East Coast of NORWAY - the sunny side!

Oslo is our first stop but only for one full day, Hop-on Hop-off bus I hear you say! You bet, it worked well too, we got off at the Viking Ship Museum first. This is the first Viking museum we have been too and it was fantastic, we had heard it was the best in Scandinavia & maybe that is so. Second hop-off was at the Royal Palace to watch the changing of the guard then back on again & off at Vigeland Sculpture Park which was absolutely amazing, the granite & bronze sculptures were incredible & the parkland/gardens just beautiful. The bus took us back into the city centre and we got off at the tourist information centre & walked down the main shopping mall, Karl Johans Gate back to our accommodation.

Unfortunately we don't have any photos of Oslo, our SD card developed a fault and won't read so I have put it to one side (hoping we can still save at least some of the photos) & we got a new card.

Larvik, our two weeks of house & cat sitting that we hope will give us a chance to rest & recouperate a bit before the next stage of our trip. With our cute little 2-storey duplex & our view over the fresh water lake, the city & the harbour, what more could we ask for! We started off with a weekend at home, nothing more heavy duty than a walk to the local Spar Supermarket for some milk & bread. But by Monday we had had enough of doing nothing & walked into town (which I might mention is easy because it is downhill all the way, getting home however is a completely different story). Tourist information, church, Colin Archer Museum (famous boat builder), ocean esplanade, shopping centre, etc all the must-see locations in any town. It was a long walk, took plenty of photos, we had very tired feet & were very short of breath (well I was anyway) when we finally dragged ourselves up the hill towards home.



L to R Lake Farris, Bokeskogen (Beech Forest), Larvik township, Larvikfjord & port area



Inside the top floor of our temporary home

Our next adventure was much more exciting! We caught the local bus to a town only about 20 minutes away called Nevlunghavn (havn = port/harbour) from there it is possible to follow part of the Coastal Walk to Molen, a morain left from the last ice age which contains the burial cairns of Viking Kings thought to date from 100-500 BC. They are really just piles of rocks but fascinating none the less & there are loads of them - 230 in fact, both large, up to 35 metres across & as small as just a few rocks. There is also a ship-shaped formation which held a ship that was used as a funeral pyre.



An example of the lovely timber homes in Nevlunghavn -
see how they build around/up & over the rocks



This is the marked trail - just a little damp under foot !!



This looks like a nice spot for a picnic lunch



Helgeroa as we approached along the track, pity there was some misty rain

We then continued our walk to Helgeroa & were able to pick up a bus later in the day. It was about 8 kilometres altogether & we walked through beech forests & swamps, climbed rocky outcrops with gorgeous views of the Baltic Sea & the numerous rocky islands, lovely little beaches, hoofed it across farmland & through villages & camping areas. I am going to get myself two of those walking sticks, everyone uses them here.

We had a lovely time, beautiful views, just overcast enough to keep it cool & the fine misty rain that hit us one hour from completion didn't bother us at all, even still had the energy to eat a liquorice flavoured icecream before we caught the bus. The hill back to the house was the icing on the cake though & 'nearly killed me' as my legs had seized up on the bus trip.

State of Origin was broadcast at noon local time the next day, on the internet radio at the house, so that meant we couldn't go anywhere until after 3 pm but never fear with the sun up virtually all night we headed out for a walk to the docks which we can see from the verandah, got home at 7.30 pm so a good walk.

Because we have to be home morning & night to tend to the cats we plan to do day trips so the next town north of Larvik is Sandefjord, a train ticket later & we are there, checking out the whaling history & the really lovely Whaling Memorial Fountain. 

Whaling Memorial Fountain, on the fjord foreshore

There are two replica viking boats here & Grant had a little sit in one of them that was moored at the dock, no sign saying 'FORBUDT' so in he jumped, the idea of rowing to Newfoundland from Norway across open ocean is mind-boggling but there is undeniable proof that it happened. I had made contact with other couchsurfers from this area and we met for lunch, had a beautiful meal shared with really lovely people, thank you Roberta & Hans.

