Larvik, Norway - 01/11/18

Larvik, Norway

Larvik COA; (Three sails)
represents maritime tradition.
Granted in 1989.

After casting away the Paradox Monster's curse, we continued our path, which suddenly shrank right before our eyes, reaching the city of Larvik in Larvik municipality in a lighting fast speed.
The first thing that caught our attention was the heavy viking heritage displayed in many ways around the city, which we quickly learned is due to an important mark that happened here.
Norway's first town, Kaupang (Derived from Old Norse ’kaupangr’, meaning market or a trading place), was founded here around the year 800 and served as a hub for trade as well as production. At Kaupang today there is a Viking house like they think it could have been. We could also see a model of the town, and information about the escavation of the area, which is not 100% dug. Inconveniently enough for us, the replica viking house in Kaupang does not work during winter, but we found a way in anyway, since we came here from so far.

     

Miniature representation of the old viking settlement

Guides dressed as vikings

Larvik is the 19th most popupous city in Norway, with 43,867 inhabitants as of 2016.

Interesting Facts:

• Larvik has a daily ferry connection to Denmark (Hirtshals)

• The name derives from Old Norse, meaning; 'logr' (river) 'vik'(cove): "The cove at the mouth of Lagen" (Now called Numedalsagen river)

"SuperSpeed 2 has the capacity of taking up to 2000 guests, 764 cars or 117 trailers."



Maritime Museum
To get to know more about the maritime history of the city, and about this Thor Heyerdahl fellow we keep hearing about everywhere, we decided to make a visit to Larvik Maritime Museum, which is honestly a rather simple exhibition, with pictures and model ships. Also, the ship Jærbuen II, dating to 1898, from famous Larvik shipbuilder Colin Archer is usually docked here.
Colin Archer and Thor Heyerdahl are represented in statues a stone throw away from the museum

Interesting Facts:

• There are also ferries to other national and international lacations: In Norway: Oslo, Kristiansand, Sandefjord. And Kiel in Germany.

Color Line ferry connections

• We are only 65 miles southwest of the capital, Olso, now.

Thor Heyerdahl was an explorer from Larvik who conducted an expedition in 1947 trying to prove that South American natives could have settled Polinesia in Pre-columbian times.

His aim was to show that there were no technical reasons preventing the natives from doing so, thus he used only material and technology available to those people at the time (except for communication and orientation devices)

Very interesting in depth article about his life
Thor wrote a best seller about the expedition, and a documentary was also made (a film was also made in 2012).
The trip started in Peru, founded by private loans and equipment donations from the US Army. The raft, called Kon-tiki, named after Inca sun god, Viracocha, was constructed out of Balsa logs and other native material in an indigenous style as recorded in illustrations,
He and other five companions sailed for 101 days and over 6.900 km(4.300mi) across the Pacific, before smashing into a reef. They returned safely.

The expedition inspired many others to try (at least 9) and demonstrate this idea, some succesfully, others not so much.

After that, we have seen almost everything there is to see in the city, we are now parting to our next and probably penultimate stop in Norway.

 

Next stop, Captital of Norway.

,