From the Viking Museum in Larvik, we made an inspired trip to Oslo, the Tesla Capital of theworld Norway. There is also another Viking Museum in Oslo, that we could have teleported to, but it would be to easy.
As is the case with most Norwegian cities, despite being the capital, Oslo is still rather calm and relatively small, but it's the most populous city with only 672.061 inhabitants (2017) in a 480 km² (185.62mi²) area. -*Or 975.744 in Oslo county and Akershus(which were recently merged) and 1.5 million in the metropolitan area)
Interesting Facts:
Oslo was know as Kristiania from 1877 to 1925 after being reconstructed after a fire, during the reign of Christian IV, but was founded in 1040 by Harold III. with the actual name.
Oslo, Bergen and Tonsberg are the only cities that don't have a COA, but use a city seal instead, in Norway.
There are 40 islands within the city limits and 343 lakes.
The city has plenty of room to spare, and is very accessible, be it on foot or motorized public transport. It's atmosphere is marked by lots of open spaces, mostly due to it's relatively small population and unusually large land area, as well as a diverse and modern architecture, one example being the Oslo Opera House and Bjorvika borough (Meant to look like a barcode from a distance).
The Nobel Peace Prize is given in Oslo every year at the city hall.
Oslo is Europe's fastest growing capital, and the birthplace to famous figures, Edvard Munch and Henrik Ibsen. - As we were walking, flabbergasted by how expensive (Oslo has been named the world's most expensive city, and is still very much so, at 3rd place) most thing were, - the internet seems kinda cheap, and produce too, but 1bottle of beer is $10. We stopped to observe the city's beautiful architecture, which is currently being modernized. Some of the places we will visit include: The Holocaust Center, Edvard Munch Museum and National Museum.
The first stop we made was to Norway`s most visited turist attraction, Vigeland Park in Frogner park. At the first sight of it, we were convinced it was just a private park of very good taste, but no, we were amused to discover that it was actually public and open all year round.
In the park are more than 200 sculptures by Gustav Vigeland, who also designed the archtecture and layout of the park. The park was completed between 1939 and 1949.
We took our time appreciating the expressive sculptures, and taking in the moment, it feels good to be here, what a nice atmosphere.
In the Frogner borough, which is consisted of agricultural land, and now the frogner park, the 18th century buildings on the grounds now are also holding the Oslo Museum.
Skipping Oslo Museum, we went right to Edvard Munch Museum, in Old Oslo (Gamle Oslo) -which is currently being relocated to near the Opera House (see the video), in a project which dates back to 2008 and is to be completed in 2019- to see the collections left by Munch himself , and his sister, to the city.
The museum has well over half of Munch's entire production of paintings, and at least a copy of all of his prints.
We appreciated the art as we listened to audio tours about the works and Edvard's life. The exposition was very concise and organized, we could observe all the styles and all the variety in his work. It was opened in 1963, comemmorating Munch's 100 year anniversary, financed by Oslo cinemas. The designers were Einar Myklebust and Gunnar Fougner.
The National Museum was also in the proccess of changing locations, but it was probably the best Museum visit we have made in Norway.
We have covered the entire south coast of Norway!- Next stop, Halden, The one with the jail-free high security prison.
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.
This time our stop was a little farther, almost 100 miles, so we made some stops. -Not for food though, because we can't afford anything here :), but to rest our feet a little.
After 2 weeks, we finally arrived in Kristiansand (historically "Christiansand"), a city and municipality in Norway with 88.598 inhabitants as of 2016, being the 5th largest in Norway. - We are doing it in the wrong order! - Some habiticans are saying, as the order of the most populous cities we are visiting are wrong. First there was Bergen, Norway's second largest city, then Odda, way down there with 5.5thousand inhabitants, then Haugesund, 14th, and Stavanger, 4th place in Norway.
We learned that the road from Stavanger to Kristiansand is only 3 hours by car, and that there is a road connecting the city to Denmark, but our trip on foot took us 2 weeks.
The town was founded in 1641 as Christiansand, on a sandy headland, by King Christian IV(renowned for having founded many towns), who is depicted in a monument in the city.
