by Mary Jo
As is my unfortunate custom, I hurled a manuscript into email for my editor and a few hours later left on a major vacation: in this case, a flight to Oslo where we would pick up a cruise ship in Bergen and then sail across the North Atlantic to Montreal. Which we’ve done, and it was a great way to recover from deadline panic. We saw many wonderful things, several blogs worth. I napped a lot. <G>
We sailed on a terrific Viking Ocean cruise called In the Wake of the Vikings in a brand new ship called the Viking Sky. (The Mayhem Consultant and I independently picked this itinerary out of a fat Viking catalog. Image above is from the Oslo ship museum.)
The Sky a beautiful ship with wonderful, thoughtful design at every level and I could write a blog about it, but won't because this is not an ad for Viking. <G> But here is a gorgeous horsy piece of artwork from the ship, one of many.
We started in Norway. After tours in Oslo, Bergen, and into the mountains, I learned much, and soon realized that one can hear a lot about a country and have mental images without actually knowing much about it. My thoughts on Norway were basically:
North! Cold! Vikings! Skiers! Gorgeous fjords and mountains! Gorgeous tall blond Norwegians! Constitutional monarchy of the bicycle riding royals variety!
All of which is true, but hardly the whole story. Half the country lies north of the Arctic Circle and only 4% of the land is arable. This and a very long coastline explains why Norway became one of the great maritime nations of history, ranging from historic Vikings onward. Those first Vikings had superior seamanship skills and ranged widely as traders, raiders, and explorers. Viking long ships traveled to the Mediterranean and even Central Asia, and established settlements in many places. The French province of Normandy, for example, is named for the Northmen who settled there.
Though English speaking people like me tend to use Nordic and Scandinavian as interchangeable, one guide told us firmly that "Scandinavia" is specifically three countries: Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, and they speak a mutually intelligible language, though with some variations. "Nordic" countries are a broader classification and include Finland, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, and Greenland. In that part of the world, "Norden" is used, meaning "the North."
The Norwegian royal family are indeed "bicycle riding royals," but though the kingdom is ancient, the current royal house is relatively recent. For long periods of time the country was controlled by Denmark or Sweden, and it didn't separate into an independent nation until its union with Sweden was dissolved in 1905.
Since the country no longer had a king, Prince Carl of Denmark, a younger son of the Danish king, was invited to take the throne. He wisely said he would, on the condition that the Norwegian people voted on whether they wanted him. They did, and it was a perfect beginning for a constitutional monarchy. He took the Norwegian name of Haakon VII and ruled for 52 years as a popular, non-political, and very effective ruler.
Haakon and his oldest son, Crown Prince Olaf, spent WWII living as a government in exile in London while the Crown Princess and younger children lived with President Roosevelt in the White House. (I did not know that!) The story of Haakon's resistance to Nazi demands and his moral authority is very inspiring.
I really liked the capital, Oslo; it's one of those cities that I look at and think, "I could live here." (It would help if I spoke Norwegian, of course. <G>) It's beautiful, civilized, and there is lots of water. It has been rated as the most livable large city in Europe. The metropolitan area has a population of about 1.7 million people--and this in a country where the overall population is only 5.2 million.
The subtext is that Norway is tough, challenging place to live, which explains the huge emigrations of the 19th century. Norwegians moved to many places around the world, but most of all to the American Midwest: we were told that over 800,000 people emigrated there over a period of 90 years, with Minnesota and Wisconsin being the most popular destinations.
One can see the appeal: the Norwegians were used to dealing with cold weather, and the Midwest offered vast tracts of mostly level farmland, very different from the mountains of Norway. There is a straight line from that vast emigration to Garrison Keillor's Norwegian bachelor farmers. <G>
One of the most popular tourist destinations in Oslo is Frogner Park, which includes over 200 sculptures by Gustav Vigeland, a Norwegian sculptor who was basically given free rein and a government income to create sculptures about the life and nature of humankind. The statues are mostly bronzes, and they are lovely and full of life.
The second most popular tourist attraction is the Oslo Viking Ship Museum, which contains original long ships that had been used for burials. The ships had been in use before they were turned into grave, and three of the four of them are very well preserved. Stunning! One hall included terrific graphic projections.
We took a scenic train ride over the mountains to Bergen, Norway's second largest city, and a major maritime city. It was one of the cities of the Hanseatic League, which was a group of Germanic trading guilds that worked together for defense and economic security. Their waterfront warehouse and trading area called Bryggen is a world heritage site because it looks essentially the same as it did in the Hanseatic era. Though the houses have been rebuilt over time, they have had the same colors and measurements as the original building.
A principal product of Bergen was stockfish, a general term for air dried fish, usually cod. When dried properly, it could last for up to seven years and it was a principal source of food for Norwegians and sailors of all kinds. (I suspect that a lot of re-hydration was needed to make it edible!)
Sigh. I can't possibly describe all the wonders of Norway in one blog--that's why so many links--but time is running out and my cats have not recovered from my absence and they are demanding extra cuddle time. (All four of them are STARING at me!)
So--have you ever been to Norway? Would you like to visit? I can highly recommend it!
Mary Jo, showing the Bryggen trading houses