As I watched England disappear, I began to cherish the memories. But I also wished that I had been able to share
Britain with Her. I wanted to be married again
and I believed that the heart of marriage was memories.
I began having misgivings because I realized this journey would become
filled with profound memories. I had seen
loving couples in Britain and it reinforced my desire for close relationship with my
future wife, wherever she might be. Perhaps
she might be a girl of legendary Scandinavian beauty…
A cherubic
blond-haired girl came and stood near me at the rail of the M/S Venus. Her
name was Gerdkarin. She was a 19-year-old
sociology student from Bergen. We spent the evening together, walking the decks, exploring
the interior of the ship, and sitting outside on deck chairs. She told me of fierce storms at night with waves up
to 20 meters high here on the North Sea. That
was not the case tonight. We photographed the
sun setting over a calm sea. As it bathed
Gerdkarin's smiling face in gold light, the sun seemed to be competing with the inner glow
of this happy girl. But the glow was not
for me – she was returning home from three weeks spent in Scotland with her fiancé.
Around 3:00
a.m., I awoke and walked in a breeze on the gently rolling decks. The clear sky reminded me of the McLaughlin
Planetarium in Toronto brought to life – a sky of stars. In the distance, there were a few indigo spots,
clouds, like black holes on the horizon. Lights
indicated a few distant ships. Smoke streamed
back from the smokestack like the breath from a giant's nostril. I went inside, found a table and chair and began
writing the third story for the Times-Review: "I couldn't sleep so I walked the decks of the
Venus..."
and I recalled times in Britain.
When you hold apprehensively in mind an image of a place and then
you see something of that place that is unexpected, even if it is less threatening, it can
make you nervous: Is this the right place? That is how I felt when the Venus glided along the shore of Norway. My first sight was not of towering dark fjords
– my image from school days – but of rugged gray and green hills dotted sparsely
with homes. Though for the moment I felt
more hopeful for Melawend, my shattered image left me puzzled. The image, however, would soon be overwhelmingly
restored as we continued north along the coast.
Under clear
cool skies, the ship glided down a long channel, under a suspension bridge and into the
busy port of Bergen – “The City Between the Seven Mountains", "The
Fjord Capital". It had been Norway's
largest and wealthiest city (due in part to German merchants) until Oslo superceded it in
the 19th century. Bergen was
prominent in Norwegian cultureand even today
the Bergensere were proud of their individualistic tongue.
It was a wet city with 275 days of rain per year. It was green, flowery and hilly with low skyline
that was filled with red-tiled roofs. Bergen was a major port, a fishing
and shipbuilding center, and a university town that had a noted philharmonic orchestra. By two months, I had missed the 34th
Eurovision Song Contest hosted by Bergen in its modern Grieghallen.
Nearing the city, I saw more fishing and pleasure boats, and the
dark green slopes of the shore lined with buildings of white, green, coral, gold and red. The Venus
eased into the harbour. I saw the wooden Hansa
houses – merchant buildings of the early 1700’s that lined Bryggen (the street
along wharf of Vågen – the harbour inlet). This
was the also site of daily fish, fruit and flower markets and today was no exception.
The ship
docked in mid-afternoon, too late to arrange an exchange.
As Melawend and I rode out of Bergen the land rose up. I was riding along the steepening shores of
Sorfjorden, weaving past homes that were perched amid trees high above the water. On a flat secluded spot beside the road, high over
a train track the wound along the shore, I put to the test what Allan had told me about
free camping. I slept restlessly but
undisturbed. In the morning, I cleaned up at
an immaculate Fina gas station on the way back into Bergen – the ambassador in blue
jeans was on his way.
I began my
diplomatic mission by making a cold call at the Town Hall, located near the city lake,
Lille Lungegârdsvann. The Town Hall was
housed in the only skyscraper I could see. I
had two hours to use before I could have a
meeting with anyone. I contacted the Bergens Tidende, the local paper, and they welcomed
a story and photographed me on heavy-laden Melawend.
I had read
about Bergen's funicular, a mountainside rail car that took you 1050 feet (320 meters) up
Mount Fløen. I felt a new confidence –
call it viable recklessness – so I rode Melawend up a hairpin road with some
extremely steep grades that scared the hell out of me.
Melawend did it! I was rewarded
with fine views of the city and the sea. You
saw that there was very little wood used in construction of buildings. The city had been burned virtually to the ground
four times, the last being in 1855. Wooden
construction had since been prohibited. Melawend's
brakes protested a bit on the way down. To get
back into Bergen, I paid a 5 Krone toll ("...to finance a speedy improvement to the
roads...") You did not have to pay on the
way out.