Some notable people from the city include:
Agness Kittelsen: Actress
Andreas Thorkildsen: Olympic world champion in Javelin Throw.
And many singers, athletes, writers and artists.
Interesting Facts:
Kristiansand is the third most viatnamese populated city in Norway
Kristiansand Dyreparken (which we visited) is the zoo that sells most girrafe in Europe.
Kvadraturen
Odderoya Island
The center of the city is called Kvadraturen, a very organized planned block, one of the five boroughs in the city. There we visited Fiskebrygga, a very popular small port and fish market with a nice scenery. Immediately to the south of the city center and Fiskelbrygga, connected by 4 bridges, is mostly undeveloped former naval base now made into a recreational area, Odderoya Island, with approximatelly 0.7 km²(170 acres), with a popular concert stage where names such as; David Bowie, Bryan Adams, Alice Cooper, Ozzy Osbourne, John Fogerty, Bob Dylan, Sting, Kanye West, No Doubt, Foo Fighters, Aerosmith, Daft Punk, Björk, Alicia Keys, Black Eyed Peas, Damian Marley, Backstreet Boys, Pink, Slash, Oasis, Snoop Dogg, 50 Cent, The Who, Muse and Coldplay have played
Our favorite trail for running, walking and other activites in the city was Baneheia, a recreational area with extensive paths, that is sadly infamous for the murder of 2 girls in 2000.
Dyreparken, or Kirstiansand Zoo and Amusement Park
6 miles(11km) east from the city center, we visited Norway's most visited attraction and probably the biggest and most complete Zoo in Scandinavia.
Dyreparken, or Kirstiansand Zoo and Amusement Park, encloses a complete zoo, an entertainment parks, as well as a waterworld, in 150 acres(61hectares) of mostly open and explorabe (via walking paths) Nordic terrain.
Among the animals we saw african savanna animals (Giraffes, Zebra and lions) as well as native Scandinavian animals sucha as Wolves and elk, a large breeding ground for Bastrian Camels, and exotic animals such as alligators, orangutangs, pandas, Siberian Tigers and a variety of apes and monkeys roaming freely or swinging on the ropes an trees in the park.
There is an atificial town inside the park which was made to look like Cardamom Town in the book by Thorbjorn Egner, as well as villages Captain Sabertooth and Abra Havn(Port of Abra), taken from a theatre act bt Norwegian author Terje Formoe also serving as a hotel, with 170 apartments, along with Dyreparken Hotel.
That was it for our stop, we are aiming big for the next ones!
After another 92 miles of activities (you guys are killing it! specially our mage by the name of Walderich, who is leading the guild, motivating us all to move forward, with more than 190 miles logged since we sat foot in Norway).
After another good week on the road, we reached our new destination, the city of Stavanger in it's own municipality (same-same). Togheter with the neighbouring town Sandsnes, Stavanger is the third largest urban zone in the country, and the 4th largest by population, with 132.729 inhabitants.
Interesting Facts: The city counts the completion of it's cathedral, Stavanger Cath. as it's founding year, 1125.
As we already know, Norway is experiencing an economic 'boom' since the late 20th century due to the offshore oil industry, this has affected most cities, as we have seen in Haugesund and earliers stops.
In Stavanger it has been a major force, contributing to the population growth and overall development of the city, including the instalation of higher education institutions, military instalations and unemployment rates lower than the Norwegean and European average.
I.F: Stavanger has been ranked as the most expensive city.
Stavanger Harbour
For long periods of time it's most important industries have been shipping, shipbuilding and the fish canning industy, but in 1969, a new boom began as oil was discovered in the North Sea and Stavanger was chosen to be the onshore center for the oil industry on the sector.
Stavanger was an importan city even way before oil, being one of Norway's oldest cities, existing as a church and market town in it's early days.
Interesting Fact: The county of Rogaland (area of Stavanger) was occupied by the Germans during WW2, the city was conquered without resistence. Over 480.000 mines were planted with forced labor from natives in the period of the war, all of which the Wehrmacht was required to clear. 62 were killed and 94 were injured.
