Kay and Sylvia's Norwegian Adventure 2015: Trondheim

Thursday, July 2, 2015 (Day 3)

We had to get up early, which means we had to use my alarm clock! We have both been sleeping quite well on the ship - a good thing - but had to get up for our excursion into the city of Trondheim. Trondheim is the 3rd largest city in Norway and began as the capital of the country. The Viking King Olav Tryggvason founded this ancient city as early as 997. We boarded a bus at 8:45, which took us to the Nidaros Cathedral. As all of us 'Oles' know, this is where St. Olav, Norway's patron saint, is buried. It is the largest Gothic cathedral in Norway and 2nd largest in Scandinavia. The cathedral is quite impressive and has a beautiful stained-glass window by the organ pipes. We had a 30-minute tour inside the church with a guide. There are usually three tour groups from the ship - one each in English, German, and French! There are 130 or so French on the ship - about 33%. Emmanuelle and Nicolas would get along just great!

After the cathedral, we were taken to the Ringve Museum of musical history. The beautiful manor house is surrounded by a wonderful botanical garden. We had a guided tour of about 45 minutes with a young woman who played all of the keyboards for us from clavichords to a harpsichord to a Broadwood piano from 1805 (Beethoven's time) to organs. I studied with Kenneth Drake at Drake University and the University of Illinois, and later had him perform a concert at Frostburg State College when I taught there. Mr. Drake was a Beethoven specialist and owned three Broadwoods. He outfitted a van in the back so he could bring one of his pianos along for his Beethoven concerts. (He also did a concert at the Smithsonian at the time of the FSC performance.) One can follow the development of Beethoven's piano sonatas by the development of the piano from the Broadwood and on. This Broadwood from 1805 had 63 keys. If I had the internet I could check to see exactly which sonata Beethoven was composing at that time. One room in the Ringve Museum was devoted to Beethoven with many photos as well as the Broadwood. One room was devoted to Chopin with a cast of his death mask and a cast of his left hand, which the original owner of the museum bought from the granddaughter of Georges Sand, Chopin's mistress. Chopin's left hand has long and VERY thin fingers.

The Ringve also had a collection of ethnic instruments from around the world - it was like a larger version of my office so I felt right at home. We saw a couple of Hardanger fiddles as well.

Norway is an expensive country. Oil was discovered around 1970 and in about 1990, the Norwegian government developed a government pension found from the oil money. Of the 800 billion, 96% is invested and 4% is used to help the people of the country with various programs. (Remember, Norway has about 5 million people.) The drilling for oil appears to have reached a 'peak' so the people will need that money over the years to come. Interestingly enough, those who work on the oil rig, work for 3 weeks and have 5 weeks off. In the fishing business, it is 5 weeks of work and 3 weeks off. For the Hurtigruten employees on the ship, they work 3 weeks on and have 3 weeks off. Unemployment in Norway is 3% compared to 30% in Spain. Norway has the most Tesla cars in the world - about 8-10% of the cars in the country are electric. One of the emerging fields in Norway: fish doctors! There are about 2 million salmon in one 'farm' and if one salmon gets sick it spreads fast to the other fish so they have to act quickly. Many go to Molde to study to be a 'fish doctor.' (All information given by our guide yesterday.)

We met Nancy Johnson and her daughter, Anne Panowicz, at lunch today. Anne Gullikson Panowicz was a '74 Ole grad and we had some friends in common. What a great connection. After lunch I checked out the laundry room which is in high demand. (One laundry room with three washers and three dryers for the entire ship!) Tom from Florida helped show me the ropes for when I do the laundry.

For the first time, we had our dinner at a reserved table. Our dinner companions are from Germany and were on the two excursions we took so we had seen them already. We have printed menus for each evening meal giving information about some of the special foods from the area where we are traveling.

By 9:00 pm we were able to fill our a form and guess when the ship would cross the Arctic Circle in the morning. I studied the special book about the Hurtigruten trip I purchased in the souvenir shop in the ship and made 'educated' guesses for Mother and me. We'll see in the morning!

city of Trondheim (from the bus as we began our excursion)

city of Trondheim

Nidaros Cathedral - couldn't take a full view as we were there at 9 am and the sun was facing me

Stained glass window and organ in the Nidaros Cathedral (we would have liked to have heard the organ)

We had excellent guides for every excursion. Bjorg, our guide in Trondheim, is the granddaughter
of Arne Stuland from the Stuland farm in Omvikdalen - we are related!