Southern Norway – mikegerhardt.net

In the summer of 2023, Micha and I spent some time exploring Norway and visiting friends. This post describes the second part of our trip to the south, in which we visited the capital city of Oslo before flying to Munich to visit some friends. You can read about the first part of our trip here.

We journeyed by bus from Fredrikstad back to Oslo. The ride took about two hours and was mostly uneventful, save for a rather creative three-point turn by the bus driver to pick up a few stranded passengers from a different bus. We arrived at the Oslo bus terminal in the early afternoon, ate some sandwiches, and stashed our bags in a locker so we could do some shopping and sightseeing while waiting to check in to the Airbnb. After living in Trondheim for two years, Oslo felt like a huge, bustling city in comparison.

A view down Karl Johans gate towards the royal palace (Det kongelige slott). The back of the parliament building (Stortinget) is on the left.

The highlight of the night was checking out the arcade bar Tilt, which had a wall-sized game of Pac-Man and a really fun rhythmic shooter game called Music GunGun — here’s a video of a single person easily handling the level that gave us a lot of problems together. We played a few different games, enjoyed a drink or two, and walked back to the Airbnb in the late evening sun.

We set the high score for the day at the World’s Largest Pac-Man at Tilt.

Vigeland Park

The weather was beautiful and warm the following day, so we headed out in the morning for Vigeland Park, a famous park filled with statues of naked people named after the artist who sculpted them all, Gustav Vigeland. The entrance to the park is a bridge lined with statues of people in various random poses, meant to depict common emotions or activities that everyone can relate to. The statues seemed kind of funny to me at first, since I’m so used to proud, dignified poses rather than the snapshots Vigeland chose to depict. They depict lots of ordinary, everyday things, like stretching, chasing down and beating a thief, and surviving parenthood.

The bridge leads to an open courtyard, with a large fountain held up by statues of naked people, surrounded by beautiful gardens framed by statues of naked people, with a massive tower of naked people on a pedestal behind it all. It was beautiful, weird, quirky, interesting, confusing, and above all I had the sense that Vigeland had perhaps a little too much time on his hands.

The fountain at Vigeland Park, seen from the base of the pedestal upon which the “monolith” sits.

The main attraction of the park, the monolith.

The monolith was difficult for me to photograph, since it’s 50 feet tall, the sun was beating down on it, and there were (regular, clothed) people everywhere. It was impressive, and kind of eerie. Apparently Gustav Vigeland said of it, “The column is my religion,” and I’m honestly not sure what to make of that.

The National Museum of Norway

Sunny weather in Norway rarely lasts long. The following day the skies opened up, so we went to Nasjonalmuseet (The National Museum) in the morning. The first floor is dedicated to various artifacts from different times and cultures and felt sort of like a cross between an art museum and a history museum. One of my favorite exhibits was right at the beginning and showcased the various dresses that Queen Sofia and Queen Maud wore, and how the styles changed over time.

At the top of the staircase separating the two floors is a cafeteria, which served as a natural point to take a break and eat some food. I happened to be wearing the Seattle Kraken hoodie that my dad gave me. I’m not exactly a Kraken fan, but Dad thought it would be funny if I was wearing a hoodie that said “Kraken” on it in Norway, and it happens to be really comfortable and I like the blue colors. I didn’t really get the joke until a Norwegian woman stopped me in the cafeteria and told me that Kraken was a Norwegian word, and that she had a relative who lived in Seattle. She was super excited to have met an American who had been to Seattle and instantly relayed our conversation to her husband in Norwegian, who nodded confusedly and went back to sipping his coffee.

The second floor of the museum was dedicated to paintings, and in particular the work of Norwegian artist Edvard Munch. I really liked his self-portrait and the way his body disappears into the shadows.

A self-portrait by the Norwegian artist Edvard Munch.

One of Munch’s most famous works, Skrik (or Scream in English), is also in this museum and drew a small crowd. I found a couple of Monet paintings as well. All in all it was a cool museum and a fun way to spend a day, but our day wasn’t over yet. We had lined up a “ghost tour” of the nearby fortress in the evening

Ghost Tour of Akershus Fortress

I’d never done a ghost tour before, but Micha loves haunted things, so we knew we had to try it while we were in town. We waited at a street corner for our tour guide to arrive and collect the members of our tour. When everyone was ready, he took us for a stroll through a few neighborhoods and down to Akershus fortress, telling stories along the way about hidden passages under banks and haunted restaurants.

A view from the outside of Akershus Fortress during the tour. Local time 8:15 pm.

Our guide walked us through the old fortress, telling various stories about cursed horses and haunted corners. One story that stuck with me was a legend about a dog that had been sealed into the fortress walls as some kind of superstition to protect the fortress. Instead, the guards were haunted by howling and barking noises, and to this day dogs will occasionally stop and stare at the wall as if they heard something.

Sunset atop the Opera House

Our view of the Oslo Opera House as we returned from the ghost tour.

