Norway Trip Part 2: Bergen to Kirkenes
Our bus trip
back from the fish farm brought us back into Bergen. On the way to the
Hurtigruten Ship dock, we stopped at a shopping mall so people could visit the
“Wine Monopoly”, the state run wine and spirits store, and pick up supplies for
the remainder of the trip. Several of us
who were not interested remained on the bus, including Suzy. After that stop we
went on to the terminal building where we processed through some minimal
security and boarded the MS Nordnorge. We had turned over our bags at the dock
and were free to wait for our cabins to become available at 4 p.m. It gave us
some time to explore the ship, which was not large, but did have a 500 person
passenger and crew capacity and was fully booked for this trip. The ship looks like a small cruise ship, but
also carries cargo and cars up the west coast of Norway, stopping at towns both
small and large to let people on and off, deliver and pick up cargo and cars,
and provides a tourist experience for groups like ours. When we processed in at
the terminal we received a card that granted us exit and entry on board, but was
also tied to a credit card for onboard purchases. The ship had a regular dining
room, a café and a snack bar with coffee, tea, ice cream and pastries during
the day. It had two conference rooms, one of which our group used every day to
hear a lecture from our tour leader, Chase, on various subjects. After a mandatory safety briefing we were
able to access our cabins. Ours was on the 3rd deck and had all the
room we needed. Our group’s time to have dinner was set at 6:30. Breakfast and
lunch were buffets, as were a couple of the dinners, including our initial
dinner on board, while others featured a fixed 3-course menu. The servers and housekeeping staff were
generally young people from Sweden doing summer work. The ship had 35 stops it could make, a number
of them were at night and were very brief, while others were much longer and allowed
for tourist activities. The ship had
excursions of its own which could be purchased; however, our group had its own
itinerary. We set sail out of Bergen while
we were at dinner. We had no other
activities scheduled for the evening and the ship had no on board entertainment
activities, so we called it an evening and got a decent night’s sleep.
The next morning after breakfast we entered the Alesund fjord, stopping at the town of the same name on the way in and had some time to look around, then continued into the fjord and went the length of it in about 3 ¼ hours and then returned the same way we came with plenty of lovely scenery and waterfalls along the way. I took an after lunch nap and rallied in time for dinner, followed by our first talk, about Norway in general and featuring a humorous video of what it means to be a Norwegian. Chase also shared some of his wedding pictures with the group at our request. They make a very handsome couple.
Our next day was a long stop at the major city of Trondheim. Trondheim had German U-boats stationed there in WWII and as a result got bombed by the Allies and much of its pre-war architecture was destroyed. We had a bus tour of the city, with an overlook stop for photos.Click here for a short overlook video We next made a visit to the Nideral Cathedral, tehn returned to the ship with a talk on Norwegian food and dress. Norway is about 40 percent self-sufficient in feeding itself with surpluses in the areas of potatoes and fish and deficits in grains, fruits and vegetables, and other meats. Milk production is subsidized so there are plenty of dairy products available.
We had an “Inner Circle” cocktail reception at 5 p.m. before dinner which by virtue of the number of Grand Circle/O.A.T. trips we had taken, all 23 of us were qualified for, with the exception of one couple we granted honorary status to so they could be included. Sparkling wine, orange juice and a taste of Meade (fermented honey) was served up by one of the ship’s staff in our conference room and we had a pleasant time of conversation before dinner.
