Sweden

It was about a 5 ½ hour drive from Oslo to Stockholm but it was nicely broken up. We stopped for coffee and then at a candy supermarket. I didn’t know there was such a thing but it is just what it sounds like. Instead of aisles of produce and canned goods there are aisles of candy.

You take a bag or a bucket when you go in and then fill it. They charge you by weight. Of course we had to buy some. In addition to the bins of candy, we found a couple of licorice chocolate bars that we saved for special occasions at home. I think we ate one on my birthday and one on our anniversary.

We stopped for lunch at a roadside diner where it was faster to order the special than to order off the menu. We all got fed but it was a bit of a rush. When we got to Stockholm we had supper in a little restaurant underneath a church.

We had Swedish meatballs, mashed potatoes, and half a tomato. Someone made a comment about hoping the meatballs were better than Ikea’s. The server overheard and said, “Trust me, they are.” I can’t comment, having never had the meatballs at Ikea.

After dinner some of our group decided to walk back to the hotel. I debated and then thought better of it because of my two previous falls. I reasoned I’d have less chance of tripping again if I took the bus. Well, guess what? I fell anyway. I was angry and worried and determined to rule out the easiest cause first. I decided to buy myself a new pair of shoes at the first available opportunity. Even my crocs and heavy socks felt more secure than the Vessies I was wearing. Nothing against Vessies. They are waterproof and fairly comfy but I need a shoe with a lot more lateral stability than they offer.

The next day, the final one of the Trafalgar tour, we went with a local guide on a tour of the city. We saw the city hall where the Nobel prize dinner is held.

In the same building contains the Golden Hall that is decorated with mosaics from floor to ceiling.

We were the only people in there which the guide said was impossible to believe because it’s always crowded. She thought that there were so few people because the school holidays had just started and so many people were out of town.

We got back on the bus and went to a palace to have Royal fika.

I particularly like the idea of fika. It’s a gathering of people around coffee or tea and a cinnamon bun or other sweet treat. It can be a couple of friends getting together, or it can be a quick stand-up meeting at work. It’s a chance for some good conversation.

The bus dropped us off in the centre of the city and we followed the local guide onto the train where we made several stops to look at the public art in ther stations. She explained that if the stations were also art installations there was less vandalism and it also helped people to recognize which station they needed to get off at. One art piece was a series of photos of people in Stockholm going about their daily lives behind glass so they looked three dimensional. Another station paid tribute to all the workers who built the train line.

Photos through glass

Tribute to the people who constructed the station

When we emerged from the station in the center of the city, Richard and I scuttled into a huge mall to get out of the pouring rain. We ate at a little kiosk and talked to the young woman who was making the wraps and to a man from Stockholm who was an architect.

Lunch spot

After lunch it was back on the bus for a tour of the Vasa museum. The Vasa is a ship that sank on her maiden voyage in 1628 in the harbour. It is quite opulent with incredibly detailed carvings throughout. The story goes that the king wanted two rows of cannons rather than just one. This meant that there were two levels of doors that could let in water. The ship is ridiculously top heavy and when she set sail the wind caught her and she started to rock. Water came in through the cannon ports and she sank.

The Vasa

Double decker cannons

Some of the carvings

She remained on the bottom until the 1950s when she was rediscovered in the shipping lanes. She was salvaged in 1961 and in order to prevent her from disintegrating as her timbers dried out, she was sprayed with polyethylene glycol. It was pretty amazing to see a ship that had been in the sea for over 300 years.

View from our window. The dome is a performing arts space.

The bus delivered us back to our hotel for the farewell dinner. Our group made quite the racket with our laughing and chatting. One of the funniest things was a misprint in a small number of the menus. Instead of saying ‘salmon with sauce’ this particular menu said ‘salmon with stainless steel.’ That led to all kinds of speculation about how stainless steel was to be cooked. As the dinner wound down we said our goodbyes and Richard and I began to plan for the next part of our adventure.

