Scandinavia - July 2006

With two months of summer holidays and a heat wave in Europe, we decided to head North. Having just bought a new digital camera, we took about 800 photos. Even after deleting the many duplicates, we're still left with about 200. Here are our favorites. (If you click on them, they get much bigger).

Our first stop was Malmo, just across the bridge from Copenhagen, in Sweden. There's not a lot to see there, but we had to wait for a night train to Oslo.

After a series of train connections, we found ourselves at the Western Fjords. This train descended 1000m in 30 mins (apparently very steep for a train) into the Flåm valley.

We stopped briefly at this waterfall (our first of many).

The Flåm valley.

After reaching sea level, we boarded a five-hour ferry through the fjords. Etienne was still able to pass for a student, so we all got 50% discounts.

We stopped briefly at this waterfall.

The ferry stopped numerous times at small towns (that would otherwise be quite inaccessible).

We approach Bergen.

Bergen is in the touristy part of the fjords (filled with little old ladies from England). The main attraction is Bryggen (the colourful old warehouses at the harbour).

We spent the night in a Christian Youth Hostel, arriving just in time to see the first World Cup Semi-Final. The next day, we climbed a nearby mountain.

Etienne was constantly on the lookout for a Norwegian Blue Parrot and often found himself pining for the fjords.


Our second night in the youth hostel, we had to wait for bible study to end before we could watch the World Cup...

We returned to Oslo, dropped Etienne off at the airport and continued on to Lillehammer. Unfortunately, Etienne was at the wrong airport and didn't realize it until it was too late. He had to buy another ticket, spend an extra night in Oslo and just made a very close connection to his flight back to Canada.

In Lillehammer, we visited the Olympics museum:

It contained brief exhibitions on each of the Olympics games, mainly detailing how many medals Norway won.

There were also some giant props left over from their Opening Ceremonies.

The real highlight of Lillehammer was an "open-air museum" with hundreds of centuries-old huts with turf-roofs.






There was also an old stave church, with a pole out front where they could chain up anyone the church wanted to humiliate.

And a brief exhibit on modern living, with this display on homelessness.


After Lillehammer, we returned to the fjords (a bit further north). To get to the town of Geiranger from the nearest train station, we had to take a bus over a mountain range. The road (called Troll's Way) is pretty much one lane and has a series of steep hairpin bends. This made it very interesting for cars and buses coming the other way.

We stopped briefly at this waterfall.


Here's a view from the top:

As we neared to Geiranger, the mist cleared, revealing the blue waters below.

We stopped briefly at this waterfall (called the Seven Sisters).

We spent the day hiking around the town.


We climbed about 500m and found the perfect place to take a "postcard" photo.

We also hiked to a small waterfall that you could walk behind.

After six hours of hiking (in our Crocs), we returned to the bus.

We continued on to Trondheim (roughly half way up Norway). It was like the Kingston of Norway, with a nice downtown area and lots of students (our hostel consisted of bunk beds in a student run dance club).

There was also an old fort.

To help cyclists climb the only hill in town, an innovative "bicycle lift" was installed. You place your right foot on a step, which then moves up the track, pulling you along.

Shortly after leaving Trondheim, we passed through Hell. This seemed a bit ominous as we were just beginning a 20-hour train ride.

We changed trains at the Swedish border, and found ourselves onboard a deserted train. We had an entire car to ourselves for the next couple hours.

Finally, we arrived at Abisko National Park, about 250km north of the Arctic Circle, in Sweden.

Despite being so far north (2407km to the North Pole), the weather was gorgeous (20 degrees).

In winter, most visitors travel by dogsled but in summer, the area is filled with hikers.


The ground is only unfrozen for two month a year. Unfortunately, as it thaws, it becomes a muddy bog (and the perfect breeding ground for mosquitoes).

Luckily, most paths had thin boardwalks across the worst parts.

We chose to take full advantage of the "midnight sun" and began hiking up this mountain around 10pm (it still seemed like the middle of the day).

Near the summit, we finally found some snow.

And a reindeer. He walked right past us, about 10m away. There are about 230,000 reindeer in Northern Sweden and Finland, but they're almost all part of commercial herds.

We also saw a moose (way off in the distance).


Near the train station, we found this bike. It seems the Swedes found a better way to ride the rails.

After another long series of bus/train connections (there aren't a lot of travelers this far north), we arrived in Rovaniemi, Finland. The city is the site of the official Arctic Circle marker.

And also, Santa Claus' Official Office (and Post Office). Santa is becoming quite the capitalist. A photo with him is 30$US and even a letter from Santa costs 6$US.

Our next stop was Tampere, where we found the only indications of poor people in Scandinavia. The train station was full of vagrants and all public toilets had black lights, so that you can't find a vein to shoot up.

The city is industrial and not much too look at, but there were lots of museums. There was an interesting spy museum with a few Jamed Bond gadgets, and an incredibly boring Lenin museum (Finland borders on Russia).

There was also an excellent museum dedicated to Moomins: characters from a series of children's books. The stories are like those of a Finnish Dr. Seuss.