Arne Simonsen,
Information Officer for Bergen, welcomed the exchange in his high-rise office, and then I
was away, free to roam Norway until I reached Oslo. I
got my mail at American Express – a letter from a Patricia, who was a penfriend in
Malaysia. Then Melawend and I rolled out of
the city. A penfriend also waited for me
further on in Norway.
I rode beyond
where I had camped the night before, and on through miles of tunnels on my way up to Dale. From there, the road went the way of a mining
company's profits chart when it strikes gold. Melawend
and I wove around precipitous hairpin turns above deep green rocky canyons. We squeezed past down-coming buses on some of those
turns and I wondered how cars would have passed through without being knocked over the
edge. I was amazed at Melawend with the little
engine that proved that she was up to taking on mountainous Norway.
Once at the
summit, the land leveled out and there were fewer trees. There were pretty lakes and at
least one wooden cabin with a thick sod roof.
I was on the
Hardangervidda. At 3,860 sq. miles (10,000 sq.
km) it was Europe’s largest mountain plateau and was an average 3,000 feet (914
meters) above sea level. There were supposed to be thousands of reindeer up here but I did
not see any.
Near Voss, we
began a gradual descent, passing through long dark tunnels in forested mountainsides and
through green valleys with sloping farms and homes that must have had spectacular views. At Kvanndal, we boarded a ferry to cross a four-arm
junction of fjords. From the water, I wondered
how we could breech the wall of mountains that surrounded Kinsarvik across the mouth of
the Sørfjord. But we did, and about ten miles
further on, and we camped by a red barn on the valley farm of Gerd Rosten.
As we continued on toward Geilo the next morning, the land rose
up, higher, it seemed, than before. I paused
to see Vøringsfoss Falls. You reached it by a private toll road from highway 7. The falls plunged 489 ft (149 meters) into the wild
Måbø valley. There was a wooded path that led you to the unfenced precipice of the
narrow falls – this was not a place for suffers of vertigo.
Near the
falls, I looked back to see the road stitched to the very edge of rock face that shot up
perhaps 1,000 feet above a rubbly river. Approaching
turn around the face of the rock was a car towing a “caravan” (RV trailer) - (you
can just barely see them in the photo at left - about one-quarter the way down from the
top left side of the photo, on a line with a slight downward slope, against a rock face). It looked so incredibly tiny that I made me realize
how small we truly are and yet, like ants, how we were able to fantastically manipulate
our environment. Melawend carried me and the
big load higher still to flat rocky land, to where trees disappeared, replaced by tall
sticks planted along the shoulders of the road – markers for snowplows. Here, you were on a barren plateau surrounded by
hills that were actually the tops of mountains.
By the time we
reached Geilo it was raining and I thought I was in northern Ontario, Canada – the
trees here reminded me of the pines and birches and poplars I knew from so many trips to
the family cottage. But we were, in fact,
2,642 feet (805 meters) above see level and roughly midway across Norway. At a gas station, I picked up a copy of the Bergens Tidende – and there we were! I could not read it, but the headline put me off
– “På vennskapsur kloden rundt” – rundt? It
seemed to read "runt". Was there
mockery in the words? I didn’t know. But I was in a land of tall burly Vikings, so I
became self-conscious and did not say anything to anyone.
(This was
August 13, 1986. In the early hours of this
day 25 years earlier, thousands of armed troops and police of the German Democratic
Republic (GDR) deployed along the border separating the Soviet sector of Berlin from the
British, American, and French sectors. By
dawn, with security forces in place, work gangs began ripping up cobblestones, sawing down
trees, and jackhammering holes in the ground for poles along which barbed wire was strung
– the beginnings of the Berlin Wall. Why? More than 2 million East Germans had fled during
the past 10 years and in recent weeks people were flooding over. The GDR would collapse, along with the wall, in
1989.)
Melawend and I
turned south on route 8 and the land rose up again to another barren area. Then we rolled down into a long forested
valley where you saw wooden "loft" houses, food storage buildings in that rich
deep brown patina perched on piers near wood cabins. There
were small waterfalls everywhere. For now it
was sunny.
It was raining
when I spotted a "stave" church. It
was so-named for its construction: horizontal wooden beams on a stone foundation from
which rise four corner posts or staves. Its imposing dark lines, its wood construction and
the two dragon carvings that arched from the bell tower intrigued me. This was Uvdal Church, a 1893 imitation of a
medieval church. It was not open to tourists.
On my way
south through the southern county of Telemark, I passed near Morgedal, a hamlet in the
mountains that was the birthplace of modern skiing. In
the mid-1800s an eccentric young farmer named Sondre Norheim, devised a way of making the
chore of plodding over the snow on two planks much easier and more rewarding. He experimented with shaping the boards, developing
a side-cut and the slight "hourglass" profile.
