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Published: September 3rd 2022
Dear All
Greetings from London. Last week I got back from an epic five-and-a-half week adventure around the Nordic lands of Europe. As with my last trip around New England, I thought it best if this time I simply wrote notes as I travelled, and wrote up the proper blog entries upon my return home. This worked out well again this time, as again it meant I got to spend more time travelling and seeing the wonders of these amazing countries. I had a superb time and quite an epic journey, and over the coming weeks I plan to write up about my adventures in Norway, Denmark, the Faroe Islands and Iceland here, and also upload some photos alongside.
I left the UK in the middle of July, just as the UK was experiencing an unprecedented heatwave of 40 degrees. With any kind of extreme weather, the UK just cannot cope, it seems to go into meltdown when there is anything slightly out of the ordinary, whether it be cold weather, hot weather, snow, wind, leaves on train tracks, anything really. The media helps in no way at all with its whipping up of fear, drama and doomsday messages.
Norway from Above
Coming in to land on Norwegian AirOn my day of departure, a number of trains to Gatwick Airport were cancelled or delayed, but I did manage to get on one within a few minutes of arriving at the station, and it was packed to the gills with people flocking to Brighton to enjoy the weather. My flight with Norwegian Air from Gatwick to Oslo was on time and was a breeze - I did feel quite fortunate as I later read that Luton Airport, where I returned from Iceland at the end of August, had closed for a couple of hours in the afternoon due to the runway melting. I was hoping that the extreme heat would have left us by the end of August, and indeed it did. On the plane, I got talking to a nice chap next to me, a Danish university lecturer returning from a few days visiting friends in Oxford, who became the first person I practised my Norwegian with, and I don't think it was too bad! I had been learning Norwegian on the DuoLingo app for around six months prior to my trip, hoping to practise it during my travels.
The Oslo Airport experience was a bit longer
than what I'm used to. Due to Britain recently leaving the EU, and along with sporting my brand new blue passport which doesn't have "European Union" on the front cover, I joined for the first time in my life the "Other Passports" queue, rather than the EU one. It was actually shorter, and ended up with me getting a Norway stamp in my passport - yay! This new one needs filling up, and hopefully future trips planned to Europe will help it on its way now! The bags took over an hour to arrive though, and it seems Norway has similar issues employing airport personnel as the UK does, probably similar in a number of countries.
From the airport there was a direct train running through Oslo city centre, and onto the small town of Sandvika where I was staying, around ten miles to the south-west of the city - I always like to stay in suburbs when I travel, avoiding the tourist hotspots and getting to know the real country. From the train station, it was a short bus ride to my Air BnB accommodation - a very peaceful, self-contained annex stuck on to the side of a
building in the sprawling suburbs of Oslo. Before settling in for the evening, I headed to a nearby "Kiwi" minimarket to stock up on goods for my time there, having mainly booked accommodations with kitchens, fridges, ovens and microwaves, to save money on eating out which is, along with everything else, notoriously expensive in these countries. I planned to be doing lots of self-catering over the coming weeks.
After a good first night's sleep, I had a wonderful day around Oslo, my first full day on this trip. I wouldn't say it is a particularly attractive urban area in itself, the buildings are not particularly notable, and many seem to be of the concrete, featureless variety - it actually seemed more East European than Scandinavian to me. Its setting at the head of the Oslo fjord is quite stunning though, with the sea stretching out into the distance in front of the city, and mountains and forests overlooking it from the north. For such a small city of only one-and-a-half million people, it seems to have quite a large surface area, and its T-Bahn metro and rail system appears to be one of the world's largest, with 101 stations.
Me
The Royal Palace, Oslo It seems that most people live in houses with big gardens, and with its small population and lots of space, the people aren't all cooped up together like we are. I was very pleased with my use of Norwegian on this day, with around half of my conversations conducted in the language, from asking directions, buying tickets, carrying out transactions in shops, and asking people to take my photo. On the whole, people spoke back to me in Norwegian, which I didn't always understand, but I was happy that they were happy enough with my language skills to speak back to me in their native tongue. Thank you DuoLingo!
On this first day, I took the T-Bahn metro from Haslum station into town, heading to my first stop, the Royal Palace, with its rather relaxed-looking guards and impressive hilltop views over the city below. From here, I walked onto the Oslo Fjord which borders the centre of the city, past the National Museum, and onto the wonderful and inspirational Nobel Peace Centre. I'm not a big fan of large national museums, but the Nobel Peace Centre was right up my street. Alfred Nobel himself was actually Swedish, and was
mainly a scientist who made his fortune with the invention of dynamite in 1866. Upon his passing in 1896, he bequeathed his fortune to the setting up of five separate Nobel Prizes, for Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Literature, and more famously, Peace, to be awarded annually thereafter. It does seem a bit odd though that the inventor of dynamite, which went on to become the ingredient for numerous weapons of war, founded the Nobel Peace Prize. But with this rather dubious link aside, I am a big fan of the Nobel Peace Prize itself, and a great admirer of many of its recipients. Hence, visiting Oslo, I was excited to learn more about this prestigious award and those who have achieved it - the Nobel Peace Centre certainly hit this spot for me.