One of the 'four greats' writers of Norway was born and died here, Alexander Kielland. The others are:
Henrik Ibsen
Bjornstjerne Bjornson
Jonas Lie
Lake Mosvatnet, with aerial view of the city and the 3km path around the lake.
The first place we visited was only within a 20 min walk from the 18th century wooden houses in the center, the local lake Mosvatnet, probably the most popular spot in the city.
I.F: In 1995 over 560.000 people regularly visited Mosvatnet
Leading it's importance in the oil exploration in Norway, Stavanger has the only petroleum museum in Europe, in a rather interesting architectural design, resembling an offshore oil platform.
As the city is so deeply conected to petrol exploration, you can also see the changes the industry has made to it and the people.
It was a rather productive and remarkable visit, where we were able to both have fun and learn about the curious and profitable world of petrol.
Very few galleries were as informative, organized and honest as the Petroleum Museum, being critic and open about the current state of Norway and it's future concerning the wealth from the black gold. This visit makes itself valuable for everyone, being interesting from the layman to the students and specialists.
There also were many interactive exhibits and dinamic ativities; after learning how oil and gas are created, discovered and produced, and what they are and can be used for in the future, we participated in a quiz with 5 questions. Once we got all of them right, the staff took a picture of us and added it to the museum"
The exhibitions are varied and well produced, there also is a 3D movie "Petropolis" being displayed all day, as well as many challanging activities to partake.
Next Stop, Kristiansand, 199 miles away -Preety far, we'll have make some small stops along the way.
Haugesund COA (Three seagulls) - Grated in 1930, represents the important of the sea
Our current stop, after another week of activities and 81 miles walk, is the main population center of Haugaland, Haugesund. Instead of just seeing the obvious but surprisingly few (Haugaland is still a relatively small city) tourist atractions, we will use our brief stay to take a better look at the quality of life and general aspects of the city, as a mirror of the country.
Interesting fact: The norwegean language has two writing standards: Bokmal (book tongue) & Nymorsk. (There also is a conservative ortographic standard called Riksmal)
The first thing we noticed was how the country's current economic activities are changing the dinamic of the cities.
The city grew prosperous with fishery, being situated in an important geographical sound, (a large deep inlet), karmsundet, with a generous population of herring fish. Today the herring is long gone, and the economy is turning to the petroleum industry.
The old fishermen who don't convert to oil mining are facing bankruptcy, also due to illegal sismic shocks used for petroleum hunting which harm the aquatic life. The salary in oil mining is 3x higher than that of a fisherman's.
To this day Karmund is one of Norway's busiest waterways, but not accounting for employment or local economy.
Our unmissable visit here was to Haraldshaufen, the burial site to the first king of Norway (Harald), who lived in Avaldsnes, close to the modern town of Haugesund.
The monument consists of a large mound surrounded by a granite memorial stones with 29 smaller stones, one from each of the historic counties of Norway. At the top of the mound stands a 17m high granite main obelisk, with four bronze panels around the base. Each panel depicts important scenes from the life of King Harald I. - It was erected in 1872 by Crown Prince Oscar, 1000 years after the battle won by Harald that united Norway(Battle of Hafrsfjord).
Norway has a nearly socialistic economy, based on the Nordic Model; a combination of free market capitalism and welfare state. - At the cost of very high taxes, many public benefits are accessible to the citizens, including:
Free universal health care
Unemployment insurance
Free Education, and so on.
Even though the employment rate is apparently low in the public eye, a large portion of the population still doesn't work. They live off a disability aid given by the government, which keeps the country from a crisis and maintain the quality of life for the citizens with the wealth from the black gold.
Interesting Facts:Norway is currently handling gender equality and muslim immigration; due to recent controversy, even haircut prices are gender equal. -And this while deciding wheter they should remove meat from school cantines and comemorate chirstmas or not.
