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Activities and Scenery

Everyday on board we had a learning session.  The first was about the Vikings.  Probably the one thing that surprised us the most was that Vikings were not an ethic group—it was a profession.  (Maybe you knew, but we didn’t learn that in school.)  Much of what has been learned about the Vikings has come via the Rune stones (Sweden), sagas (Iceland), and Skaldic verse.  The Viking time period was 8-11th century.

We had another session on Norway during World War II.  Germany invaded Denmark and Norway April 9, 1940.  Denmark fell almost immediately but Norway held on for about 2 months.  There was some peaceful resistance but there was also some cooperation.  In 1942 many Jews were shipped off the Germany.  It was said that before the war there were 2000 Jews in Norway and afterward there was only one.  The king and government fled to England.

We had a session on learning the Norwegian language.  It was fun but don’t think we got very far!

Another day we learned about various famous Norwegians explorers and yet another day we talked about the marine and bird life on the Norway coast.

One night the ship made a detour to the Trollfjord.  It is a beautiful fjord with a very narrow opening.  There was just barely space for the ship to turn around.  It was a magical night – about 11:30 pm, cold, steep walls, waterfalls, quiet. The ship served hot fish soup to drink.  Tasty!

We decided there was no reason to attach actual days to specific scenic photos. The scenes were just beautiful along the whole coast.  The farther north we went the more rugged it seemed.  But everywhere was beauty.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 1st, 2018 at 4:54 am and is filed under Norway, Scandanavia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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