It was an early breakfast the next morning and then out on deck to see us pass the Arctic Circle at around 8 a.m. At 10 a.m. we had a talk on WWII and Scandinavia, which was very interesting to me as a military history buff. Norway was attempting to be a neutral nation when WWII started, but their neutrality was violated a number of times and finally hostilities came about resulting in a fairly rapid takeover of the country by the Germans with organized fighting continuing for some months in the more rugged north. The end of the hostilities saw a Nazi occupation that ran from 1942 to 1944. Sweden remained neutral throughout, Finland had had a war with Russia in 1939 and when the Germans tuned on the Soviets, Finland ended up with a large German presence in the north of the country until Russia pushed them out to Norway in 1944. The Germans practiced a scorched earth policy in their retreat from northern Finland, but made a more orderly withdrawal from Norway. In terms of the Norwegian populace, (according to Chase) about 20% were active collaborators with the Nazi’s and about 20% were in the Resistance and the remainder just tried to survive day to day. As far enemy occupations go, the German’s treated the Norwegians fairly well as they looked upon them as fellow Arian racial stock. There were not many Jews in Norway, but hundreds were deported from the Oslo area with the help of the collaborating city police force. Post-war Norway retaliated strongly against those who had aided the Nazi occupiers with trails and executions for several years after the war. Women who had taken up with German soldiers had their heads shaved (as was the case in occupied France). Children of Norwegian women and German soldiers had a very hard time in school and were ostracized growing up. The one story that sticks with me is of the sabotage of a ferry in a deep fjord that was taking “heavy water” produced by Germans for atomic bomb research out of the country. The resistance people who planted the bomb knew it would kill friends and family riding the ferry but they did it anyway and destroyed the material putting a major roadblock into Nazi efforts to build an atomic weapon.
The next day we had several stops, none of them as long as Trondheim, but enough time to see the area. Our first stop was in Bodo where we met an acquaintance of Chase’s named Per (Pear) who along with an infant son in a stroller gave us a walking tour of the town and also recounted his experience with the socialized medicine in Norway. One of his older children had been diagnosed with a very nasty form of brain cancer and nothing could be done for him in any of the Norwegian cancer centers. There was a study going on in New York at Sloan-Kettering that looked promising, but the cost for treatment was estimated at just over 1 million dollars. The family applied for the government to pick up the cost and were turned down at several levels, but eventually approved nationally. The family moved to New York and spent almost a year at a Ronald MacDonald house whole treatment was done which turned out to be successful and the family returned to Norway. Unfortunately several years later the cancer returned in another form and took the child’s life, but it was an example of socialized medicine coming through in a big way. We got back to the ship and went on our way stopping in the small town of Svolvaer. This was a picturesque fishing village, but also the scene of a major raid by the Allies against the German’s in 1942. Allied Naval and Marine forces attacked the German garrison and the harbor. They destroyed several ships and captured some 300 prisoners and got away before re-enforcements could be marshalled against them. The German naval vessels destroyed are still at the bottom of the harbor which is very deep. The small town has a privately owned WWII museum run by an interesting fellow who has collected thousands of artifacts, uniforms and pieces of equipment from all sides of WW II, German Soviet, British and American alike. There was stuff crammed in every corner and display case, to include a silver purse belonging to Eva Braun (Hitler’s mistress), some drawings of Disney’s 7 dwarves purportedly done and signed by Hitler, Nazi Christmas ornaments and a very chilling “Gestapo Room” behind a closed door. It was hard to take it all given in the brief time we had in the town. We got back on the ship and sailed north, entering a small but very narrow fjord known as the Trollfjord. This was another great photo opportunity to be outside on the front deck of the ship as in some places the cliff walls were very close to either side of the ship. It is very deep and opens up into a small bay where we could turn around and come back out. We saw several eagles on the cliffs and magnificent mountains still lit by the sun despite it being around 11:30 p.m. Click here for a short video of the Trollfjord
Our next day brought us to the town of Tromso, the last town of size in the northern part of the country. It was another perfect day for walking and we explored the harbor area, looking at repurposed warehouses from commercial fishing and whaling days. Chase procured some smoked whale meat and we all had a sample. It tasted much like smoked beef, but was much denser. We had admission to a Polar Museum there and had a local guide take us through and tell us more about the Arctic explorers but also a lot about the indigenous people from the Arctic, their lifestyles and the lifestyles of the trappers, whalers and seal hunters who were in the area before it was developed. We returned to our ship and continued north passing by chains of barren islands. BY this point it literally was daylight all night, so we made good use of our blackout curtains and eye shades.
