Then we boarded our ship in Dublin for our 20 night cruise. Highlights en route to Norway included the Isle of Man (to take the old trains and see the huge waterwheels), Kirkwall (the Orkneys) to see several prehistoric sights including Maeshowe and Scara Brae.
We visited several Norwegian ports on our way north and then more on our way back south to Oslo. Several of the ports were overcrowded because there were huge ships in port. Our ship only has about 650 passengers.
In Bergen, we took a museum tour of the Hanseatic buildings, took the Floybanen funicular up the mountain for a short walk and enjoyed a reindeer sausage!
In Trondheim, we visited Nidaros Cathedral, a splendid building built over the grave of King Olaf II who reigned until 1028. It took many years to build, but substantially completed in 1300. However it has been rebuilt after a few fires and restored as well. Still quite a dramatic building.
In Hammerfest, we visited some Sami to hear about their lifestyle. Staged, of course, but interesting, especially hearing about the Sami Parliament where these people can have input on decisions pertaining to their interests.
After visiting fogbound Nordkapp, we visited a fishing village where our guide had grown up (Kamoyver). Lovely place and we learned more about bacalao (cod).
We took a ship’s tour to the Atlantic Road and an underground marble mine, and a tour to the top of Stranda Mountain (Flydalsjuvet) overlooking Storfjord where the huge fjord branches off into the Sunnylvsfjorden-Geirangerfjorden to the west and the Norddalsfjorden-Tafjorden to the east.
Of course, we thoroughly enjoyed the scenery! The cruise line’s itinerary saved Geraingerfjord for the last, so even the other, very lovely scenery we encountered earlier was enjoyable! The big draw though was the fjord of Gerainger with its steep walls and numerous waterfalls. One of the ship’s guest speakers gave us interesting tidbits as we cruised the length of it and the captain turned the ship 360 degrees so we could admire all of the fjord without having to switch our viewpoint. Stunning, and the sun was shining, giving us rainbows over the Seven Sisters waterfall!
We were glad that the three Russian ports were included in our itinerary. Murmansk is an odd highly industrialized city, with monuments celebrating a variety of historical events or special symbols, like the cod! In the post-Soviet world, the city has shrunk, but still benefits from facilities that were built during that time.
We preferred Archangel (Arkhangelsk) with its older buildings in a pedestrianized area, its open air museum of historic buildings (Malye Korely, about an hour out of the city), and its celebration of fairy tale writers and stories. In both cities we learned about the Arctic convoys of WWII, a part of history that we knew little about.
Our third Russian port was totally different, Solovki or Solovetsky archipelago with a total population of about 860! We took a tour with Kola Travel to see three small monasteries or sketes in the northern part of the Big Solovetsky Island. A skete is a small monastic community dependent upon a large monastery, and the three we visited were remote, needing a skilled driver and four-wheel drive vans. One had wonderful restored icons and was also a lighthouse and one had a hermit monk who didn’t like visitors to his church. One was used as a summer house by the patriarch but didn’t have a church anymore. It was lost to a fire. The scenery looked very Canadian, but the roads were even worse than the backroads in Algonquin Park! The drivers used whichever side of the road that looked best!
We also had a brief time to admire a small part of the huge 16th century Solovetsky Monastery. It is a fortified monastery, which had been transformed into a Soviet prison and labor camp in 1926–39, and served as a prototype for the camps of the Gulag system. That changed in the 1990’s and it is currently undergoing restoration work. It is impressively and surprisingly huge. We just had a short visit to an icon-rich chapel and the main gilded church before tendering back to the ship.
We spent two nights in Oslo after the cruise and enjoyed two very warm days exploring the city. We did see the innovative opera house, but didn’t do the recommended walk on the roof! We saw the Scream and other paintings in the National Gallery and enjoyed an hour in the Nobel Peace Museum. We spent our second day visiting Bygdøy with its open air museum, and several other museums. We were glad to finally visit a stave church. We couldn’t visit Norway without seeing one! We picnicked in the museum grounds before walking to see the impressive Viking museum. We saw three original ships plus sleighs, a cart and other interesting objects. The grandest ship had been used as a burial ship for a high ranking woman.
Then we walked to the Kon-Tiki and the Fram museums. The museum had the original Kon-Tiki and Ra reed boats (the lower reeds of the Ra have been replaced). In the Fram museum, we learned more about the search for the northwest passage and polar (north and south) explorations. There were original artifacts plus an interesting film about Norwegian polar exploration in general and three great Norwegian polar explorers in particular—Fridtjof Nansen, Otto Sverdrup and Roald Amundsen.
Our hotel, the Thon Hotel Terminus included an excellent breakfast brunch and a light supper in the daily rate, perfectly adequate for us. And to beat the high VAT, we had picnic lunches both days.