaniemi?  I can honestly say that I had never expected to visit there in my lifetime.

But it turns out that Rovaniemi is one of the largest cities in Finland and is famous, at least as much a random Finnish city can be famous.  Not only is it the capital of Lapland; more importantly, it is the Official Hometown of Santa Claus.  Who knew?  One of the don’t-miss sites is Santa Park (not to be confused with Santa Village which is also in Rovaniemi) where you can go to Elf School to learn how to become an elf.  How was this not on my can’t-miss list?

But back to Norway and the cruise.  Notwithstanding the uniformly gray skies, the scenery continues to be beautiful although the stops in cities are a bit underwhelming.  Trondheim is famous for its classic Gothic Cathedral, but in Tromso they have the much more interesting Arctic Cathedral which looks like slabs of ice.  Tromso also has a Polar Museum with information about North and South Pole excursions and winter hunting trips.  Needless to say, a lot of Norwegians were involved and Roald Amundsen is still a national hero. All I can say is that those guys were nuts, spending months essentially snowed in with whatever they brought with them or could kill.  And the excursions in the early twentieth century to the North Pole took months, if not years.  One genius had the brilliant idea that if he sailed a ship into the Arctic ice, the flow of the ice would bring the ship over the North Pole.  Wrong.  Although he spent years building a super strong ship that could withstand the pressure of the ice, they ended up iced in for over two years and never got more than a few more degrees north.  Amundsen finally made it over the North Pole in a airship.

And one last unique landform that we sailed by - Finnkirka. Unfortunately, I never saw it as I was on my computer trying to figure out how to get out of Kirkenes.

Fish and Potatoes

It is not surprising that they have a lot of fish in Norway.  After all, there are 63,000 miles of coastline (including islands) which is the second longest in the world after Canada.  But who knew that the real national dish is potatoes?!?!  I can’t say that I am enjoying the side dishes with every meal.  The variety of meats is a bit different than I am used to.  To keep meat fresh in the old days, they salted or smoked everything, and they still do quite a bit.  Of course, I expected smoked salmon, but smoked lamb?  That’s a new one on me.  My first night on the ship they served ox - another first for me.  And tonight I tried white onion soup which was made with pickled onions, dried reindeer meat, and leek oil.  Hmmm … not ingredients I usually combine.  There are a lot of Thai and Chinese restaurants.  I walked by one tonight that had all the standard Chinese dishes that I am used to but also a local specialty - deep fried cod tongue.  Of course.

The scenery has been as spectacular as expected.  It is almost like floating by a Yosemite Valley that goes on and on.  But it never gets old.  It is also reminiscent of Halong Bay in Vietnam, but there it feels eerie, and here it feels majestic. On our second day we sailed into Geiranger Fjord, one of the most famous and beautiful fjords with dozens of waterfalls.  It took the better part of a day for the round trip. 

Tonight we are in the Lofoten Islands where the mountains rise dramatically right from the water. 

Passing through the Lofoten Islands, we went into the short, narrow, and dramatic Trollfjord.  They told us not to go to bed because we will not enter it until 11:45 but that it was worth staying up for.  Needless to say, we won’t have any trouble seeing it as the sun will still be up. And, of course, they were right. It was worth staying up for. A short narrow fjord barely wider than the ship with both sides rising dramatically straight up.

We did cross the Arctic Circle this morning at 7:40.  I happily slept through that great event.  But later in the morning we had the “traditional” Crossing the Arctic Circle celebration:  a glass of champagne after they poured ice cubes down your back.  I passed on both but still received an official certificate.

The weather has been overcast and drizzly off and on.  Too bad because I really wanted to see the sun make a circle around the sky, rather than its one way route that we usually see. But the weather had hardly detracted from the spectacular scenery.

I hear very little English onboard the ship and even less American English. It is impossible to distinguish Scandinavian languages, so I can't tell where those speakers are from, but it does seem like the predominant language spoken on the ship is German.