'Acting' like a Viking, these were very basic boats, you sat on
the box that you kept your few possessions in

Tourist Information Office, Sandefjord, very large & very ornate timber building

Next little journey was to Skien, again a lovely town of 50,000 people, the birthplace of Henrick Ibsen so needless to say there was an Ibsen Museum & a couple of Isben statues. Skien is also the starting point for the Telemark Canal which was built as a goods transport route 150 years ago. We walked round the town, climbed the staircase to the parkland in the centre of the town & enjoyed magnificent views of the township. There is a collection of historic homes in this park, that have been moved here from across the region & date from the middle ages. They were really interesting and in beautiful condition, such massive timbers.



Using Grant as a comparison, you can really get an idea of the size of the timbers & the building in general...huge

A loft style construction dating from the Middle Ages, this was moved to the museum in the 1960s

Roberta & Hans extended an invitation to their home for dinner Saturday night, what a beautiful spot to live, farming area but quite near the sea, just about perfect! Not to mention a delicious meal & such wonderful company.

Roberta offered to drive us to Skien & was able to joined us for our cruise down the Telemark Canal. We had a lovely day, fine for most of the trip & when it rained we adjourned to the cafe for a bit of late lunch and a coffee then straight back up on deck once it cleared. The views were absolutely beautiful & the locks were manually operated. We travelled from Lunde to Skein through the use of multiple lock ladders, fascinating to watch & an engineering marvel.



The MS Victoria arriving at the Lunde lock

Roberta joined us on the deck despite it getting a bit damp & breezy,
 at the end of the day but the rest was glorious

Our next visit took us to Stavern & out to the 'rock island' of Svenner. Ever seen a picture of a lighthouse on a rock in the middle of nowhere, well that describes Svenner? It is a popular holiday spot, camping, fishing, rock hopping, swimming if the sun is shining, it is very isolated but also very well used by locals & Norwegians in general for a 'roughing it' type short holiday. Really pretty spot, water was as clear as a bell & we picked a good day to go as the ocean wasn't too rough.



Stavern harbour panorama, the small boat in the foreground is the ferry to Svenner Island,
 in the distance you can see Larvik



A very pretty spot, Svenner Island in the
middle of the Sandefjord

The township of Stavern which is only 8 kilometres south of Larvik has a couple of claims to fame - 200 days of sunshine a year, it claims to be the sunniest place in Norway & there is a very well maintained Naval Shipyard from the 1700's - well it lived up to its reputation, we had a glorious sunny day and the historic area was fascinating.

Back on the trail of Fire Brigade sleeve patches we caught a bus to Horton over 2 hours north of here only to find they didn't have a fire station in town any more, they had moved it to the expressway about 10 kilometres out of town so we weren't able to go there but a lovely town nevertheless & we enjoyed a nice meal overlooking the harbour as we watched large ferries come & go across the fjord. Apparently the ferry cuts hundreds of kilometres & hours of driving off the trip to Sweden & is the busiest ferry route in Norway.



Our view as we enjoyed a bit of lunch, the cross fjord ferry from Horten to Moss

On our way back to Larvik we stopped in at Tonsberg (there is supposed to be a line across the O but my laptop doesn't have a key for that) & found the fire station. How dare they have such a view from their lunch room!!

Part of the view that the firefighters get from their lunch room, I took the photo
from the pedestrian bridge across the river



Construction of a replica Osberg Viking ship, all done using traditional tools & techniques

We walked round the township, along the harbour & up the hill to the viking burial mounds. The fascinating thing here is that the magnificent viking boats at the Oslo Museum were found in this area & as those boats will never come back to town they have decided to build replicas of their own. The construction is going on at the moment & it was wonderful to stand round watching the men in traditional clothes, using traditional tools working on this amazing boat.

We had seen very little Viking history during our time in Scandinavia but here on the south-eastern coast of Norway the heritage is clearly evident. We asked Roberta why there were rocks sticking up in the middle of wheat/oat/barley crops only to find they are Viking Relics that the farmers are not allowed to remove, once we started noticing them there were literally dozens visible from the roadway. The remains of the oldest town in Norway is on the coast here, the viking graves, the best preserved examples of Viking ships were found here, just an amazing history throughout this 'Viking Trail' area, so we couldn't have picked an historically interesting nor more beautiful place to spend our two weeks of R & R.

A couple of quiet days at home now so a good time to upload this blog.......next stop Edinburgh, Glasgow & two weeks of campervanning (is that a word) in northern Scotland.