TWO NORWEGIAN FJORDS Guest Post by Caroline Hatton

Nærøyfjord, Norway.

My friend Caroline Hatton, a children’s writer and frequent contributor to this blog, took the photos in this post in July 2025.

Why Norway? For scenery and Viking history! Under “scenery,” my husband and I targeted three natural wonders: the Lofoten Islands, fjords, and Jotunheimen National Park, home of the highest mountains in Norway. This blog post is about the fjords.

Fjiords (F), Norway (N), Oslo (O).

We decided to visit the two Norwegian fjords listed as UNESCO World Heritage Sites: Nærøyfjord, perhaps the narrowest, most stunning of them all, and the wider Geirangerfjord. We usually prefer to design our own tailored itineraries, and to buy tickets and make reservations ourselves. But to avoid long drives in a rental car, we favored public transportation. And to avoid errors in connecting trains, boats, and buses, I looked for a package deal, for only four of the many days we would spend exploring Scandinavia.

My online research zoomed in on www.FjordTours.com, which I wholeheartedly recommend. The website offers many trip outlines for traveling without a guide. For the “Norway in a Nutshell & Geirangerfjord” tour, I had to try different start dates before the interactive tool could find availability for two people on five trains, three boats, and four buses. Booking the whole package took only one click.

Star Wars filming location.

From Oslo, a 6:20 a.m. train** took us through farmland into mountains past Finse, the filming location of the ice planet Hoth in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. A second scenic train ride took us steeply down the mountains, including through 20 tunnels, to sea level at the head of a fjord.

There, the supreme highlight of the entire four days was to be a two-hour boat ride. The second half of it would take us into Nærøyfjord. In the 1888 book, Midnight Sunbeams or Bits of Travel Through the Land of the Norseman, author Edwin Coolidge Kimball wrote, “The fjord is winding in its course, and in places the mountains close it in so that it appears to be a small lake, the great headlands of granite forming grand and imposing boundaries. Many waterfalls—some over a thousand feet high appearing like threads of silver as they descend in a broken course from the snow-fields above, others with more volume of water from lesser heights—plunge into the fjord below. Every turn of the steamer unfolds new grandeurs of rock formation and a fresh supply of waterfalls.”

Given the fickle Norwegian summer weather, I couldn’t believe our luck when we lined up to board the boat under bright blue skies. That’s when the captain appeared, unsmiling. “Sorry,” he said. “The boat ride is canceled due to a technical problem. This is not a joke.” No one was laughing. FjordTours immediately sent buses to take stranded customers to the next stop in only 20 minutes… through a lo‑o‑ong tunnel—some sightseeing! I took the postcard-like photo of Nærøyfjord (at the top of this post) from the spot where the indisposed boat would have docked at the end of the cruise.

View from the Stalheim Hotel.

A bus took us as planned to see an incredible view from the Stalheim Hotel, then to a train to Bergen where we arrived at bedtime. Staying there two nights gave us time to visit the excellent Edvard Grieg Museum, the former home of the most famous Norwegian composer.

Medieval alley in Bergen.

We also visited the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Bryggen, including a few narrow medieval alleys with wooden bridges connecting former fishing-trade warehouses. And we ate the best fish ever, fresh, not from medieval times: monkfish and flounder at Fjellskål. At home, I am a near-vegetarian, but on trips, I am willing to taste some of what the locals eat.

A beautiful summer day to go sailing in Norway.

Next, we spent a day traveling north by scenic boat and bus to Ålesund*** (pronounced awl-soon’d) on the Atlantic coast.

Hotel Brosundet in Alesund.

Our yellow Hotel Brosundet on a historic harbor canal was a repurposed fishing industry warehouse. Around town, we spotted pastel colored Art Nouveau buildings with stylized botanical motifs such as daisies and leaves. We tasted more delicious seafood at Anno, crab-encrusted haddock and fish soup.

The next morning, we embarked on a three-hour boat ride headed inland where the waterway would finally narrow down to Geirangerfjord. I ran around the outdoor deck, hunting for photos of shoreline villages in sun patches, charming old boat sheds, and waterfalls, trying to click fast enough to catch the best angle before the boat motored on.

Historic farm.

The most amazing sights were of historic farms perched partway up dizzying slopes, out of reach of potential attackers. In his 1888 book, Kimball wrote about such a farm, “…one wonders how a human being can choose such a place for a habitation, midway between heaven and earth, exposed to falling avalanches from above, and to sliding down the yawning precipices into the fjord below. It is said that the parents here tether their children with ropes, to keep them from the edge of the cliff, and from ‘taking a header far down below’.”

Entering Geirangerfjiord.

