Yesterdays’ sea day was uneventful. The seas have been very calm considering we’re in the North Sea. Fred’s been disappointed by the lack of swells.
Today we arrived at our first and only port in Norway. Such a shame, we would have loved to have more but it is what it is. Kristiansand is at the southern tip of Norway with a population of 117,000 people. That’s a fairly big city for a country with a population of 5 million.
Most houses are made of stone but they wrap them in white wood for the esthetic. It looks very pretty. The stone was mandated after a series of fires that burned down the town.
Today we took a tour covering the history and present state of the city. They used to mine and refine nickel in the area but now the mines are played out and they import raw nickel from Canada before refining it and probably making its way into our cell phones.
Lumber was also a huge industry here, but most of it was exported to England, Germany and other European countries to the detriment of Norway. Norway was once part of Denmark and only became independent in 1814. I say only because in Europe that counts as recent history.
Our tour today took us out of town to a seaside area of the metropolitan area and then back into the main town via a scenic road. It’s a lot like Maine, very craggy shore with fishing villages. Very pretty.
We then went to an open-air museum, these are very common in Europe. For Norway, this was an opportunity to exert their ‘norwayness’ and separate from Denmark by bringing examples of Norway homes, farms and structures to a museum where people could see how people lived and worked.
These storage areas were used on farms. In the bottom part they would store farm implements and food, on the top they would store all their valuable possessions. There would be a third structure with a hole in the roof and a fire constantly going in the middle. This is where the parents would sleep, along with the husband’s parents. Any children would sleep in the barn with the animals. That probably would be healthier for them since there was always a fire (and smoke) going in the main house.
We were supposed to be here an hour to look around but that didn’t happen for us. Fred passed out while we were at the first stop. He’s okay, just fine, but it was a little scary for a minute or two. He was standing behind me when he started getting wobbly. Thankfully, a couple behind him was able to grab a hold of him before he hit the ground. He was able to walk back to the bus after a little while and he had a good lunch once we got back to the ship. He still has that nagging cold and took some cold medicine while we were on the bus, that apparently interacted with his heart medicine. A quick google search confirmed these two medications do not get along. Lesson learned!
After lunch, Fred took a nap and I went back into town to look around. We had dinner in the main dining room and Fred was totally back to his old self. Whew!
One thing is for sure, we definitely need to go back to Norway. There are so many interesting things to see. This short visit wasn’t enough.
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