I can now confirm that the people of Trondheim, as suggested by Monty Python, do not perform a waltz every 25 minutes in which “old ladies are struck about the head with round sticks”. The Trondheim Hammer Dance is a myth. I’ve been to Trondheim today, and it doesn’t happen.
We visited Trondheim today. It is Norway’s third largest city and it has the feeling of a small market town. Basil parked himself in a special motorhome parking area, provided by the City of Trondheim, where motorhomes can stay free for 24 hours. Three cheers for Trondheim, before we’ve even started looking round.
Trondheim Cathedral
Our first stop was the 11th Century Cathedral, built in honour of St. Olav, Norway’s first Christian King. It’s stone construction looks a little incongruous in a country where many building are still, 2000 years later, built of wood. But presumably the Cathedral was built to make a statement and it is very similar to the Cathedrals in Britain and Northern France built at the same time. This should be no surprise because apparently many English stonemasons were brought to Norway to help with its building.
Cathedral. Rear view.
One major difference from its English counterparts is that Trondheim’s Cathedral, instead of being built from light sandy stone as are most in England, is built of a grey rock, which makes quite a difference in the feeling of the building, both inside and out. There are elaborate carvings throughout the structure and beautiful stained glass windows.
Detail from the front of the Cathedral. The guy on the left I think looks rather Viking. Goodness knows what’s going on with all those heads on the right!
It was supposed to be 90 NOK (€9.60) to visit, but just as I arrived at the ticket desk it was declared entry was free due to a malfunction with the organ. I thought this a bit strange, but when I got inside one of the bass pipes was making a constant loud drone and it was actually quite disturbing. It quickly stopped, but I wasn’t made to pay!
The Cathedral had a rather irritating ban on all photography, but I managed to sneak a couple for the record.
Cathedral Rose Window and Organ
The adjacent Archbishop’s Palace, of a similar vintage, is a much more Scandinavian looking building with a long low hall, much like the Vikings built, albeit made of stone.
Old Trondheim
We subsequently walked through the blissfully quiet old section of the city, with the inevitable coloured warehouses and dwellings attracting the attention of my camera. It looked a pleasant place to sit and have a coffee and cake, but our intention was to find somewhere to eat later.
More colourful warehouses!
And yet more warehouses including one distressed one – even better!
Our wanderings eventually took us back to the modern shopping area and we belatedly found the tourist information centre, where I was greeted by yet another Norwegian with a perfect southern English accent! She recommended we walked to another area for lunch at a waffle restaurant, which is apparently a tradition in Trondheim. Unfortunately the walk was to an old, but not particularly attractive, area of Trondheim and worse still the waffle place did not open until evening! It was back to Basil for bread and pullit! Just in time too. As we arrived at Basil the rain started.
In summary, Trondheim is a very pleasant place to spend a few hours. It might even detain you for a weekend, with some museums thrown in.
After lunch we started our drive to the next of our Tourist Roads. It was 180 miles from Trondheim, so we probably won’t start it until Thursday. There was a quick stop for a shop at REMA 1000, where Sarah successfully got our deposit back on my beer cans. Each shop has a machine where you insert cans and bottles. The machine manipulates them until it can read the bar code and then provides a coupon which you can redeem. At 1 NOK per can and 2.5 NOK per large plastic bottle it’s well worth the effort.
Our drive south took us out of the gentle hills around Trondheim, back into the mountains. Rushing rivers, cascading waterfalls and the reappearance of snow on the tops. I had found a promising looking overnight stop on one of my databases and so we drove past numerous good parking areas on the E6. For once the database’s description was spot on. Quiet, on an isolated moor, overlooking a lake and surrounded by fells – perfect. What’s more we are in a national park which is home to wild Reindeer (not the domesticated ones we saw in Finland and Northern Norway) and the rare Musk Ox. I don’t suppose we will be seeing either.
View from Basil tonight
Tomorrow we push on to our next Tourist Route, starting in Andalsnes. Depending on how spritely we feel in the morning, we might make a start on it tomorrow afternoon or we could hunker down near Andalsnes ready for a fresh start on Thursday.