Summer 2010, Norway Part 1.

Thursday 15 July saw us say goodbye to Sweden for a while and head for Oslo on the train.

Oslo harbour - as you can see Norway gets a lot of rain but this didn't really bother us.

The Nobel Peace Prize Centre in Oslo.

The building does have straight sides! I'm sure there is something in Photoshop to fix this so that the photo shows it how you actually see it. My 10-22mm lens was at 10mm for this and I had to wait many minutes for the crowds to disperse only for this lot to appear.

Oslo is home to a number of museums with nautical themes so a busy afternoon was spent on ferries and buses getting around them. Hundreds of photos later we were exhausted but the history behind each on the following vessels is well known.

Roald Amundsen's Gjoa.

Amundsen spent 3 years completing the first crossing of the North West Passage in 1906. His next move to head for Antarctica in the Fram and the race to the South Pole which he reached before Robert Falcon Scott on 14 Decemeber 1911, 35 days before Scott. To the right of the Gjoa in this photo is the Frammuseat (Fram musuem). The ship was moved into a dry dock and the museum them custom built around it. A most impressive museum indeed and a must if you visit Oslo.

The Fram.

Again the ultra wide angle doing its job here. I have read many books about Scott, Amundsen and Shackelton and seeing the Fram itself ranks alongside the experience and emotions of seeing the James Caird at Te Papa in Wellington, New Zealand. Click here if you don't know what I'm talking about.

Next door to the Frammuseat is the Kon-Tiki Museum dedicated to Thor Heyerdahl's expeditions in the Kon-tiki and Ra II.

Kontiki

Ra II

Viking ship - 95% original.

Nearby is the Viking Ship Museum containing one of the best preserved ships of its type that reached North America long before Christopher Columbus and served the Greenland communities as well around 900-1100AD. After a quick tour around the Norsk Folkemuseum we caught the bus back to our hotel "museumed out" for the day.

Only 2 nights in Oslo because the main highlights in Norway for us started in Bergen. What a trip, 7 hours through lush farmlands, forest and the mountains. We even stopped at Hell on the way. (Hell is a small town with a railway station.)

The railway station at Finse is 1,222m asl next to a small lake with 2 glaciers spilling over the edge. If you fly you miss so much incredible scenery in Norway. Bergen was wet too when we arrived!

Bergen waterfront buildings - all made from timber but with sprinkler protection now.

This stone building is behind the famous waterfront scene above. It was built in 1666 "to take care of documents and other valuable things". I wonder if the date has any link to a great fire that occurred the same year on the other side of the North Sea? Good forward planning because everything else in Bergen was burnt to the ground in 1702! Bergen has some great sea-food establishments on the waterfront but we both shuddered at the sight of whale meat.

The day after arrival Bergen it was Norway in a Nutshell - another one of these must do trips. Early morning train to Voss then transfer to a bus for Gudvangen to then board a boat for 2 hours on two branches of one of the longest fjords to Fläm and then to board the Flämbanen to Myrdal and another train back to Bergen.

The photos below need little commentary.

"one picture worth ten thousand words" - Confucius  

is so very true.

The road down to Gudvangen

Sognefjorden is 204km long. We cruised along two small branches of it for two hours.

Arriving in Fläm

The train is rises 867 m vertically in 22 km to Myrdal

The train stops near the top on a bridge and platform for a 5 minute photo stop of these falls. Because there had been so much rain the waterfalls today were truly spectacular.

From here it was on to Myrdal though some amazing tunnels, avalanche shelters etc. This line was opened in 1940 and was operated by steam locomotives until 1947.

Back to Bergen late that day . The next day, the main course of our trip was to start on the Hurtigruten

Part 2 will take us from Bergen to Tromsø  on the Nordkapp and back to Trondheim.