The centre began first with a history on Alfred Nobel himself, and then you are invited to take a quick test to find out what kind of "Peace Personality" you have yourself - I turned out to be "The Helper", like Mother Teresa - what an honour! The exhibition then took a look at modern global issues and conflicts, and finally presented a striking, humbly-lit room with
an attractive gallery of the various Nobel Peace Prize winners themselves, detailing their lives, works and legacies. There have been 102 awards in total so far, with notable ones to my mind including Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa, the Dalai Lama, Aung San Suu Kyi who I still see as very much a hero despite what the press may say, Nelson Mandela along with his presidential predecessor who often goes under the radar, F.W. de Klerk, the two accredited with ensuring a peaceful transition to democracy in South Africa, and Betty Williams. This latter winner is also not well-known, but means a lot to me as I was touched by her story of facing down violence in a peaceful march of reconciliation in Northern Ireland, to organise another march which was even larger and more successful than the former. I noted that the Peace Centre must learn a lot about what is required to be a force of good and peace in the world, as it studies and compares first-hand the actions of such amazing people. The Centre seems to suggest that the most important harbinger of peace is learning to listen to each other, to both sides in a
conflict. This I could not agree with more, and wish many more people in the western world today would adopt this simple piece of advice in their activities.
For lunch I headed to a nearby street food venue for a lovely minced meat burrito, and enjoyed it in the sun. As well as the heatwave in the UK, this was also an unusually warm day for Norway, around 27 degrees - I still thought it a huge blessing not to be experiencing the concurrent 40 degrees of London that day. I then walked around various city centre sights, noting again that the city is not particularly attractive, with not many standout sights which its contemporaries of Stockholm, Copenhagen and Helsinki seem to have, but it was pleasant enough. I walked around and through the 13th century city centre Akershus Fortress, along the Oslo Fjord past very quirky-looking sauna boats which combined the sauna experience with dips in the fjord, and up to the lovely Oslo Operahuset. This is perhaps Oslo's most famous building, an opera house built in 2007 with a very modern, contemporary design. The design, made up of strikingly large white surfaces, is really quite impressive, and
a walk to the top affords awesome views over the famous Munch Musuem nearby, and across the city and fjord below. However, perhaps its white, heat-reflecting design was not the best place to spend a hot, sunny afternoon - it was boiling up there!
After this, I headed past Oslo's Sentralstasjon train station, up Oslo's main shopping street, Karl Johans Gate, which was very busy on this summer's afternoon with a nice atmosphere, and took the T-Bahn up into my next destination for the day - the lovely forested mountains to the north of the city, perfect for a cool respite from the urban heat, and an antithesis to the busy city streets.
There is plenty up there to explore in the famous Nordmarka forested region of Northern Oslo, and I was heading to an area called Holmenkollen, home to a ski jump used in the winter, currently home to a vertigo-inducing zipline in the summer. I felt dizzy just looking at the structure, and it reminded me of my visit to the Pyeongchang ski jump in South Korea a few years ago. Ski jumping is a sport which nightmares are made of to my mind, particularly after
Me and a Guard
The Royal Palace watching the excellent film "Eddie the Eagle", and standing at the top of the jump back in South Korea and subsequently doing a virtual reality jump of it. It was a lovely place to begin a lovely walk through the forest though, which I enjoyed before heading back to the T-Bahn and returning to my Air BnB, stocking up at a local supermarket again with plenty of cold milk and beer to cool down with after a warm, and wonderful, first day of sightseeing.
My second day in Oslo was also lovely. I had originally planned to visit a small town to the south-east of the city close to the Swedish border called Fredrikstad, regarded by the Lonely Planet as one of Scandinavia's best preserved and prettiest fortress towns, but I scuppered these plans when I realised it would cost me around £40 for a return train ticket there! This just seemed a little too steep for a simple day trip of an hour's journey each way, and reminded me of just how flipping expensive this part of the world is! Added to the cost, rail engineering works were also taking place on the line, and I didn't fancy
Guard
The Royal Palace paying a fortune just to sit on a rail replacement bus service for most of the day. I was a tad disappointed, as I'd also planned to visit famed Norwegian polar explorer Roald Amundsen's home nearby, but in the end my alternative plan turned out to be wonderful and highly enjoyable - I spent a day in and around nearby Sandvika, a lovely little arty town on the shores of the beautiful Oslo Fjord.