Our boat turned into Geirangerfjord for the last half hour of the cruise.

The Seven Sisters.

In the above photo of the Seven Sisters waterfall, a kayak gives an idea of the scale. On the opposite wall of the fjord, our boat approached a rushing waterfall, making passengers squeal and laugh as they got misted.

That afternoon, a scenic bus ride brought us to Åndalsnes. There, instead of taking two trains back to Oslo that night, we dropped out of the tour and picked up a rental car we had reserved from home, to go hiking for a week in Jotunheimen National Park.

Footnotes:

* Credit for the globe image: Rob984 - Derived from Germany on the globe (Germany centered).svg, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

**Read CarolineArnold’s post about Bergen.

***Read CarolineArnold’s post about Ålesund.

 

THE GRIEG MUSEUM NEAR BERGEN, NORWAY – A COMPOSER’S HOME Guest Post by Caroline Hatton

At the Grieg Museum, Bergen, Norway.

My friend Caroline Hatton, a children’s writer and frequent contributor to this blog, took the photos in this post in July 2025, except for the top and bottom images, credited in the footnotes.

“Where are you from?” the tour bus driver asked in Bergen, Norway, a standard question to welcome visitors, but he had another reason to ask. “We Norwegians think that Edvard Grieg is the greatest composer in the world, but is he well-known in other countries?” All present, including my husband and me, answered yes emphatically. Of course, all present had bought tickets to visit Troldhaugen (“Troll Hill” in Norwegian), the late Grieg’s summer home, now a museum. So it was no surprise that all the visitors had heard Grieg’s greatest hits before--in their childhood homes and on their local classical-music radio stations--on both sides of the Atlantic and beyond.

Growing up in Paris, I loved Grieg’s Morning Mood. Dreamy or grand passages, such as some moments in his piano concerto, felt to me like precursors of Hollywood movie music up to the 1950s.

Speaking of movie music, a piece by Grieg in a rather different style, In the Hall of the Mountain King begins with a phrase that sounds perfect for a cartoon. No wonder Disney used it in Hell’s Bells, a 1929 black-and-white animated short film. Other uses in movies or on TV include The Pied Piper of Hamelin (1957), Woody Allen’s Scoop (2006), an episode of House (2011), and more recent productions.

During the 20-minute bus ride from Bergen to Troldhaugen, the tour guide prepared us for visiting what had been the summer residence of Grieg (1843-1907) and his beloved wife Nina for the last 22 years of his life. Located on the shore of a lake dotted with small islands, in lush woods on a rocky peninsula, the museum consists of the villa (which closed for restoration in August 2025, after our visit), the Composer’s Hut and the couple’s gravesite, as well as a modern museum building with a Kafé, and a concert hall.

Once on site, our visit began with a guided tour of the villa. Built to Grieg’s specifications and completed in 1885, it is Victorian on the outside. But the inside looks simple and homey with knotty pine wood from floor to ceiling—like a traditional Norwegian farmhouse.

The grand piano.

Edvard and Nina Grieg’s grand piano stands in the same living room spot as when they lived there, because she helped set up the museum, years after he had died. The piano was a silver anniversary gift from the Griegs’ friends, who snuck it into the house while the Griegs were asleep! Nina the soprano sang and Edvard the pianist accompanied her. He wrote nearly 200 songs, “all for her,” according to him, and she was their “only true interpreter.” Their love and musical collaboration was well documented.

The house tour took exactly 15 minutes, at the end of which a staff member nudged me onward as I was taking one last photo, then out of the room and outside. This was the only way to allow the next small group to get through, and the next and the next. The tour did not include going upstairs.

Path to Composer's Hut.

Grieg was highly social—but not when he was composing and would disappear for months. A few steps from the house, a footpath led us down the hill to the Composer’s Hut where Grieg worked on his music.

Composer's Hut.

After the path curved through ferns and deciduous trees, the red Composer’s Hut and the lake came into view.

Composer's Hut.

When Grieg spent summers at Troldhaugen, it was remote and wild. Everywhere he looked, he would have seen forested islands and hills in their natural state. Now there are roads and bridges and buildings everywhere.

Inside Composer's Hut.

When we visited, the hut was locked, but we could see the whole interior through the glass door, including a piano, of course, a writing desk, and a couch for dreaming up new melodies and revising drafts. What pieces did Grieg work on in this space?

Concert Hall.

Our tickets included not only the round-trip bus ride from Bergen and a cup of coffee at the Kafé, but also a piano recital of music by Grieg in the modern concert hall. Photography was not allowed during the performance, so visitors took pictures beforehand.