Our next day brought us to the North Cape area of Norway, stopping at the town of Honningsvag. We had a local guide who actually was from Portugal, but lives in town and runs a bar as well as doing tour groups. He was very good. We bussed out of the town and out to the end of the land where the most northern point in Europe lies at 70 degrees 10 minutes and 21 seconds North Latitude. It is marked by a large metal globe which we all took turns having our pictures taken by. There is a museum and theater which ran a good film on the seasons of 24 hour daylight to 24 hour darkness and the Northern lights. They also had a good exhibit on the WWII Allied convoys that supplied Russia in the Port of Murmansk to assist in their war effort against the Germans and how dangerous convoys were with all the U-boat activity, but how much of a difference those supplies made in the long run defeat of Nazi Germany. We returned by bus to the ship and after dinner had a talk on Scandinavian politics which was very interesting. Norway, Denmark and Sweden are constitutional monarchies and Finland is a republic with an elected President. Norway is a founding member of NATO and takes defense seriously. It has turned down joining the E.U. several times in referenda, so sympathizes a bit with the UK and their Brexit. Sweden is still neutral and not in either NATO or the E.U, but Finland and Denmark are both in the E.U. with Denmark being a NATO member as well, but focused on their Air Force as there is only a tiny Army. Hot button issues for Norway are immigration and toll roads. In fact the fastest growing political party is an anti-toll road party that has come together recently in opposition to putting tolls on the roads. North Sea oil monies are held in escrow as a rainy day fund and they are operating without a current deficit, having a balanced budget and a very hefty tax burden to pay for the social welfare state.
Sunday morning found us at the end of our ship journey as we docked in the small town of Kirkenes. We were off the ship at 9 a.m. and onto a bus that took us into town, but there was little to see or do as there was no one out and about early Sunday morning. Kirkenes is very close to the Russian border and there is even a monument to Russian soldiers who liberated the town from the Nazi’s in WWII. We had a local guide who was actually German but is living there. He gave us a tour of a large underground shelter constructed built by local miners who worked the iron mines in the area to protect their people from bombing that went on. Kirkenes was pretty much destroyed in WW II above ground, but the large facility underground was a safe haven. It doubled as a fallout shelter during the Cold War but now is a tourist attraction. The iron mining had dwindled in recent years, but we noted that a large facility had Chinese writing on it and we learned that a Chinese firm has purchased the mines and ore plant and is starting up production again—getting their hands into everything it seems. That also explained the new Chinese gate in the town square and the local Chinese restaurant (although they are also catering to the many Chinese cruise ship tourists who visit). I asked Chase on the side if this proximity to Russia engendered any spying and he indicated it did. He told me a local Norwegian official from the town had been arrested in Murmansk several years ago with a large amount of Russian currency that was speculated may have been intended to procure information. He is still being held in Russia. An interesting fact is that people living in a 25 mile area on either side of the border have a special passport that allows back and forth cross border travel with little scrutiny. Russians come across to buy Norwegian gasoline for their cars and groceries while Norwegians cross to load up on Russian booze which is much cheaper than in Norway. After finishing up in the town, we continued our bus ride along the road that leads to Murmansk and stopped at the border with Russia for some photo opportunities. I could see a lot of signals intelligence towers on the Norwegian side of the border on some nearby mountain tops, which I am sure is used by NATO to monitor the Russian Baltic Fleet in Murmansk. At this point we loaded back up on the bus and head to the Finland border and said farewell to Norway. Stay tuned for Part 3 of this travel blog which will cover our time in northern Finland, Helsinki and the trip home.
The next morning after breakfast we entered the Alesund fjord, stopping at the town of the same name on the way in and had some time to look around, then continued into the fjord and went the length of it in about 3 ¼ hours and then returned the same way we came with plenty of lovely scenery and waterfalls along the way. I took an after lunch nap and rallied in time for dinner, followed by our first talk, about Norway in general and featuring a humorous video of what it means to be a Norwegian. Chase also shared some of his wedding pictures with the group at our request. They make a very handsome couple.
Our next day was a long stop at the major city of Trondheim. Trondheim had German U-boats stationed there in WWII and as a result got bombed by the Allies and much of its pre-war architecture was destroyed. We had a bus tour of the city, with an overlook stop for photos.Click here for a short overlook video We next made a visit to the Nideral Cathedral, tehn returned to the ship with a talk on Norwegian food and dress. Norway is about 40 percent self-sufficient in feeding itself with surpluses in the areas of potatoes and fish and deficits in grains, fruits and vegetables, and other meats. Milk production is subsidized so there are plenty of dairy products available.
