Totally blessed with the weather this morning in Oslo. Not sure if it going to last all the way to Trondheim.
Early start again today – never got up this early when worked!!!
Today we caught the rather spiffy train from Oslo Central to the northwest coast of Norway to Trondheim.
Trondheim is about a quarter of the way up the Norwegian coast. It is hard to describe the lower landscape we were travelling through as it was green and rolling but not England.
Circumnavigating lakes on our way through to Lillehammer which is where the 1994 Winter Olympic Games were held.
We are finding that there are very little communication problems as when we look dumb at them they seem to know to automatically switch to English. The language is no where near as difficult as Finnish but it is still not easy to try to make out what printed word is trying to say. It is starting to make German look like a dawdle in the park.
About a week back we said we would look at Scandinavian countries role’s in WW2 as our history was severely lacking in this area.
From what we can tell both Denmark and Sweden were both neutral. Norway was allied to England and was occupied by Germany.
But what of Finland? It appears this is a bit more complicated. Finlands history is closely tied to that of Russia. During the Tsars time it was controlled by Russia but had a lot of autonomy. After the Russian revolution of 1917 that heralded the start of the USSR, Finland declared itself fully Independent, but the Soviets weren’t ever too happy about that.
Come the outbreak of WW2 the soviets attacked Finland and war broke out. The Finnish sort assistance from England but none could be provided as England was allied to the USSR and others against Germany. A relationship between Nazi Germany and Finland commenced and Germany moved troops to Finland with both Finnish and German troops co-operating in fighting the Russians, resulting in England to declare war on Finland. The crux here is that from Finlands perspective, the enemy of our enemy is usually your friend.
The war on the Finnish Russian border ebbed and flowed a bit and resulted in a stalemate despite huge numerical advantage of the Russians over the Finns.
As Russia’s focus moved towards its major priority of fighting Germany on the eastern front, a truce and peace was negotiated between Russia and Finland. Part of the deal was that Finland had to expel Nazi troops. They asked them to go nicely but that didn’t do the trick so there was a short war between Finland and Nazis troops stationed in Lapland in northern Finland. Fortunately this didn’t last that long as the war and the eventual surrender of the Nazis was imminent.
So that is it in a nutshell. Now they are all mates in the EU……….
Our six and half hour trip heading northwest of Oslo was uneventful except for the deterioration in the weather which was unfortunate.
Once again, we have a smart trendy hotel very close to the train station which made it easier due to the wet weather.
It is definitely cooler here and we checked that we are on the same latitude as Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories. Sunset is not until 11pm with sunrise 3.30am. The further north you go the shorter the amount of night fall. At winter solstice, the sun rises at 10:01, stays very low above the horizon (at midday its altitude is slightly more than 3 degrees over the horizon), and sets at 14:31.
We dropped off our bags and headed back out to find something to eat and have a bit of a look around.
As evidence in the photo, just a little precipitation.
Looking at the rain stats for Trondheim, it rains 50% of the time.
We had heard that there was a cathedral here to rival Norte Dame and were a little dubious but went up to have a look anyway.
It isn’t as big as Norte Dame but architecturally it has everything and more. There is even a Rose window. It is known as the Nidaros Cathedral which was the name of Trondheim prior.
The weather is to be slightly better tomorrow so will head back tomorrow to have a look at the inside as it was closed by the time we got there.
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