Westray is the second largest island in the Orkneys. Its main village, Pierowall, consists of a small hotel with restaurant, two general stores, a fish vendor, a chippie (open summers only), and the hostel where we are staying.
People come here to walk, look at birds, and take photographs. We’ve been doing all three; here are some pictures from our rambles.
Last night we got stuck in Kirkwall. While I love Orkney (I’ve been here twice before), I had hoped to avoid its capital city, which I remembered didn’t have a whole lot to recommend it. But we arrived too late in the day to get to any of the smaller islands that make up Orkney, or even to get across Mainland to Stromness.
This is how I remembered Kirkwall – a bit bleak.
It turns out there was plenty here to keep us interested. There is the red sandstone St. Magnus cathedral, founded in 1137 by the Viking Earl Rognvald:
as well as a number of other attractive features:
We had a pleasant dinner at a new cafe called Helgi’s. It’s named after a figure who appears in some of the old Norse sagas (but not – correct me if I’m wrong, Norse scholars – in the Orkneyinga saga that tells the history of the earls of Orkney from the 800s to the 1200s ).
Black pudding and scallop appetizer at Helgi’s.
We spent the rest of the evening at The Reel, a pub owned by twin sisters who are traditional Orkney musicians.
The Wrigley sisters weren’t performing themselves that night, but here they are at the Smithsonian Folkways Festival in Washington DC a few years ago.
We had a fine time drinking Orkney beer and listening to the Orkney accordion and fiddle club. Kirkwall’s not such a bad place after all.
But today we are off to another, smaller and more remote island (my favorite kind!)– that’s where we can explore some the natural wonders of this place.
Our time in Scandinavia came to an end today with a short flight to Kirkwall, Orkney.
This route makes for an easy transition between regions: Orkney was ruled by Norse kings until 1468 and there are still many cultural ties. The Orcadian dialect is full of Norse words and the intonation sounds a lot like Norwegian.
Though Orkney is a part of Scotland, the people here identify as Orcadian and refer to Scotland as if it were another country. When someone here says Mainland, they don’t mean Great Britain, they mean Mainland Orkney, the largest island in the archipelago (and our present location).
I should probably mention that I have a thing for small islands. My MacIver people came from an island (Lewis, where we’ll be in about a week), and I married a guy who comes from a long line of Greek islanders. Islands are on the itinerary for the rest of this trip so get ready for lots of ocean photos.
When we were in London at the start of this vacation, I picked up a copy of this book by Judith Schalansky:
On those long ferry rides I can plot our future holidays.
Today we made our way back to Bergen, where we spent a few hours in the train station on Saturday morning. This time we’re staying a little longer but unfortunately not long enough for me to get to the site I most wanted to see here, Edvard Grieg’s home. Troldhaugen is supposed to be an excellent museum, and if you go in the morning you can catch the daily concert. But the trip back from Flam took all day (OK, I’ll admit it was a very scenic day which included the Flamsbana train ride). But no hall of the mountain king for me.
I did get a picture of the Grieg statue in the city park though (with seagull).
Instead, we strolled along the waterfront with its famous Bryggen buildings, from the 1700s:
And we wandered through the old town:
And we enjoyed some interesting statuary and public buildings:
But really, the coolest part about Bergen was the seagulls. The light was just right for me to take these photos – and rid my backpack of some stale breadrolls left over from our fishy cheesy meals at the same time.
Andreas rented a bike today and took it on the train partway to Myrdal, then rode back. He said the views were spectacular, but since he didn’t take a camera I can’t share them with you.
I headed by bus to the village of Borgund, in search of Norway’s best preserved stavkirke.
These wooden churches date from the times when Christianity first came to Norway. This style of medieval church construction was practiced all over Scandinavia at that time – the design is based on a the palisades and ships of the Vikings. The Vikings were the converts building these early churches, and that’s what they knew how to make. The only remaining examples are the Norwegian ones, of which there are 28. Almost all were built in the 1100s. The one in Borgund, which is said to be the least changed, dates from the late 12th century.