Norway has the most electric cars, being considered the 'Tesla capital' of the world, due to governmental incentives:
"Tesla doesn't pay a sales tax on the models it sells, electric car owners are exempt from automobile tolls, and they can charge their vehicles for free. The catch is that Norway funds these initiatives through its sovereign wealth fund, which is almost entirely comprised of profits from Norway's oil and fossil fuel exports." -
Norway has banned deforestation - We know it is ironic that the country's recent green twist is being financed by the oil industry, but Norway itself does not use fossil fuels for power, instead they use green alternatives, mostly hidropower.
According to our research, over 9% of the population aged 18-66 recieve a disability pension (474.043 people), while 68% between 15-77 are employed, 30% being by the government, the highest in the OECD, masking the lack of jobs in the country and the existence of a two-faced society.
The blessing of oil in Norway, despite creating a welfare, equality and quality of life in the country, has created many challanges to capitalism (most evidentially in the fact that 30% of workers are employed by the government).
Due to the high scholarity level of most citizens, the majority of work is in advanced areas, with a highly disputed market, such as Technology and medicine, mostly cancer research, making it much harder to find work.
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Turning our heads back to Haugesund, we realize how interesting and complex this place really is. Amidst the jaw dropping sights; fjords, lakes, mountains and waterfalls. There is history happening in this place right now.
The brutal triathlon event IRONMAN will take place in Haugesund in july 1st 2018 as it has been happening since 2012
I realize we've been doing our own version of IRONMAN all this time, but the doubt remains; would we be ready for this challenge?
Next time we will try to tackle immigration in Norway, which seems to be getting out of hand.
Still in Hordaland (Norway), our next stop is Odda, a relatively small city with over 7.025 inhabitants.
As we saw in the last stop, Odda is located in a valley, which is on an arm of Hardangerfjord, itself called Sorfjorden. Odda is known for it's amazing views and hiking spots, having two of the most stunning Norwegean places; Trolltunga (Troll's tongue) and Hardanger.
The area is the 42nd largest in Norway, and the 146th largest by population (Bergen was the second).
What is a normally ~4 hour car ride was for us more than a week of activities, including: walking, running, hiking and sometimes swimming. Having fun and challenging ourselves along the way.
After this rewarding process, we were delighted with the view of the city -
There is was, covered in snow - Odda
It might have been obvious, but what surprised us the most geographically-wise, was the large amount of waterfalls and lakes, due to the location of the settlements, in valleys.
Lined within a radius of only a few kilometres, the waterfalls are: Tjørnadalsfossen, Strandfossen, Vidfoss, Espelandsfossen and Låtefoss(biggest)
We will mostly just hang out here and visit all the sites we gladly have the chance to see, including Trolltunga and Hardanger, included on the top 10 places in Norway.
Tysso I plant. Part of Smelterverk
Due to the intense migrations to work with smelters and energy generation for the country, a new dialect was born here. There are many dialects in Norway, even between very close communities the dialect can be so varied that it's not mutually inteligible.
Take your time and have a look at what we've been waiting to see here for so long!
After a well deserved 2 weeks rest, we continued our adventure from Iceland to Norway, also passing through the Faroe Islands. The entire journey was over 904 miles, both through sea and land. We thank our mages and rogues for arranging all our supplies for our stay here, including food and clothes (Luckily for us, Norway gives "right to access", right to camp for up to 2 nights on the same spot without inconvenience) since, as we have learned, life in Norway is very expensive for tourists.
A fact that we only learned on our way here (while also counting who makes the most puns with the country's name) is that Norway covers the entire coastline of Scandinavia, being the westernmost, northernmost and also easternmost of the three Scandinavian countries.
Norway covers the entire coastline of Scandinavia
Travelling by boat, practically anywhere we landed would still be 'Norway
The country's landscape is largely influenced by its shape, being very long and close to the ocean. There are more than 450.000 lakes throughout the country, giving amazing views and panoramas at any point. There are also countless islands (more than 20.000 identified) throughout, which shelters the coast from rough waters.
BERGEN
As many of us already knew, we have gotten ourselves in a world heritage city, a protected historical site with many interesting and innovative solutions, which we'll see for ourselves now.