On the day of our visit, pianist Kateryna Persysta played all six Lyric Pieces VII, Op. 62. Sylph and Brooklet were visually evocative. Gratitude and Homeward were mood-setting. Finally, Persysta played the Notturno Op. 54 No. 4. Grieg worked on it in the Composer’s Hut! I could see it through the glass wall behind the stage. In my mind’s eye, I could see Grieg inside it, playing the notes, writing them down.

Gravesite.

After the recital, we walked down the hill again, this time on the path to the Griegs’ gravesite, marked by a stone plaque on the face of a cliff overlooking the lake. Edvard’s ashes rest there. And after Nina outlived him by 28 years, her ashes were added.

Finally, we entered the small museum, crowded with wall-to-wall visitors but packed with information and photos. Grieg was born in Bergen, in a wealthy, elite, well-connected family. His mother, a music teacher, started giving him piano lessons when he was five years old. Gifted, sent at age 15 to the famous Leipzig Conservatory in Germany to study piano and composition, mentored and taught by top musicians, by age 25 he had produced a hit, his piano concerto. He became a leading Romantic composer and concert performer, playing and conducting his own compositions all over Europe.

At the museum’s outstanding website (link in first paragraph), Grieg’s biography is sprinkled with recordings of key music pieces. The long list of his works includes songs, piano music, and Peer Gynt, the latter both as stage music for the play by Henrik Ibsen and as the two suites Grieg put together by selecting only a few pieces. Morning Mood and In the Hall of the Mountain King are among them.

About the poems Grieg set to music, he said that the music composed itself and all he had to do was write it down. This was definitely not the case for Peer Gynt, but ironically, it is better known.

Grieg’s privileged life was not without challenges. He survived serious respiratory infections at age 16, but the ordeals destroyed his left lung and deformed his spine, leaving him impaired and plagued by respiratory illnesses all his life.

Yet he achieved success and stardom in his lifetime. And because of his distinctive musical style, evoking his wild and scenic homeland and its folk songs, he helped Norway develop its national identity as it gained independence from Sweden.

Bergen (B) and Oslo (O), Norway (N).

Before I embarked in a month-long exploration of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, my draft itinerary had quickly filled up with iconic scenery, plus Viking museums and historic sites. Fortunately, I wondered whether this trip was about to be nothing more than all-you-can-eat Viking stuff. I can’t believe that I hesitated to add a visit to the Grieg Museum. Not only did I find it extremely interesting—it ended up being the most powerful of my cultural experiences in Scandinavia. I loved Grieg’s music before, but now I find it even more moving.

 ###

 Footnotes:

*Credit for the villa photo at the top of this post: Andreas Sandberg, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

**Credit for the globe image at the bottom of this post: Rob984 - Derived from Germany on the globe (Germany centered).svg, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

 Read Caroline Arnold’s post about Bergen.

INDIGENOUS HISTORIES at the KODE MUSEUM OF ART, Bergen, Norway

Big Party (detail) by Patricia Rengifo. Indigenous Histories at the Kode Museum of Art, Bergen, Norway

On our recent trip to Norway I visited a fascinating exhibition at the Kode Museum of Art in Bergen called Indigenous Histories. With more than 285 items on display, the exhibition presents different accounts of indigenous experience from South America, North America, Oceania, and the Nordic region, through art and visual culture, curated by artists and researchers who are indigenous or of indigenous descent. It will be on view until August 25, 2024. Here are just a few examples illustrating the wide variety of items in the exhibit and where they are from.

SOUTH AMERICA

Peru

Brazil. Big Party by Patricia Rengifo

Brazil

Brazil

Peru

Brazil

Brazil

OCEANIA

Australia

Australia

Australia

Australia

New Zealand

NORTH AMERICA

Mexico

Mexico

Canada

Canada

NORDIC REGION

Norway

Norway

The Kode Museums include four art museums and three composers' homes. For more about the Kode Museums in Bergen check their website.

[Note: this post appeared at my Art and Books blog on June 22, 2024.]

BERGEN, NORWAY, 3 DAYS IN MAY: Old and New and a Walk About Town

The Domkirken (Cathedral) in Bergen, Norway, dates to the 12th Century.

Conventional wisdom says to always carry your umbrella when you are in Bergen, and on our recent trip to Norway in May, we were glad we did. Unlike Oslo, where we had enjoyed warm, sunny weather, it was cool and cloudy in Bergen with periods of rain. But that didn’t stop me from going out and walking around the city.

Our hotel and the colorful building fronts of Bryggen.

Our hotel, the Radisson Royal Blu, where Art’s conference was being held, was in the heart of Bryggen, the historic center of the city, now preserved as a UNESCO Heritage site. 

Historic buildings of Bryggen. View from our room at our hotel.

