Shamballa Cruising Yacht Club: Heat Waves, Viking Ships, Polar Explorers and Sculpture

Viking Ship

All of northern Europe was in the middle of a heat wave while we were there in July. Buildings here are built for the cold weather and do not cope with hot weat at all. The heat stays in the buildings and few building have air conditioning. Temperatures in the mid to high 20's, which are fairly mild by Australian standards, feel very hot here. Copenhagen had 50 days with little or no rain and the grass in the parks was crisp and brown – more like Australia in the summer.

We left Oslo planning to have a relaxing long train trip through the Scandinavian country side with a single transfer in Gutenberg. This was not to be. Our train was 30 minutes late getting out of Copenhagen and when we got to Malo, Sweden just across the long bridge outside Copenhagen, we were told the train terminated there. We were to get another train in 30 minutes to Helsingborg then change for a bus to Angelholm then catch another train to Gutenberg. The heat had buckled the train tracts in the section after Helsingborg.

So three hours after we left we were in Helsingborg, the town we looked at from Elsinore castle (Helsingør) in Denmark the day before, a destination we could have reached with a half hour bus trip and a 20 minute ferry ride. As expected it was chaos in Helsingborg. Fortunately a nice Swedish lady was also going to Gutenberg and took us under her wing, translating for us and getting us on a local bus to Angelholm rather than the overcrowded and delayed buses the train company were providing in this unplanned emergency. (The amazing thing about everyone here and in Denmark is that as soon as they realise you don't speak Danish or Swedish they immediately switch to flawless unaccented English. I am so envious of the language skills here!)

Needless to say when we got to Gutenberg 2 ½ hours late we had missed our connection. Fortunately the conductor on the train arranged for a gratis night stay in the very nice hotel at the train station. We had a restful night and continued to Oslo the next day.

So our three days in Oslo turned into two and were filled with boats and sculpture. Our first stop was the Viking Ship Museum. The museum houses two large Viking ships from around 900 AD which were recovered from a burial site as well as lots of artefacts from the Viking age.

Oseberg Ship

Studded wood ornamentation

We then walked to the nearby Fram Museum. This museum honours Norwegian polar explorers and includes Fridtjof Nansen’s ship Fram and Roald Amundsen’s ship Gjøa. The Fram was built to Nansen’s specification for his expedition to the North Pole in the 1890’s. The Gjøa was the first ship to sail through the Northwest Passage. It was only 21m long and had a crew of 6 very brave men.

The tales of these polar explorations are inspiring. I am so impressed that I have started reading Nansen's book Farthest North about his expedition to the North Pole. These guys were really tough! They provisioned the ship to be totally self-sufficient for 5 years in the world's harshest environment. There was no radio communication back then. When they went over the horizon into the Arctic Sea: that was it. They were on their own. It makes crossing the Atlantic over a few weeks using gentle trade winds look pretty tame - yet I doubt we will be brave enough to do even that.

Polar Explorers

The Gjøa

Arctic sled

The Fram

The very sturdy construction of the Fram

The Fram sail plan. It also had a petrol engine

Quarters for the crew

On our last day in Oslo we went to Vigeland Sculpture Park just northwest of the city centre. This is an amazing and beautiful park devoted to Gustav Vigeland's lifework with more than 200 sculptures in bronze, granite and wrought iron.

The Sculptor

For you, Eva

After the sculpture park we walked around Oslo. I vainly tried to find places that I recognised from my visit 14 years ago but the city has changed too much (and my memory is too poor). Finally we watched the sun set over Oslo from the top of the new opera house. So we said goodbye to Oslo and boarded our overnight train to Bergen.