While I wouldn’t say that doing laundry was a particular adventure, it was necessary. The next day we bought train passes that were valid long enough to cover our stay in Stockholm and our trip to the airport to fly to Gallivare. Passes in hand, or rather on our phones, we loaded our dirty laundry into our backpacks and caught the train into the center of the city. While the clothes were in the wash, we went to find a shoe store to see if I could get a better pair of walking shoes. The laundry needed attention before I had decided on a pair so Richard went on ahead and I made my way back to the laundromat once I had my shoes.

The hanging sculptures help with navigation. 

When I arrived I was surprised to learn that the dryer had eaten enough money to dry our load twice over but still refused to work. Being unwilling to lose any more money, we gave up, loaded our wet laundry into our backpacks and headed back to the hotel where we strung up a laundry line and spent the evening dodging hanging clothes.

Somehow you sort of expect that when you go somewhere to wash your laundry you should also be able to dry it. We had supper in the food court across the street from the hotel. The rice bowls were perfectly acceptable and we got to do some interesting people watching.

The next morning we went to Skansen, an open air museum. It’s a fascinating place which includes a zoo and a number of historic exhibits. We did a tour of the zoo but were less enthused about seeing bears than some of the other visitors. I did see a gorgeous owl but wasn’t able to get a good photo because it was behind mesh. The highlight for me was the historic furniture factory. We spent quite a bit of time talking to the young woman who was working there on some marquetry.

Vintage drill press

Scroll saw demo

I asked her if she would demonstrate the treadle scroll saw which she did. From there we went to watch the glass blowers.

Glass sculpting

I left before the sculpture was finished but Richard saw it to completion. I walked around and noticed a bookbindery which wasn’t open but I got a pretty good look through the window. By then our feet were tired so we caught an old streetcar back into the center of the city. We decided to have dinner at an outdoor restaurant before going back to the hotel.

Tram car

Dinner spot

On our final day in Stockholm we went to the Viking Museum and the Shipwreck Museum. Rather than take the train out to the island we opted to take the small ferry from the center of the city.

Ferry line-up

I’m not sure I understand exactly what a Viking is but they seem to have been aggressive and nasty if you weren’t one of them. The governor of one place they landed welcomed them and they responded by killing him on the spot and proceeding to kill the townspeople and take whatever they wanted before moving on.

Viking ship

Viking carvings

One of the interactive stations in the museum asked if you could row as fast as a Viking. I decided to give that little exercise a pass although there were plenty of people trying it. The rowing machine gave readouts as to how well you were doing compared to the Vikings. Some guys managed to keep up but most didn’t. The part I found most interesting about that museum was the exhibit detailing how much influence the Vikings have had in all areas of modern life, from names of appliances, to characters in video games.

We liked this sign

After the Vikings we went to the Shipwreck Museum. The whole top floor was given over to hands-on exhibits. One involved a series of 4 bins with what looked like plastic cutting boards in them. Each board had a tab listing a particular subject on it. You pulled the board out and put it into a slot and information about that subject came up on a touch screen where you could navigate through various layers of information. Most of the exhibits were available in English which we really appreciated. Then again, some of the signs didn't need translation.

And this one

In one spot there were 4 stools on which you could sit and, using a virtual reality head set, try to take photos as if you were a diver under water. There was a lineup so I didn’t try that one. Other stations had artifacts under microscopes. On the main floor was a movie projected onto the walls and ceiling of a room. The movie was in the form of a monologue by the ocean. I wasn’t impressed by the monologue and I was less impressed by the fact that the doors remained open throughout the showing and people came and went contributing their shadows to the atmosphere of the sea. The guy beside me was on his phone the whole time.

There was a good vegetarian restaurant not far from the museum where we both had tomato, feta, and lentil salads which we really enjoyed. On our walk to the train station we stopped for ice cream for dessert. When we arrived back at the hotel it was time to pack our stuff in preparation for the next day’s flight to Gallivare.

I met a friend at Skansen

Norway

Norway was the second country on our Scandinavian tour and the scenery there was truly spectacular. Of course I’m a sucker for mountains. Taking the ferry from Denmark to Norway was a welcome change from sitting on the bus. 