From medieval times through the late 1800s, Bergen was the focus of trade on Norway’s west coast. Colorful storefronts facing the waterfront were once busy offices and warehouses and other buildings connected to the shipping business. Today they are restaurants and souvenir shops.

Entrance to the Bergen Castle.

Just beyond the warehouse district is the entrance to the old castle/fort and its large ceremonial hall, the Hakenshallen, a structure dating back to the 1200s. The opening reception of Art’s conference was held there and we were greeted by the mayor. It was not hard to imagine knights in armor dining in the magnificent room long ago.

Hakonshallen (ceremonial hall)

My first job after arriving in Bergen was finding a laundromat to do our laundry. I learned that, like virtually everything else, all the machines were operated by credit card. We had gone to an ATM machine when we arrived in Norway and gotten cash (Norwegian kroners), but almost never used it. Even the smallest purchases (like a cinnamon roll at the local bakery or the toilets at the train station) was paid for with a tap of a credit card. 

Spring flowers in the Bergen city park.

Armed with a map picked up at the hotel, I took a self-guided walking tour through the streets of Bryggen, then circling the city park, where strollers ambled down flowered paths and swans floated past a fountain in the center of lake. 

Swan in the lake at the Bergen city park.

Bandstand at the Festplaza.

Tulips, rhododendrons, and all kinds of flowers were in the glory of the spring bloom, brightening the overcast weather. At one end of the park a bandstand was ready for summer concerts.

Sample piece (from Brazil) in the Indigenous Histories exhibit at the Kode art museum in Bergen.

Facing the park on one side are three of Bergen’s art museums. One afternoon I met a friend for a visit to a fascinating exhibit called Indigenous Histories. (For a virtual tour of some of the pieces in the exhibit, go to my June 22, 2024 post my Art and Books blog.)

At the main shopping plaza in downtown Bergen, a modern portico has been added to provide protection from rain or snow. Look carefully at the metal column and you can see multiple images of me with my camera.

I then returned to the waterfront by walking through the business district of downtown Bergen. There a wide plaza with memorial sculptures is flanked by commercial buildings dating from the 19^th Century.

A food stand at the fish market offered burgers made of salmon, whale, elk, and reindeer meat.

In the fish market along the waterfront stalls were filled with artfully arranged fish, caviar, and sausages made from reindeer, whale, elk. There were also stalls with various cooked foods to go. (I didn't try any.) The fish market seemed to be more of a tourist draw than a place where locals went to purchase seafood to cook at home.

White building at end of the street is the beginning of the Floibanen Funicular.

A popular attraction in Bergen is the funicular, a skyride that whisks you up from town to the mountain overlooking the city for a spectacular view. But on the day I planned to do it, it was raining and the clouds were so thick that I knew it would be impossible to see anything from the viewpoint. So, instead, I went to the archeology museum next to our hotel and joined a one hour tour.

Trade routes from Bergen in the Middle Ages.

In the Middle Ages, Bergen was a transportation hub, sending ships to ports in Europe, Asia, Africa and North America.

Layers of history revealed in the archeology museum.

Over the centuries the wooden buildings of Bryggen burned many times and were rebuilt many times. As archeologists dig through the layers of remains they have uncovered evidence of life going back to medieval times. In the museum there were displays of ancient shoes, combs, tools, knitting needles and more--even a communal wooden toilet seat! I was particularly fascinated by the display of wooden sticks covered in runic writing.

The Futhark are ancient writing systems used by the Old Norse people of Northern Europe.

Both sides are carved with Runic inscriptions. "Hakon carved me, but the boy owns me." and "Bard owns me. He found much to object to in the person who carved me."

And on our last morning, after the conference was over Art and I did a tour of another museum in Bryggen, which introduced us to life in Hanseatic times. (Bergen was a member of the Hanseatic League, a confederation of German city/states involved in trade in the 14th to 16th centuries. Norway did not become an independent country until 1905.) We then checked out of our hotel and made our way to the ferry building to board the ship for our overnight trip to Alesund. As the ship steamed out of the harbor, the sky cleared and the sun came out as we said good-bye to Bergen. We no longer needed our umbrellas.

Leaving the harbor and the cloudy skies of Bergen.

For more about our ferry trip from Bergen to Alesund go to my post of May 27, 2024, Two Weeks in Norway: Trains, Planes, and Automobiles, and a Few Ferries, Too.

And for an overview of our three days in Oslo, go to my post of June 17, 2024, Oslo, Three Days in May: Opera, Art, History and Sunshine. 

 

The Bryggen waterfront, historic buildings, with the addition of a modern Ferris Wheel, constructed while we were there, perhaps in preparation for the summer tourist season.