EUROPE – PART 8 

Soon after arriving at l’École Évangéline at the tender age of eleven, my interest in learning plateaued. In la petite école in Wellington, I’d been encouraged to learn outside the box and was rewarded for being inquisitive. The rote-learning model we were forced into in Grade eight by the nun who ran the place, and those teachers who were afraid of her, didn’t suit me at all. I made it through Grade twelve because of high school sports and one particular girl who had struck my fancy.

Hazel Graham was the village librarian in Wellington. Our library, tiny as it was, held stories that were much more interesting to me than most of what I was learning at École Évangéline. One topic that caught my attention early on was Arctic and Antarctic exploration, and the stories of the brave men who risked all to claim the glories of discovery. Mrs. Graham could always find another book to pique my curiosity.

Travelling in Norway, we’ve come across many reminders of famous Norwegian explorers. There were Erik the Red who founded a colony in Greenland and, his son, Leif Erikson, the first European known to have pitched a tent on the north American continent at l’Anse-aux-Meadows; Roald Amundsen, first to reach the South Pole; Fridtjof Nansen, first to cross Greenland; Otto Sverdrup, who explored Canada’s far north; and Thor Heyerdahl, who piloted a hand-built raft called the Kon Tiki across the Pacific Ocean from South America to Tuamotu Island. Our expert historian on the MS Spitsbergen has given illustrated talks on some of these men, rekindling my teenage interest.

Day 5 was meant to be a day of rest and we’d chosen to take the gondola up to an observation point high above the town of Andalsnes. Once there, we decided to walk up the path to get a better view of the town and the harbour, and then we just kept going... The day was sunny and warm, the trail was good, and the views were spectacular. We didn’t make it to the top of the highest peak, but my Garmin registered 50 stories, so we did have ourselves a bit of a climb. After three straight days of hiking, my quads had finally stopped screaming, so the walk down wasn’t so painful.

Some days, the journey is more interesting that the destination. So it was on Day 6 as the MS Spitsbergen sailed up to the head of Sognefjorden, the world’s second-longest longest fjord at 203 km, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In places, it’s over 1,000 metres deep and cliffs surrounding the fjord rise to as high as 1,500 metres. National Geographic calls it “the world’s number one natural heritage site.” It’s hard to describe the majesty of the place in words, and easier to illustrate it in pictures.

While anchored in the tiny village of Gudvangen, we took the zodiacs to shore and visited the Viking Valley historic village where Elva learned to throw an axe.

Bergen is Norway’s second-largest city with a population roughly equal to that of Halifax. The former warehouses that still stand along the old quay are a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The harbour is lined with modern, well-equipped ships that service the offshore petroleum industry and the downtown area is a beautiful place for a walk. Cities that feature broad boulevards, pedestrian streets, parks, and public sculpture are our favourites and Bergen ticks all those boxes. We spent the morning wandering around, dodging the drizzle and seeing the highlights, then took a ride up the funicular to the observation point called Floyen. Unfortunately, all we saw was cloud. We did come across this plaque though showing where Tom Dumoulin of The Netherlands won a steep uphill time trial in the 2017 World Cycling Championships, beating his closest rival by an incredible margin of almost one minute.

Another day, another beautiful fjord! From the dock in the village of Eidfjord, we took a bus to the Norsk Nature Centre where we learned about Norway’s natural history. The goats keep the roof of the nearby restaurant well-trimmed. Then, our driver took us to the waterfall called Vøringfossen in Hardangervidda National Park. The drive up the valley to the alpine plateau is 10 kilometres at a slope of 8%, with a few tunnels along the way, one of which is a spiral tunnel. Vøringfossen is one of Norway’s premier tourist destinations. Water pours down the side of the mountain 182 metres into the chasm below. Government is building a five-kilometer walk around the edge of the waterfall, all of it steel and aluminum, so that people can get a better look. It's not a place for people who are afraid of heights!

If the Swiss are the world champions of tunnel building, the Norwegians must certainly come a close second. Tunnels are everywhere. We’d seen one a couple of days earlier that connected a small settlement of no more than 50 people on a dead-end road to the village of Gudvangen; it was 1.7 kilometres long! Another observation I’ve made while in Norway is that, while the country has a very advanced social system, its tax rates are sky-high. A liter of gasoline in Eidfjord cost an eye-popping $3.43 CDN the day we were there, double the price on Prince Edward Island. That’s the equivalent of $10.00 US a gallon! I suppose Norwegians are being eased out of internal combustion engines, in line with government’s decision that all new cars sold by 2025 will be zero-emission.

Not much happens in Egersund on a Sunday morning. It was our last port of call in Norway, a town of 12,000 or so with a fine natural harbour. We took a guided walk around the downtown area, then hiked up to Vardberg, the highest point around to take in the best view of the place. As usual, we were rewarded, and managed to get in our 50 stories and 10,000 steps for the day. The MS Spitsbergen stayed in Egersund for just half a day, then set sail for the German island called Heligoland, southward across the North Sea.

‘Hurtigruten’, Norwegian for 'the fast route', is a shipping route along the coast from Bergen in the South to Kirkenes in the North. The route began in 1893 and has always been funded in part by the Norwegian government. It calls at several ports and completes the route both ways in eleven days, year-round. It has run continuously from 1893, except for World War II and during the COVID outbreak.

Hurtigruten, the company, has an interesting history. It began with one ship running the coastal service and branched out into the cruise business in the 1990s. It now also offers expedition-style cruises in the Arctic and the Antarctic. It’s our first time with this company and, although it’s considerably more expensive than other companies we’ve sailed with, we’re satisfied with what we’ve gotten so far. Many excursions are included, we are accompanied by excellent guides, the service standard is very high, and the food, well, it’s to die for. Although it’s cafeteria style, they manage to put on an impressive spread at every meal, all of it top quality.

Due to heavy fog, our time on Heligoland was limited to one hour. We climbed onto the zodiac and bounced on choppy seas to reach the jetty on the tiny island, barely one square kilometer in area and home to 1,300 people. We had just enough time to walk the 3 km trail around the island and to see the sea stack, Lange Anna, at its northern tip. Due to its location some 60 kilometres off the coast of Germany, the island is home to many nesting bird colonies and serves as a resting place for those migrating across the North Sea in the spring and fall. Of great strategic importance during both World Wars, the island is pockmarked with bomb craters, and evidence of defensive structures is everywhere. One part of the town features back yards like this one with all kinds of interesting characters.

The weather in Hamburg, Germany’s second-largest city, was perfect for the time of year. We started our day with a bus tour, then went back on foot in the afternoon with our expedition photographer. He didn’t share too many of his trade secrets with us, but I watched at every stop to see what he was shooting in the hope that some of his knowledge might wear off. Hamburg is a beautiful city with many canals and bridges. Its strategic position on the Elbe River makes it Europe’s third-largest port, topped only by Rotterdam and Antwerp. We walked through Harbour City, presently the largest construction project in Europe, to reach the warehouse district, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Along the way, I took the types of photos I don’t normally. I actually like some of them, particularly the one where the herring gull flies up to catch a morsel of food tossed by some people sitting beside the canal. Not bad for an iPhone 8!