The first stop we made was in Bergen, Norway's second largest city (after Oslo) with 250 thousand inhabitants.
The city is surrounded by seven mountains and fjords, which contributes to it's tittle of 'Europe's rainiest city', and the nickname "City of the seven Mountains"
From our research we could tell that our visits and experiences here will come mostly from the country's unique settings and solutions rather than visitor attractions, of which most are museums.
The records say the city was founded in 1070 by Olav Kyrre, and was the capital of Norway until 1299, when the title was passed to Oslo. It is a municipality in Hordaland County, today the 3rd largest by population.
The visits we are to make here include:
Edvard Grieg Museum (Troldhaugen);
Bryggen: small town from the Hanseatic League era.
Edvard Grieg, a widely known composer and pianist, and the most celebrated person from Bergen, -with numerous statues depicting his image, and many cultural entities named after him- is for us the most interesting find of this visit. He was born (15 June 1843), and died here (4 September 1907) at age 64, his and his wife's body, Nina Grieg, were buried in their former home, now made into a museum in his name, Troldhaugen.
His music is widely used in popular culture and is easily recognizable, we found that these two were the most common among us:
Although there are many more to discover, just search for his music and enjoy!
Another interesting aspect of Norwegian music is the development of the Norway Metal genre, with bands such as Burzum; a one-man Heavy-metal band by Verg Vikernes, which gets it's name from TLOTR, meaning 'Darkness' in the black speech - Ash nazg durbatulûk ash nazg gimbatul ash nazg thrakatulûk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul (One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them) And the band Emperor, coming from Bergen.
Norway is one of Europe's most sparsely populated countries, with a population of 5 mi in a land of 385.802 km² - 50% of it being of barren mountains - (equals to 16 inhabitants per km²). It is also a very prosperous country, with free education and most basic systems, in exchange for the high taxes..
Due to this nature, we will focus in the most important cities, skipping the small stops and hopefully get to see all the regions of this enormous country.
Another 2 things surprised us once we got here; almost everyone speaks English (90% of the population), making Norway one of the most English proficient nations where English is not an official language.
Also regarding languages, there are two languages spoken; Norwegian and Sami, the latter being related to Finnish. Most Norwegians also learn French, German and/or Spanish as well, and there are also many dialects spoken around the country.
We also noticed that instead of dubbing their content, they prefer to show programs such as foreign television in their original language with subtitles, which is probably why almost everyone is fluent in English.
The other surprising fact is that Norway (Or the Kingdom of Norway) is a unitary monarchy, being so for 1.445 years, with a list of over 60 kings. The current monarch is King Herald V, with only representative power as head of state (the Prime Minister is the head of government).
As mentioned before, Norway is a very prosperous city, with extensive reserves of important resources such as petroleum, oil and natural gas, being the world's largest producer on a per capita basis outside the Middle-east. It also has the fourth highest per capita income, the world's largest sovereign wealth fund (USD 1 Trillion), world's highest Human Development Index and most importantly, the first rank on the World Happiness Report. We will look later for some practical examples of why that is.
So is life: Only after we put Norway on our map did we suddenly start seeing it everywhere, now there is a lot to see here. There is a lot of controversy about the true state of the country, with problems including immigration crisis, unemployment, socioeconomic problems and lack of privacy(some say endorsement of sick/envious behavior). Though we can't say for all of that on our own, we expect to learn much more about it, and see the country from all sides.
Edvard Grieg Museum
Museum Shuttle bus; takes to all main museums in one fare- Bus-lightrails transport in Bergen.
Bryggen, a series of Hanseatic commercial buildings in Bergen
Skipping Oslo Museum, we went right to Edvard Munch Museum, in Old Oslo (Gamle Oslo) -which is currently being relocated to near the Opera House (see the video), in a project which dates back to 2008 and is to be completed in 2019- to see the collections left by Munch himself , and his sister, to the city.
It was opened in 1963, comemmorating Munch's 100 year anniversary, financed by Oslo cinemas. The designers were Einar Myklebust and Gunnar Fougner.
