Arrived in Oslo and did a fun treasure hunt for the apartment keys in the baggage storage area at the train station because it was so late the hosts wanted to go to bed. Easily found the apartment without incident and slept. Up the next morning (not early, but the happy thing about Norway tourism in January is a lack of lines!) to the Norwegian version of the Shelburne Museum. (Norwegian Folk Museum) It was a little depressing to walk through the buildings in the cold drizzle, and it was a bit underwhelming at first because many of the buildings had nothing inside (you couldn't go in them) but as I went through the various exhibits (towns) I really started to appreciate how cool it was! Stave church:
Beautiful woodwork:
Sod roofs:
and just the oldest wooden dwelling in the world, (1238) just sitting here, no big deal!
All the buildings were original and had been moved there from towns all over Norway. (Hence fire extinguisher you can see above) There was a lot of information about the arrangement of the farm buildings in relation to one another, which I appreciated when seeing the real thing the next day on my tour. All the massive logs and the functions of the different outbuildings were really cool (slots cut in doors to allow for air flow to separate wheat from chaff, VERY short cow stalls for, I assume, very short cows) I also loved the funky Norwegian fences. How do you pound these fence posts?
They do have animals at the farm who use these fences but I didn't get to see them because it wasn't the weekend. Brush fence:
There was also a Sami hut and a more modern area where they had moved an Oslo apartment building onto the grounds and decorated the apartments from different eras. The building was a lot like the one I was staying in so it felt very voyeuristic to just wander into these apartments but it was cool. I guess my biggest take away was how much work, how gargantuanly difficult, everyday jobs used to be. It's shocking how much things have changed! Need grain? Now: call grain man. Then: grow, chop, carry, dry, separate wheat. Spreading manure? Now: get manure spreader. Then: dig manure out of the barns and move it by sled out to the fields and fork it off. Holy cow.
Headed down the street (hands were freezing at this point but otherwise fine, had mittens off too long for photo purposes!) to find THE BOAT!!! (Named the Fram) In my previous post I mentioned the guy who froze a boat into the ice? Well his boat, which went on not one but THREE voyages (with different explorers) is in Oslo and I got to see it!! I could go on and on about this guy and all the insanity surrounding the voyages and explorers in general, because apparently now I'm quite interested, but I will spare you all. You can look it up if you like. My fave: on the third voyage, someone got to the North Pole before them, so they decided at the last minute to just turn around and go to the South Pole instead. Because that's the same. Crazy crazy people!
(Model of the real thing, obviously) You can go right in the boat and poke around! It was so cool! Headed back to try to sleep but not with much success.
Next morning up and out to retrieve tickets for a "Norway in a nutshell" tour (not really a tour with a guide so much as a package of tickets for various time-complementary public transport). Train to Myrdal and another to Flam, boat to Gudv, bus to Voss, train to Bergen, and then back to Oslo on the night train. I didn't take too many photos but it was great to be on the train (forgot how much I loved that) seeing the scenery change and the farm configurations of the buildings, beautiful scenery (including the backs of my eyelids for a little nap)
At Myrdal we got on the one of the steepest rail lines in the world (lots of braking noise) to descend 2000+ feet into Flam. It was intense with lots of tunnels and views!
Once we got to Flam we had a little while to look around the museum and then we got on our boat to head out on the fjord to Gudvangen. The scenery was, as you can imagine, staggering.
Very difficult to do it justice! There were 8 of us on the boat, then 7 to Voss by bus (dark at this point and very cold rain), one person went back to Flam for the night. I got soaked getting to the train in Voss but did find this friendly guy. (Troll!)
Another nap and we were in Bergen, a world heritage site, for a few hours. I went to walk around the buildings where German Hanseatic traders traded fish for wheat a long time ago (or something like that, forgive me if I'm confused by this point!) Very cool narrow alleys and old buildings! (Obviously) with art studios and offices and restaurants and shops in them now.
Slept really well on the train and more at the apartment and then went yesterday to the
National Gallery (beautiful Norwegian landscapes and Edvard Munch painted some stuff A LOT prettier than "The Scream"!) and the National Museum of Contemporary Art (some gorgeous stuff by Sidsel Paaske and some other really bizarre stuff, I am not contemporary in art taste!). Both were free on Thursdays. Headed to Crossfit after pretty walk to the Modern Art Museum (un-free haha) and back to sleep! Up early for flight to Brussels and here I wait for Scotland!!! Some weird internet issues (perhaps this post is too long, let me know and I can try to break them up!) but I hope it will work. Phone blogging is new for me. Norway is gorgeous but I am happy to head out to somewhere with slightly longer days, almost cried when I saw the sun yesterday!
So fun to read about your observations from your Norwegian adventure. You have to come back in the summer! Then I will show you long days. You will need to cover your eyes to sleep...��
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