This sidecut is what enabled skis to run true and turn easily. He also devised bindings to hold the feet in boots
to the skis, giving the skier control over the skis. He
and his fellow Morgedal skiing farmers perfected new maneuvers until in 1868 Norheim led
his followers on a 112-mile (180 km) journey from Morgeal to Christiania (now Oslo) to
cheering crowds. The rest is ski history.
My goal was to
reach Kragerø and meet my penfriend, Elizabeth Hatletveit.
It was drizzling when I got there around 7:30.
On the phone, Elizabeth’s mother had said she had gone fishing
with her boyfriend. I waited an hour before
seeking a campsite. Finally, I ask an old
couple that was working in a garden if I might camp on their narrow farm. They looked sternly at me and did not answer. When I made a pyramid of my arms and said camp the
man pointed down the road. I was tired; it had
been a 500-kilomerter run through mostly miserable weather.
I found a campground that was full of caravans, tents and cabins. For a lousy site, I paid about eight dollars (the
third and most expensive paid accommodation since I arrived at Gatwick). I squeezed in between other tenters and fell sound
asleep.
I met
Elizabeth the next day in Kagerø. She was
short much prettier and bustier than her pictures indicated.
She had cut her blond hair short. She
wore glasses and her look seemed to typify her occupation: secretary. She introduced me to Leif, her tall blond husky
boyfriend. They were going to live together
and were looking to rent a flat. They treated
me to two cups of tea in a noisy café. Leif
bought a copy of the Bergens Tidende and
Elizabeth wrote out a translation. I was
pleased that headline read, simply, "On a friendship tour around the world".
Elizabeth and Leif talked of high prices – houses, gasoline
and cars. An average new car cost about
$25,000 (1986). Leif had bought a nine-year
old Chevy van for around $9,000. Chocolate
bars were three times the price in England.
We walked
around the small town and back to the harbour in the rain.
Kragerø was a popular seaside resort with narrow streets and whitewashed
houses. It had long been a retreat for
Norwegian artists. There were many frame
cottages and in the harbour there seemed to be more than one hundred pleasure boats. Except for the prices and the rocky terrain, this
part of Kragerø reminded me of Crystal Beach, Buffalo’s “Coney Island”,
the now-depressed Americanized resort village next to my hometown of Ridgeway. We walked back to our vehicles at the café and
wished each other well.
"Say
hello to Marianne, for me," Elizabeth said.
(Marianne was
a mutual penfriend who lived in Brussels.)
Near the
turnoff for Porsgrunn, Melawend became sluggish. I
was riding cautiously because of the rain and thought she was simply slipping a bit on the
wet pavement. Finally she became like a horse
that even a whip would not have coerced. She
fishtailed and smoke began coming up from the belt. I
pulled over and discovered the rear tire was almost flat.
Fortunately there was a service station/convenience store within sight. I had one of those fix-a-flat aerosols but I still
ended up pushing hard to get Melawend up to a service bay.
The young attendant said the garage was closed and the mechanic had gone. He could call someone for me.
Great.
It was dark by
the time a tall, blond, blue-eyed young Viking in greasy coveralls came in from another
station called Falken. He started to take the
wheel off the scooter.
"Can't
you fix it on the bike?" I said.
"No. I must take it off, “ he said with a thick
accent.
I took the
wheel off myself because I knew all that parts that had to come off first.
"Oh, this
is tubeless tire." he said.
To make a long
and infuriating story short, it could have been repaired on the scooter. He had not brought a tubeless tire patch kit with
him and there was apparently none at this garage. I
had to take the wheel and go with him to his garage about ten miles away where he fixed
the flat in about three minutes. He presented
me with a bill for about US$60 – he said this was the minimum – for a job that
he admitted would have cost $5 on the spot. I
protested but his English suddenly got even worse – something about having to ask his
boss who, of course, was nowhere to be contacted. He
drove me to the main road but I had to hitchhike back, in the rain and the darkness,
carrying my wheel. Fortunately a very
attractive couple in a Mercedes took me in and drove me to Melawend and would not accept
payment (thank you!).
(And thank
you, dear reader, for listening – I have waited many years to get that off my chest!)
The young guy
who I had initially met at the station recommended I camp in the football field of a
nearby school. I found it and camped in
a wooded area nearby. I was wet, cold, tired
and hungry – a peanut butter sandwich had seldom tasted so good.
It was a
pretty spot with a gurgling stream somewhere below and I was invisible from the road. Except for gunshots from military men on training
maneuvers (I could hear them walking and talking in the woods but I never saw them) it was
restful. I caught up with my journals and
finished the third story for The Times Review. It
was cold the second night and I discovered that if you urinated into a plastic fuel
bottle, you got an effective hand-warmer.
