Finishing up the Nordic cultures

Construction of the Flam Railway began in 1924, and took 16 years to complete. The line gains nearly 2,700 feet in elevation, rolls through 10 stations, across one bridge and 20 tunnels. Because it is one of the most visited attractions In Norway, we took the ride. The views were spectacular, the tunnels long, the drops precipitous and waterfalls everywhere. At the time, the Flam allowed the district of Sogn access to Bergen and Oslo.

Built in 1885 in the outskirts of Bergen, Troldhaugen was the summer home of composer Edvard Grieg and his wife Nina. He is best known for his musical composition for Henrik Ibsen’s Peer Gynt. Now a museum, it displays his furnishings, some of his writings, and gives you a clear expression of what his early life was like. He and Nina are both buried in the hillside where the sun illuminated the woods – he could see that spot from his fishing boat on Nordas Lake where he spent most days.

Edvard Hagerup Grieg was born June 15, 1843. While I didn’t think I knew any of his work, as we walked through the museum, they were playing many of his more famous compositions. I found myself humming along because I actually knew all of them. Although a giant in music, Grieg was under 5 feet tall as an adult. A life-sized sculpture sits in the garden at Troldhaugen.

When wreckage was found of the USS Jeanette in Greenland (it had actually wrecked off the coast of Siberia) Norwegian explorer Fritjof Nansen theorized that Polar ice must flow from east to west. So, he built a ship, the Fram, with a rounded keel which would be pushed up as the sea around it froze, rather than being crushed. In 1893 he set off from Siberia believing he could ride the Polar ice and get to the North Pole. When he determined that the flow direction would miss the North Pole, he set off on foot to reach it. After two long winters on the ice, he returned to Norway just days before the Fram and its crew arrived in 1896.

The actual Fram vessel is preserved at the Fram Museum in Oslo. Because the design of the Fram actually worked, it was subsequently used by other explorers, including Roald Amundsen for his southern polar expedition from 1910 to 1912. In both Nome and Eagle, Alaska, we encountered evidence of Amundsen’s explorations there. The Fram is believed to have sailed farther north (85deg57’N) and further south (78deg41”S) than any other wooden ship.

Also, in Oslo, at the Norwegian Maritime Museum, is the Gjoa. With a crew of 6, Roald Amundsen was the first to sail the Northwest Passage. Built in 1872, the Gjoa spent its first 28 years as a herring fishing boat. Amundsen bought it in 1901, spent a couple of years modifying and equipping it, and set out in 1903 to sail the Passage. It took him 3 years, but in 1906 he succeeded in being the first.

Checking out the options on the net, I learned that Edvard Munch’s painting, The Scream, was in the National Gallery in Oslo. The bad new was that the National Gallery was closed because they were in the process of moving to a new building. Just by chance I learned that Munch had actually painted 5 original versions of The Scream, and one was in a small private museum dedicated primarily to his work.

We were able to get an Uber to take us over to the museum. Interestingly, the driver, while being a local, wasn’t even aware of this museum, so it may be a well-kept secret. Luckily for us, we found out about it and scored a first hand look at The Scream. Quite a number of his pieces were very similar to The Scream. His second most famous painting is The Madonna.

We noted there was not really much security in the Munch Museum – actually, we noted that in much of Scandinavia. Perhaps that explains why both the National Gallery’s (1994) and the Munch Museum’s (2004) originals were stolen, along with the Munch Museum’s original The Madonna. The pieces remained missing for over 2 years when police recovered them in August 2006. For some reason, the police would not reveal the circumstances surrounding their recovery. You can see some of the damage that occurred to The Madonna - its not as obvious on The Scream.

In Aarhus Denmark we visited the Moesgard Museum of Prehistory. There we found one of the first successfully preserved “bog bodies” knows as Grauballe Man. Apparently this poor fellow was likely a human sacrifice (his throat was slit) and was thrown into a peat bog near the village of Grauballe Denmark in the late 3^rd Century BC. His body was discovered in 1952, and exceptional efforts were made to preserve him – techniques were used that had never been used before. The techniques used were so successful that historians have even been able to take the man’s fingerprints.

We headed for Odense Denmark to take in the Hans Christian Andersen Museum. The Museum contains a great deal of furniture owned by Andersen, including his writing desk on which he wrote many of his manuscripts. The Museum also contains a number of the actual handwritten manuscripts of Andersen, his personal effects, his writing tools, and an abundance of original artwork.

Nearby we actually got to snoop around in the boyhood home of Hans Christian Andersen. A small, unassuming cottage, it is believed that he was actually born in this house on April 2, 1805. While we were visiting the area, we walked up and down the streets of Odense that Andersen certainly walked himself during the 1800’s. Heading back to Copenhagen from here, we completed our circumnavigation of the Nordic cultures. On to Iceland!

Talk to you soon.