With about a week left on our rail passes, we decided to finally see the capital cities. First, Helsinki (here's the train station).

The cathedral:

An island fortress off the coast:

The highlight of the Natural History Museum was supposed to be details of the Sami people (like the Inuit in Canada), but just about the only interesting thing there was these frescoes.

This is a statue of somebody famous, who birds obviously dislike:

There was also a market selling potatoes fresh from the sea:


This is the Church in the Rock: a round church that was blasted into a rocky outcrop.

Here's a sample of the Finnish language (almost makes us glad we're learning Danish)

Despite poor people in the train stations, Finland had the nicest trains. There were even separate rooms for people to have private cell phone conversations.

And, an area for children to play.

Next capital: Stockholm. Here's the Changing of the Guard outside the Royal Palace. The dark blue guards are replacing the bright blue guards.

We visited the Modern Art Museum, because we heard Paul McCartney would be there. Turned out to be Paul MaCarthy, a sick and twisted "artist" who films himself doing incredibly bizarre things often wearing only a face mask of a Disney character. It's a commentary on something or other, but mostly it's just wrong.

There were also a few pieces of art from other artists; less traumatizing, but equally weird.

Stockholm is where they give out the Nobel Prizes, so of course, there was a museum. They presented Nobel laureates on a rotating rack from a dry cleaners.

We climbed the tower at City Hall for a view of Gamla Stan (the Old Town).

The big square building to the right is the Royal Palace and the circular building to the left is the Parliament. We went on entertaining guided tours of both. The palace's history mostly revolves around huge fires, and evil Danish kings.

The Parliament is based on proportional representation, and aspires to reflect a true cross-section of Swedish society. As our guide explained, they hope to have a government of 50% women, all age groups and 20% immigrants. At this point, some Danes on our tour expressed disbelief that there are so many foreigners...

Marieke is a huge fan of Pippy Longstocking, so we visited Junibacken (an interactive museum dedicated to Pippy and other children's characters).

It was a bit more child-oriented than we expected (we were the only adults not accompanying young children). But, it was also really fun. Here are the lockers.

Here is an apartment tower for children (the front door is about 3' tall).

And another room with children-only access.

The only "ride" was similar to "It's a Small World After All." We sat on the Story Train, listening to stories narated by the creator of Pippy Longstocking and passing by small recreations of those stories. Here's heaven, where a small boy is reunited with his dead brother:

Here is Pippy's house:


Anthony's choice of museums was the Vasa Museum. This huge ship was sailed out of Stockholm harbour in 1650 as the pride of the Swedish navy. It sailed for one hour of it's maiden voyage before being knocked over by a small gust of wind and sinking. The ship was too tall and skinny, had full sails out to show off and left its gun doors open to fire a ceremonial salute. At the bottom of the Baltic Sea, it survived intact for 300 years. It was found in 1960, brought back up to the surface and floated into a dry dock. A museum was built around it.

For some reason, the waterborn microbes that normally eat the wood in shipwrecks cannot survive in the Baltic Sea, so even these carvings remained intact.


After two musuems in one day, we decided to go for a walk inthe park, and came across these birds enjoying a picnic. This was thoroughly amusing to Marieke and one of the highlights of the whole trip.

Another highlight was the incredibly fun playgrounds (in Scandinavia they don't seem to worry so much about children hurting themselves).

A final highlight in Stockholm: a restaurant with a great view and a huge vegetarian buffet.

We then returned to Oslo for another couple days. They also had a perfectly restored ship, though not as huge. This large Viking ship was still quite impressive.

We aren't old enough to have heard of him, but apparently a Norwegian man became very famous in the 1970s by sailing to Polynesia from Peru, to prove it was possibly colonized from the East. Later in life, he built this "paper" ship and sailed from Morocco to Bermuda to prove some other theory of his.

It was so hot that we gave up being tourists and spent the rest of the day at an island beach:


On our last day, we visited Vigeland park, where a sculptor (Mr. Vigeland) has created 212 statues of naked people.

The centerpiece is this huge monolith of naked bodies.

The real masterpiece though is Angry Baby (immediately recognizable to anyone who's been in Markus' bathroom):

Since the Nobel Peace Prize is given out by Norwegians, they too have a museum. The museum is only a year old, and had many interactive exhibits. This wall represented the world map with a series of dots. Each dot contained a small speaker which played short reflections on peace in dozens of different languages.

A seperate display screen was dedicated to each Nobel laureate. Photos showed on the screens until you apporached. Motion sensors triggered short descriptions of the laureate's accomplishments.

The history of Alfred Nobel was contained in this "book." The pages were really blank, with pictures projected from above. As you moved your hands around the pictures, short descriptions would pop up.

The nearby art museum had a free outdoor exhibit. This may look like a mountain bike track, but was really a reflection on man's dominance over nature, out of context in an urban setting. Or so I was told.

We took a night train back to Copenhagen, but still had one day left on our rail pass. We decided to see some of Denmark too. We visited a small town in Jutland called Århus. It was very nice, except for this hideous City Hall:

SLUT (that's Danish for The End)