We had an “Inner Circle” cocktail reception at 5 p.m. before dinner which by virtue of the number of Grand Circle/O.A.T. trips we had taken, all 23 of us were qualified for, with the exception of one couple we granted honorary status to so they could be included. Sparkling wine, orange juice and a taste of Meade (fermented honey) was served up by one of the ship’s staff in our conference room and we had a pleasant time of conversation before dinner.
It was an early breakfast the next morning and then out on deck to see us pass the Arctic Circle at around 8 a.m. At 10 a.m. we had a talk on WWII and Scandinavia, which was very interesting to me as a military history buff. Norway was attempting to be a neutral nation when WWII started, but their neutrality was violated a number of times and finally hostilities came about resulting in a fairly rapid takeover of the country by the Germans with organized fighting continuing for some months in the more rugged north. The end of the hostilities saw a Nazi occupation that ran from 1942 to 1944. Sweden remained neutral throughout, Finland had had a war with Russia in 1939 and when the Germans tuned on the Soviets, Finland ended up with a large German presence in the north of the country until Russia pushed them out to Norway in 1944. The Germans practiced a scorched earth policy in their retreat from northern Finland, but made a more orderly withdrawal from Norway. In terms of the Norwegian populace, (according to Chase) about 20% were active collaborators with the Nazi’s and about 20% were in the Resistance and the remainder just tried to survive day to day. As far enemy occupations go, the German’s treated the Norwegians fairly well as they looked upon them as fellow Arian racial stock. There were not many Jews in Norway, but hundreds were deported from the Oslo area with the help of the collaborating city police force. Post-war Norway retaliated strongly against those who had aided the Nazi occupiers with trails and executions for several years after the war. Women who had taken up with German soldiers had their heads shaved (as was the case in occupied France). Children of Norwegian women and German soldiers had a very hard time in school and were ostracized growing up. The one story that sticks with me is of the sabotage of a ferry in a deep fjord that was taking “heavy water” produced by Germans for atomic bomb research out of the country. The resistance people who planted the bomb knew it would kill friends and family riding the ferry but they did it anyway and destroyed the material putting a major roadblock into Nazi efforts to build an atomic weapon.
The next day we had several stops, none of them as long as Trondheim, but enough time to see the area. Our first stop was in Bodo where we met an acquaintance of Chase’s named Per (Pear) who along with an infant son in a stroller gave us a walking tour of the town and also recounted his experience with the socialized medicine in Norway. One of his older children had been diagnosed with a very nasty form of brain cancer and nothing could be done for him in any of the Norwegian cancer centers. There was a study going on in New York at Sloan-Kettering that looked promising, but the cost for treatment was estimated at just over 1 million dollars. The family applied for the government to pick up the cost and were turned down at several levels, but eventually approved nationally. The family moved to New York and spent almost a year at a Ronald MacDonald house whole treatment was done which turned out to be successful and the family returned to Norway. Unfortunately several years later the cancer returned in another form and took the child’s life, but it was an example of socialized medicine coming through in a big way. We got back to the ship and went on our way stopping in the small town of Svolvaer. This was a picturesque fishing village, but also the scene of a major raid by the Allies against the German’s in 1942. Allied Naval and Marine forces attacked the German garrison and the harbor. They destroyed several ships and captured some 300 prisoners and got away before re-enforcements could be marshalled against them. The German naval vessels destroyed are still at the bottom of the harbor which is very deep. The small town has a privately owned WWII museum run by an interesting fellow who has collected thousands of artifacts, uniforms and pieces of equipment from all sides of WW II, German Soviet, British and American alike. There was stuff crammed in every corner and display case, to include a silver purse belonging to Eva Braun (Hitler’s mistress), some drawings of Disney’s 7 dwarves purportedly done and signed by Hitler, Nazi Christmas ornaments and a very chilling “Gestapo Room” behind a closed door. It was hard to take it all given in the brief time we had in the town. We got back on the ship and sailed north, entering a small but very narrow fjord known as the Trollfjord. This was another great photo opportunity to be outside on the front deck of the ship as in some places the cliff walls were very close to either side of the ship. It is very deep and opens up into a small bay where we could turn around and come back out. We saw several eagles on the cliffs and magnificent mountains still lit by the sun despite it being around 11:30 p.m. Click here for a short video of the Trollfjord
Our next day brought us to the town of Tromso, the last town of size in the northern part of the country. It was another perfect day for walking and we explored the harbor area, looking at repurposed warehouses from commercial fishing and whaling days. Chase procured some smoked whale meat and we all had a sample. It tasted much like smoked beef, but was much denser. We had admission to a Polar Museum there and had a local guide take us through and tell us more about the Arctic explorers but also a lot about the indigenous people from the Arctic, their lifestyles and the lifestyles of the trappers, whalers and seal hunters who were in the area before it was developed. We returned to our ship and continued north passing by chains of barren islands. BY this point it literally was daylight all night, so we made good use of our blackout curtains and eye shades.