When the tour ended, we sauntered slowly back to the train station, not wanting our last day in Oslo to come to an end. Across the fjord we noticed the Oslo Opera House, a beautiful building with big concrete ramps along its sides that allow people to climb up to a viewing area at the top. We found a spot among the scattered tourists and Norwegians enjoying the last rays of sun from a beautiful day and watched the sun tuck behind the hills.

A view of the sunset from atop the opera house. Local time 10:14 PM.

After watching the sunset, we caught the train to Gardermoen airport, where we stayed at the airport hotel for a brief rest before an early morning flight to Munich for an entirely different part of our adventure.

#norwayisbeautiful

In the summer of 2023, Micha and I took a couple weeks of vacation to explore Norway. We spent a week in southern Norway, returned to Trondheim to meet some old friends, and then spent a week driving around Tromsø and the Vesterålen islands in the north.

For the trip south, we took a train to Oslo, where we caught a bus to Fredrikstad. Fredrikstad is a town of about 85,000, known for an old fortified city along the river now called Gamlebyen (literally, The Old City). Aside from that, the town doesn’t offer much for tourists, so I got strange looks when I said I wanted to go to Fredrikstad. It would be a bit like someone planning a trip to the northeastern United States so they could go see Lowell – Lowell is a fine city, but usually tourists headed that way would go to Boston, New York, or Washington, D.C.

A boardwalk along the river Glomma that divides Fredrikstad.

When we got there, and walked around the town, we were both struck by how empty the city felt. That could have been due to the time of year we visited. Most Norwegians go on holiday in July, leaving the less-touristy areas feeling a bit like ghost towns. Trondheim similarly felt a bit abandoned in the summer, unless a cruise ship happened to be visiting. Furthermore, we arrived on a Sunday, and though the sun was still out it was rather late in the evening.

A lonely, forgotten electric scooter lies discarded in the walkway between two buildings in Fredrikstad. Local time 9:46 PM.

After a long day of traveling, we got a bite to eat and returned to our Airbnb for the night. Tomorrow would be a big day.

Hunting down my family history

So, why did I drag Micha to a ghost town in the middle of the summer? Fredrikstad is also the city where my great-grandmother, Ragna Alvilde Syverstad, grew up. From Norway’s Digitalarkivet, I found census records from 1910 that listed her address. She lived with her adoptive family, the Haug family, at Cicignongate 26 in Fredrikstad, for at least ten years, and likely until she left for the United States. She is listed as leaving Norway on a ship bound for New York on June 21, 1929, for a “visit” that included her marriage to Einar Thidemann on August 24, 1929 in Cambridge, MA. According to my aunt Karen’s research, she had to return to Norway after the wedding before establishing residency in the US in March of 1930.

So, knowing her address, we walked to Cicignongate, not knowing what to expect. The streets were empty and quiet, and the sun and blue sky broke through the clouds that so often cover Norway.

Just after Cicignongate 24 stood a massive apartment complex, taking up the entire block. The construction was far too new to have been the building where Ragna lived in the 1910s. Just across from it, however, stood the Fredrikstad Cathedral, a huge red-brick cathedral that is definitely old enough to have been there when Ragna was.

The view down Cicignongate. House #26 used to stand on the left.

I was also able to find information about the grave of Erik Haug, Ragna’s adoptive father. He is buried in the Western Fredrikstad cemetery with his wife Oline, his son Olaf, and someone named Elinor, who I think is Olaf’s wife. After a short walk through a more industrial area, we found the cemetery and the Haug grave, nestled in a corner between a bush and a walking path.

The Haug family grave, where members of Ragna’s adoptive family are buried.

I stood there quietly for a minute, not sure what to do. I had done quite a bit of research, most of it in a foreign language, and I had navigated a foreign country and an unfamiliar city to reach this point. I don’t think I expected to actually find the grave. I thanked Erik, and the Haug family, for what they had done for Ragna and for my family, and we left.

Visiting the fortified city

An old metal map of the fortified city of Fredrikstad hangs at the fort’s entrance.

The next day, we took the ferry across the river to the fortified city – something we know Ragna loved to do as a child as well, thanks to letters and newspaper clippings collected by Karen. Like the apartment building, however, these ferries seemed a bit newer than what Ragna would have taken a hundred years ago. Several electric “byferger,” or city ferries, zig-zag along the river, stopping periodically at docks that look like bus stops. The ferries are all-electric and free to ride, and make commuting back and forth across the river fun and easy.

The city ferry shuttling back and forth across the river.

Gamlebyen is like a small town within Fredrikstad, surrounded by fortress walls of dirt and stone that come to sharp points, where cannons could be stationed. The roads are cobblestone, and most of the buildings are now museums and shops. Ragna often wrote about coming to this fort on the weekends to have lunch with her father. With the weather still perfect, we took the opportunity to walk around, explore the old cobblestone streets, and get food at Mormor’s Cafe (Grandma’s Cafe).

A statue of King Frederik II, founder of Fredrikstad, stands in the center of the fortified city.

We then returned to Oslo and explored the city for a few days before stretching our definition of “southern Norway” and flying to Munich to catch up with some friends who had just moved there. Stay tuned for more stories of our travels!

This post dedicated to Sandra Howley.