We got a break from the heat and it actually rained when we visited a bronze age farm. The buildings were covered with grass and built quite low to the ground. At the end of our tour, we got to taste some of the food that the people on the farm would have eaten. There were nuts, a bit of cream and some dried sheep meat. We encountered the dried sheep meat later on in the trip as well. 

Bronze age sheep?

Queen for 10 minutes

We spent two nights in Bergen and most of my notes from those days are about the interesting conversations we had with fellow travellers. Most of the people were retired but there were some notable exceptions. Jenny and Katie met on a previous tour and found they were great travel buddies so they began to plan trips together. Both enjoyed the freedom of having a single room and having someone else on the tour that they knew. On the surface that sounds pretty ordinary but what fascinated me was that Jenny lives in Australia and Katie lives in the US. Jenny is an enthusiastic and experienced hiker and I enjoy seeing her photos of hikes she takes in Australia.

Joyce and Sarah were a mother and daughter duo from the US who were a ton of fun. They laughed uproariously when I mentioned that I had read in a comment by “I F***ing Love Australia” that compared a certain politician to a ‘melon-headed wombat.’ Jenny objected, insisting that I was being unfair to wombats.

We had dinner one night with Don, a fellow Canadian, whose specialty was nuclear medicine. I listened, fascinated, as he described preparing the isotopes needed for different procedures and how the half lives of the isotopes were critical. He was always working within a specific time window to ensure that the procedures could be completed successfully.

But back to the scenery.

Tourist railway

The singing maiden wasn't in evidence

One of our excursions was on a tourist train which took us high up into the mountains. We stopped at a waterfall where a young woman, dressed as a figure from Norse mythology sang to the passengers assembled on the small viewing platform. I took one look at the crowd on the platform and elected to stay aboard the train. Besides Richard reported that by the time he got to the platform she had finished her song and was leaving. We were able to grab a quick lunch when the train delivered us back to the station and before we boarded the bus to take us to Sognefjord where we had a boat tour.

You see the weirdest things on the fjord

Many waterfalls

Many colours

Many kayakers

As we cruised along the fjord between the steep mountains I thought of how different these fjords were from the ones in Greenland. Trees grew most of the way up these slopes whereas in Greenland there isn’t a tree to be seen. Both places have spectacular waterfalls though. The temperature was much milder on the Sognefjord that what we are used to in Greenland.

We stayed in Geiranger for two nights and I think that was one of my favourite spots on the Norwegian leg of the trip. We went to a farm that had been in the family for generations and had Viking graves on the property.

Viking grave

Our host

Restaurant open only by previous arrangement

The couple who is currently running the farm have other jobs as do many of the people in the farming community. She is a social worker and her husband has a PhD and works at the nearby university. Her mother who ran the farm after her father died, has a masters degree in animal husbandry and, although she has stepped back somewhat from the day to day running of the farm, still acts as a consultant to farmers in the area. They raise sheep and grow apples for apple juice and apple cider. The couple have three boys and the boys are learning English and helping out by serving guests apple drinks and a kind of pancake rolled up and filled with butter and icing sugar. The secret of their delicious apple cider is that they add a little pear juice to reduce the acidity.

After lunch we went up Dalsnibba mountain.

Where the really steep road starts

That's snow

It did clear up

Snowball fight?

The views were glorious as we drove up the high mountain road with 12 tights switchbacks. Damien, our Polish driver, was exceptionally skilled at guiding the huge bus through the tight turns. Not everyone was as enthusiastic about the experience as I was. Our windows were well above the level of the guard rails which allowed for unobstructed views of the precipitous drop to the valley below. The person whose turn it was to sit in the front seat offered to trade places with someone farther back and away from a window so I got to do the downhill trip from right behind Damien. Odd that I’m afraid of heights only if there’s no physical obstacle between me and the drop. In a bus I’m fine and on observation platforms I’m fine. It’s when I’m hiking on a narrow path with a fair amount of exposure that I get nervous.

