Tag Archives: Norway

Trolls in Olden, Norway

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I think every country has its myths and legends, we in Scotland have lots, including the Loch Ness monster, mind you over the years some very serious and normally sensible people have sworn they’ve seen the monster. Kelpies are water spirits in the shape of horses. There are selkies and I recently saw a poster in a shop which proclaimed that their haggis was freshly caught in Forfar! But in Norway it’s Trolls that are legendary beings, supposed to live near water and the tourist shops are full of wee troll figurines in various designs. I managed to avoid buying any when we were in Norway. You can read more about trolls in folk tales and myths here.

However I was amused by a cute troll house that had been built at the bottom of a hill in Olden, the trolls were lurking nearby.

troll house

troll house in Olden

You get all sorts of different types of trolls apparently. The Swedish Moomintrolls of the Tove Jansson books fame are very different, to me they look more like cartoon baby hippos.

moomintrolls

Bergen (Gateway to the fjords) Norway

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I had visited Bergen before when I was eleven years old, on an educational school cruise, sailing on the SS Uganda. I had hardly any memories of the actual town, apart from the fish market that was on the quayside way back then. I think it was probably the horror of that that stuck in my mind. The Bergen housewives chose their fish from small sinks full of writhing live fish. I suppose it meant they were super fresh, I’ve never been keen on fish dead or alive, but I was even less keen on seeing them getting the chop, literally. Anyway the fish market has changed quite a bit, I only saw some crustaceans alive in tanks and the plastic awnings weren’t an improvement.

Street View in Bergen

I had no memories of the old wooden buildings in Bergen, probably because we were taken by bus to the composer Edvard Grieg’s home (he was of Scottish descent) and I have a lot of memories of that. Jack didn’t want to visit there though, so we walked around the town, going a bit further than most people probably. Jack is always on the lookout for art deco style buildings to photograph, and he did find a few but I’ll leave those for him to blog about.

Bryggen, Bergen

Bergen is a very old city, it was probably founded around 1070. In the 13th century it was the capital of Norway and eventually became a city of the Hanseatic League which was a sort of medieval European marketing union. This square was bit more modern though.

A Street in Bergen

After doing a wee bit of shopping we took the funicular railway up a very steep hill to get a good view of the city from above, but I’ll leave that post for another time.

You can see more images of Bergen here.

Aurlandsfjord, Norway

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From Lysefjord we sailed into Aurlandsfjord which turned out to be even more spectacular. It’s a branch of the much larger Sognefjord as in the map below. If you look to the right hand side of the map you will see Aurlandsfjord.

Sogne Fjord map

The photographs don’t look that wonderful, it was a grey day, but I think you can get a flavour of the ethereal atmosphere with the wispy low clouds.

Aurlandsfjord

I think of Norway as being just like Scotland – with knobs on! It always amazes me that trees can thrive in such grim growing conditions, this is a very heavily wooded mountainside and the trees have their roots in the rocks.

Aurlandsfjord mountains

Aurlandsfjord leads to the small town of Flam (pronounced flom as in from) and on the way there there are small communities, wherever there are some small patches of greenery people have settled there. These pieces of fertile land are few and far between, most of Norway is too rocky for growing crops. That was the whole reason that the Vikings had to get on their ships and look for somewhere else to live, the land couldn’t support all of the inhabitants.

Aurlandsfjord houses

Some of these houses are only lived in during the summer, they look idyllic to me but I can imagine that the winters are long and grim.

Aurslandfjord houses

I was quite happy with our grey sky views of the fjord but if you want to see other people’s blue sky photos have a look here.

The next Norway post will be of Flam.

Lysefjord, Norway

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For the first couple of days in Norway we sailed through some fjords before actually getting off the Black Watch.

Lysefjord

There are loads of waterfalls tumbling down the sides of the mountains. It’s all quite magical, so atmospheric.

Lysefjord in Norway

Pulpit Rock below is famous, it’s a flat piece of rock about 25 metres square and people go up there to sightsee, I’m not sure I fancy that!

Pulpit Rock

These are just a wee taster of our first fjord on our trip, I have loads more photos. Sadly they don’t capture just how spectacular the area is – but I’m sure you know that feeling when you look back at your own photos, they still bring back the memories though.

Lysefjord