The next day,
I headed toward Oslo, passing through Lark, the hometown of explorer Thor Heyerdahl. I spent the next night camped in a parking area off
the main road about 30 miles from Oslo. As the
night progressed, day-trippers left and a few trucks pulled in for the night. I heard voices.
Later I heard heavy breathing and lumbering footsteps near the tent. I did not move a muscle lest whatever it was that
was out there became interested in what was in the tent.
I had seen a moose-crossing sign on the road nearby.
Using the map
of Oslo that Allan Rooks had given to me, I made my way to the Town Hall. The map was in Norwegian but it got me there. As Olsonians were hustling along the busy streets,
I made my way to the Rådhus – Town Hall – a twin towered red brick building
opposite the harbour and surrounded by prosaic statues of laborers at work. There were dark statues of hearty attractive nude
Norwegians, but as in so many other cities I thought Oslo was having a tough time keeping
their statues clean of guano. The Yggdrasill
Frieze – wooden reliefs depicting scenes from Norse mythology – lined the
outside entranceway of the Rådhus. Inside the
vaulted foyer and the chambers, there were huge splash murals and mosaics based around
more modern themes. The Rådhus had been built
to commemorate the 900th anniversary of the founding in 1048 of what is now
Oslo.
My time was
regrettably concentrated around the town hall with its massive murals and the statues of
nudes in the park across the street. It was a
pleasure to return to the beautiful blond-haired girl who had given me directions to the
tourist info offices. Now she put me in touch
with Anne-Marie Taraldset, manager of the Tourism Information Office, who kindly accepted
the exchange and said, "You are welcome in Norway anytime."
I vowed to
myself that next time I would have more than 40 Krone in my pocket. I could not afford the 10-Krone ferry ride across
the headwaters of Oslo Fjord to Bygdøy to see the Kon-Tiki Museum – but I could see
it from the harbour. I had grown up with
National Geographic stories of Thor Heyerdahl's Ra
and Kon-Tiki expeditions. I had his two of his books. And now, just across the headwaters of the Oslo
Fjord was a veritable shrine built to house his famous balsa raft Kon-Tiki. Based
on an ancient Peruvian design, the raft carried Heyerdahl and five companions, in 1947,
from Callao, Peru, to the Tuamotu Islands of Polynesia in his effort to prove that South
Americans could have migrated to the Pacific islands.
Spruce and
pine forests cover 70% of Norway. The forested
area that we rolled through was often referred to as "Värmland's gold". Värmland was criss-crossed with long narrow lakes
and rivers. And now we were at its eastern
edge. To mark my exit from Norway, I stopped
in the town of Orje to get some bread and some canned pineapple. For something more
Norwegian, I photographed an ugly but cheerful concrete troll outside a general store.
Trolls had had
their own evolution. They began in
Scandinavian mythology as castle or cave-dwelling hard-skinned giants who robbed and ate
travelers who crossed their paths. They were
invincible except in sunlight, under which they would either turn to stone or explode (now
there's a movie image!). In later folklore,
they were not so awesome or mean. They stole
maidens and developed semimagical powers. Outside
Scandinavia, they began to be associated with mound-dwelling mischievous little people. Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen used them in Peer
Gynt as symbols of evil. In J. R. R. Tolkien's
The Hobbit, they were dangerous but
slow-witted creatures. In Finnish writer
Tove Jansson's Moominland children's stories, they were gentle beings living in a rural
paradise.
I returned to
where I had parked Melawend beneath posters that showed surprised winners of lotteries. There was of feeling of being home again. But the signs also made me wonder about winning
lotteries. Millions of people wanted to win
millions of dollars – incredible odds against life-changing possibilities, but there
was always that hope: “You never know…”
That’s why we took a chance.
It was always gratifying to read about winners who had been in dire
need – the family whose breadwinners had been out of work for sometime and were
facing eviction, or the old couple whose first thought was to help their families, then
travel… It was distressing to read about
the self-absorbed winners who won some record-level jackpot but who were already satisfied
with their lives and said they did not want to change the way they were living. And almost condescendingly said they would still
make repairs to the five-year-old-car. And there would be no mention of helping anyone
else… I had to wonder: Why did they bother to enter a lottery?
Soon, Norway
was fast disappearing behind Melawend and me. I didn't really know what I would find in
Sweden other than the cliché images of beautiful blond-haired women, pastry and green
countryside. I did know that Sweden had its
famous peacemakers. I knew that their Prime
Minister had been assassinated recently and that Sweden had been the first country outside
the Soviet Union to detect the fallout from Chernobyl.
Chapter 15
Fallout in Nostalgic
Sweden
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somewhat boring but fundamental part...
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