When we got to the top of the mountain it was overcast and snowing and that brings me to another delightful group of people who travelled with us. They were a family of 4 from South Africa. The girls were 15 and 16 years old and they did remarkably well amongst the group of largely older adults. Having been born and raised in South Africa they had never seen snow and it was an absolute hoot watching them catch snowflakes on their tongues. One exclaimed, “But it’s so cold!” On the ride down Damien managed to stop beside a small patch of snow that remained from the winter. It was pretty grainy stuff but the girls didn’t care. They were out of the bus like a shot and had a marvellous time throwing snowballs at their dad. That moment was, for me, one of the highlights of the trip.

The next day we drove up another mountain on The Eagle Road which is only open in the summer.

On the way up we stopped for cinnamon buns and a view of a waterfall.

 The top is quite the tourist destination but that meant that there was a paved path to several viewing platforms where we could look down and see the road twisting sharply to the valley below.

Our substitute driver (it was Damien’s day off) offered to take us to the bottom on the other side of the pass so down we went, turned around and came back up and headed back to town.

Some folks didn't like this road

We made another stop and Veronica, our tour guide, bought baskets of fresh strawberries for us to share on the ride back. I didn’t know that Norway grew strawberries commercially.

In Lillihammer, home of the 1994 winter olympics, we visited the ski jump where the Slovenian national team was training.

We rode the chairlift up to the top and on our way down were passed by the ski jumpers flying through the air.

This guy is just getting ready to push off

 with the ski slope in Copenhagen, this one was covered in artificial turf and the jumpers wore one piece suits that looked like neoprene covered in lycra. They must have been really hot and on their way up on the lift the guys unzipped the suits and let the top part hang around their waists so they could cool themselves off as the sweat evaporated from their t-shirts. Not knowing much about ski jumping, I thought that the person who went the farthest before landing got the most points, but it’s more like playing darts where points are awarded by what zone you land in.

At the bottom of the lift we took turns getting our pictures taken while standing on a pair of skis that were fixed to a platform.

Oslo was our last stop in Norway before driving to Stockholm and the end of the tour. Oslo is infamous in my personal history because that is where I tripped over a curb and hit the pavement for the second time. We visited the Vigeland Sculpture Park.

The 200 sculptures in it were the work of Gustav Vigeland and depict the cycle of human life, relationships, and emotions.

Vigeland used granite, bronze, and wrought iron to create them and the scale of his work is truly impressive. However, it was a scorcher of a day and I’m not in the mood to appreciate much except shade when it’s hot. I found myself photographing the gulls who perched on various sculptures rather than the sculptures themselves.

The park has the distinction of being the largest in the world by a single sculptor.

The Fram

I was less grumpy in the afternoon when we went to the Fram Museum where we saw Roald Admunsen’s ship, the Fram, in which he sailed to Antarctica, and Thor Heyerdahl’s Kontiki raft in which he drifted 8000 km from South America to the Toamotu Islands. Ra ii, the reed boat in which Heyerdahl sailed from the west coast of Africa to Barbados was also on display. 

Kontiki

Raa ii

I was particularly interested in the Norwegian take on Admunsen having heard the stories from the Greenlandic and Canadian perspective. Admunsen’s travels in the Canadian north were recounted but there was only a passing note to how much he learned from the Inuit people that allowed him to survive in the polar regions.

Piano with music aboard The Fram

Officer's dining

A tidy kitchen

Work bench

Once we got back to our hotel we cooled off for a bit and then ventured out to a nearby foodstore to obtain ingredients for an ‘urban picnic’ for supper. A lot of the foodstores have bins of prepared salads so you can take what you want and pay by weight. They also have utensils and napkins. I chose a rather strange taco salad. It contained ham and had no tomatoes or cheese. It did have taco chips and the dressing was tasty. We came back to the room and ate supper in our underwear in order to stay cool. Richard had a sushi bowl; we each had granola and yogurt for dessert and treated ourselves to a liter of lemonade. The next morning we had to be up at 6 and get the bus at 7 for our long drive to Stockholm.