In the morning I took a train from a tiny station near my accommodation called Blommenholm, and it took just a few minutes to arrive in Sandvika itself. I headed first to the Sandvikselva River running through town, looking for the Løkke Bridge made famous by French painter Claude Monet, and which I had learned about from watching a recent episode of "World's Most Scenic Railway Journeys" on TV. Monet apparently spent two months in Norway during the winter of 1895, basing himself in an artist's farmhouse in Sandvika, and painting lots of wintry scenes around there. His most famous painting from this time was arguably "Sandviken village beneath Mount Kolsås", currently on display at the Art Institute of Chicago. The painting features the striking
The Royal Palace
View towards Oslo ex-volcanic mountain peak of Kolsås which looms over the village to its north, and the Løkke Bridge below. After finding said bridge, I enjoyed a peaceful rest on the grass beneath it, slowing it down a bit from my hectic day around Oslo the day before, and learning to "smell the roses" and "hear the birdsong" once more as I travel. This was a perfect day to start to enjoy the natural beauty of this country, which is itself pretty much Norway's main attraction.
I then headed along the pretty promenade running by the river over a pedestrian bridge to lovely Kalvøya, a tiny island around 400 metres both long and wide, nestled on the banks of the Oslo Fjord. It seemed a favourite sunshine getaway for the people of Sandvika, and although it was busy due to it being a very sunny and warm day, there was still plenty of space to enjoy a lovely walk through its forest and along its beaches. I stopped off on the southern shore of the island to do just what the locals were doing - I stripped to my underwear and went for a deliciously refreshing cooling dip on this hot
day - it was wonderful! I noted that the Oslo Fjord is salt water, and very much enjoyed this first-hand experience of my first Norwegian fjord! I imagined there would be more to come. I was happy to see the Norwegians seem to take a very relaxed view of taking off one's clothes in public, no matter a person's body type or looks - this was refreshing to see, and felt different to the comparatively reserved nature we Brits seem to have with this.
After the refreshing dip, I headed back into town again, to take a bus towards another island called Nesøya ("øy" means "island" in Norwegian by the way). I stopped off along the way at Ikea, to enjoy a lovely meatball, potato, jam and sauce lunch, with a Daim cake for pudding - perfect, and it hit the spot, as did the economical price for this slap-up meal! I know this isn't quite Sweden, but I was still looking for an authentic Scandinavian experience, and I felt I certainly got it in Ikea. I then hopped on another bus again towards Nesøya, enjoying another small fjord island, this one around a square mile in size. I
visited the Nesøytjernet Nature Reserve, home to a small lake right there in the middle of this tiny island, making a map of Nesøya look pretty much like a doughnut. It was pretty, but mosquito-ridden, so I didn't spend as long there as I would have liked. I had then planned to head to yet another island off the south coast of this one called Brønnøya, reachable by a tiny ferry crossing the 50-metre gap between the two, but after the hot day, I was ready instead to take the bus back to Sandvika, and then another one on to my accommodation.
It had been a wonderful day of off-the-beaten track explorations, walking in an artist's footsteps, and island-hopping on the lovely Oslo Fjord. While I'm very happy to explore touristy places such as Oslo, I really do feel in my travel element when I'm off-the-beaten track, and this felt very much like one of those days, exploring my own places, and taking my own time to do it. I also noticed that outside of Oslo, people do not readily speak English, and I was very happy to be practising my Norwegian more authentically this time. One of my
conversations involved buying a pair of 99.90 kroner sunglasses, translating as "nitti-ni nitti" in Norwegian, and causing a few laughs between myself and the shopkeeper when we both said it!
I think these first few days were a great start to my Nordic adventures this summer - Oslo was busy with lots to see, Sandvika was tranquil and chilled. I imagined I would have similarly busy days on this journey, combined with the more relaxing ones as well, and this did turn out to be the case.
The next day I had planned to take a seven-hour train journey right across the heartland of southern Norway and on towards Bergen on the country's western coast, in the heart of Norway's famous fjordlands - I was excited! I will write about my time in Bergen and around in my next one.
So until my next blog entry, "takk" for reading, and "farvel for nå".
Alex
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D MJ Binkley
Dave and Merry Jo Binkley
Norway Begins .... the summer adventure.
Exploring new lands, the excitement begins and new knowledge and understanding unfolds. So, we will see lots of concrete in Oslo. I guess I'd never given much thought to what it would look like. If we get to Oslo next year we will go to the Nobel Peace Center and take the test. That will be fun to compare notes. I imagine it is similar to a Meyers-Briggs test. We've been to Giverny (Monet's home in France) it would be great to visit this location in Norway to link things together. I would not have thought about going to Ikea for lunch but it turned out well. I do hear the prices are awful in that part of the world. Your skill with languages is astounding. Maybe you should have gone into linguistics or become a translator.... you know... one of those people who knows 15 languages.