Even a budget traveler can’t go to Norway and not see the fjords. Today we took our second fjord trip – the first was the Geiranger fjord, which we cruised during our stay in Alesund. That day was a little overcast and drizzly, but the waterfalls and mountains were still beautiful.
Today’s destination was the Nærøyfjord, which is reachable by boat from Flam. This trip was even more gorgeous than than the other one. And this time the sun was shining.
This morning we backtracked a little and took a train back along the same route we traveled last night, then at Myrdal transferred to the privately run Flåmsbana railway. The route from Myrdal to Flåm, a small village at the tip of the Aurlandsfjord, lives up to its reputation as one of the most scenic in Europe.
Flåm itself turns out to be a lovely little village nestled in a deep valley. A pretty river runs through the village on its way to the harbor. The village has bikes to rent, a good system of bike paths and walking trails, some cute cafes, a small railway museum, and a brew-pub. We got lucky and found a relatively inexpensive room in a comfortable rental apartment with a shared kitchen and free fast internet. I think we’ll park ourselves here for a few days.
When we told friends in Addis that we were going to Norway, just about every one of them said the same thing: “Wow, nice! But you know, it’s really expensive.”
It’s hard to understand just what that means until you get here. $6 to ride the city bus, $200 for the cheapest hotel room, $15 for a (small) glass of (very ordinary) wine, $20 to get into a museum, $40 for the simplest dinner for two (chicken stirfry with plain rice) from the Chinese takeout place. Ouch.
We had thought we would travel to Narvik, above the Arctic Circle, just for the heck of it, but our overhead here is too high for joyriding. Instead we’ll spend our remaining time in Norway looking for free outdoor activities instead of museums, more cheese and fish sandwiches from the market instead of restaurants, and more hostels instead of hotels.
One fun way to save a little money is to take the overnight train, which we are doing right now as we head back down to Bergen.
We allotted a single day to take in this major capital city. Fortunately we got an early start with our arrival on the overnight train, and had done some strategic planning in advance so we could fit in the things we most wanted to see: the opera house, the art gallery, the folk museum, and Vigeland park.
Oslo’s opera house is just celebrating its 5th anniversary. It’s a fine piece of contemporary architecture, with high open spaces, interesting textures, lots of glass, and (the coolest part) a roof you can walk all over, from the sidewalk and the waterside right up to the highest point for some fine views. And it is right across the street from the main train station, providing easy access for out-of-town opera lovers.
The second stop on our city tour was the national museum. Oslo is celebrating the 150th anniversary of its most famous artist, Edvard Munch. You know…
The Nasjonalmuseet’s special tribute exhibit was excellent. There’s a lot more to Munch than that one picture (which, by the way, Munch painted and printed over and over again in different versions). Unfortunately, no photos allowed in the exhibit, but here are a couple of other examples of Norwegian art from elsewhere in the museum.
.Next up was the Norsk Folkemuseum. This wasn’t high on Andreas’s must-see list but he agreed to go along and I think he had a good time. It’s one of those open-air museums where they’ve taken old buildings from around the country and moved them to a big park. It’s also a living history museum, with people in period costume demonstrating traditional crafts, cooking, music, and so on.
Calling the cows. I admit it, I like this stuff.
We finished our day in Oslo by taking the tram out to Vigeland park. This is a city park decorated with statuary by the Norwegian sculptor Gustav Vigeland. In about 1920, Vigeland was in a dispute with the city of Oslo because they wanted to demolish his house to build a library. After long negotiations, he turned over the house in exchange for a new one that would become a museum of Vigeland’s work after his death (with his ashes in the belfry). On his part, Vigeland agreed to give all his future work to the city of Oslo. Vigeland was a very prolific artist, so the end result was this huge sculpture park full of everything the artist made for the rest of his life.
Never heard of Gustav Vigeland? He designed the Nobel peace prize medal.
Today we are in the city of Alesund.
This town’s fame is mainly due to it having burned down overnight on January 23, 1904.
This building is known as The House That Did Not Burn.
The 10,000 people left homeless rebuilt their town (this time in stone) with the financial help of Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany, who liked to vacation in the region. Alesund is now is a remarkably consistent collection of Jugendstil, or what is known in America as Art Nouveau, architecture.
Lorna of Arabia 