Our next day brought us to the North Cape area of Norway, stopping at the town of Honningsvag. We had a local guide who actually was from Portugal, but lives in town and runs a bar as well as doing tour groups. He was very good. We bussed out of the town and out to the end of the land where the most northern point in Europe lies at 70 degrees 10 minutes and 21 seconds North Latitude. It is marked by a large metal globe which we all took turns having our pictures taken by. There is a museum and theater which ran a good film on the seasons of 24 hour daylight to 24 hour darkness and the Northern lights. They also had a good exhibit on the WWII Allied convoys that supplied Russia in the Port of Murmansk to assist in their war effort against the Germans and how dangerous convoys were with all the U-boat activity, but how much of a difference those supplies made in the long run defeat of Nazi Germany. We returned by bus to the ship and after dinner had a talk on Scandinavian politics which was very interesting. Norway, Denmark and Sweden are constitutional monarchies and Finland is a republic with an elected President. Norway is a founding member of NATO and takes defense seriously. It has turned down joining the E.U. several times in referenda, so sympathizes a bit with the UK and their Brexit. Sweden is still neutral and not in either NATO or the E.U, but Finland and Denmark are both in the E.U. with Denmark being a NATO member as well, but focused on their Air Force as there is only a tiny Army. Hot button issues for Norway are immigration and toll roads. In fact the fastest growing political party is an anti-toll road party that has come together recently in opposition to putting tolls on the roads. North Sea oil monies are held in escrow as a rainy day fund and they are operating without a current deficit, having a balanced budget and a very hefty tax burden to pay for the social welfare state.
Sunday morning found us at the end of our ship journey as we docked in the small town of Kirkenes. We were off the ship at 9 a.m. and onto a bus that took us into town, but there was little to see or do as there was no one out and about early Sunday morning. Kirkenes is very close to the Russian border and there is even a monument to Russian soldiers who liberated the town from the Nazi’s in WWII. We had a local guide who was actually German but is living there. He gave us a tour of a large underground shelter constructed built by local miners who worked the iron mines in the area to protect their people from bombing that went on. Kirkenes was pretty much destroyed in WW II above ground, but the large facility underground was a safe haven. It doubled as a fallout shelter during the Cold War but now is a tourist attraction. The iron mining had dwindled in recent years, but we noted that a large facility had Chinese writing on it and we learned that a Chinese firm has purchased the mines and ore plant and is starting up production again—getting their hands into everything it seems. That also explained the new Chinese gate in the town square and the local Chinese restaurant (although they are also catering to the many Chinese cruise ship tourists who visit). I asked Chase on the side if this proximity to Russia engendered any spying and he indicated it did. He told me a local Norwegian official from the town had been arrested in Murmansk several years ago with a large amount of Russian currency that was speculated may have been intended to procure information. He is still being held in Russia. An interesting fact is that people living in a 25 mile area on either side of the border have a special passport that allows back and forth cross border travel with little scrutiny. Russians come across to buy Norwegian gasoline for their cars and groceries while Norwegians cross to load up on Russian booze which is much cheaper than in Norway. After finishing up in the town, we continued our bus ride along the road that leads to Murmansk and stopped at the border with Russia for some photo opportunities. I could see a lot of signals intelligence towers on the Norwegian side of the border on some nearby mountain tops, which I am sure is used by NATO to monitor the Russian Baltic Fleet in Murmansk. At this point we loaded back up on the bus and head to the Finland border and said farewell to Norway. Stay tuned for Part 3 of this travel blog which will cover our time in northern Finland, Helsinki and the trip home.
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