30 June 2019:
Honningsvåg and Nordkapp, Norway:
The Far North

June 30, 2019 Corey Sandler

By Corey Sandler

We’ve reached the top of Norway.

Honningsvåg is the northernmost city on the mainland of Norway.

There are a few gotchas in that description. Mainland, not on an island. City, not a town or village or settlement.

Honningsvåg has only about 2,484 inhabitants, which is below the Norwegian definition of a city as a place with at least 5,000 residents. But its status as a city was grandfathered in place.

Searching for a northeast passage to India in 1553, British navigator Richard Chancellor—among the early explorers of the far north—came upon a jut of rock 307 meters or 1,007 feet above the Barents Sea.

Chancellor named the dramatic landscape North Cape.

A small fishing village near the cape was totally destroyed by the Germans in 1944 and never rebuilt.

What today is called Nordkapp, North Cape, arose in 1950 as the northernmost municipality on the mainland of Europe.

The steep cliff of North Cape at 71 degrees 10 minutes North Latitude is about 2,102 kilometers or 1,306 miles from the geographic North Pole. But it is not the northernmost piece of land in Europe to purists like me.

The tourist attraction at Nordkapp includes a metallic sculpture of planet earth a display of art and artifacts, plus a gift shop.

Nordkapp is just across the bay from the actual northernmost piece of land in Europe.

So why is the gift shop there?

Because Nordkapp has a road, a parking lot for buses, and plumbing and electricity.

Neighboring Knivskjellodden Point, just to the west, extends about a mile further north. But that place is a rather difficult hike and has no parking lot or plumbing.

But actually, since both of these points are situated on an island, some purists will maintain that neither is on the mainland of Europe.

And so, they point to Cape Nordkinn (Kinnarodden) about 70 kilometers or 43 miles to the east. It’s not quite as far north, but it is on the mainland of Europe.

*Silver Wind at the pier in* *Honningsvåg, the big fish in a sea of fishing boats.*

*Repurposing some of the tools of winter with hopes of summer.*

*Nordkapp, which is near the northernmost piece of mainland Europe. The actual northernmost finger of land is almost inaccessible and doesn’t have space for tour buses to visit.*

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29 June 2019:
Tromsø, Norway:
Churchill’s Northern Obsession

June 29, 2019 Corey Sandler

By Corey Sandler

Tromsø is the largest city in Northern Norway, 350 kilometers or 217 miles north of the Arctic Circle.

It is the second largest city within the Arctic Circle, behind only Murmansk, Russia. (Some of you may be preparing to look up the population of Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland. Let me save you the trouble: Reykjavik is a sizeable city about twice the size of Tromsø, but only a small slice at the northern end of the entire island nation of Iceland is within the Arctic Circle.)

Back to Tromsø. Please don’t expect Paris.

Even though at one time this city of 50,000 or so did claim the nickname “The Paris of the North.” It earned that title because successful merchants in the late 19th and early 20th century developed a relatively significant trade with France and brought back a few of the niceties of Paris.

Today I went with guests to see the striking Arctic Cathedral and then to ascend the cable car to the mountain above for a view of the island city. Finally, we visited the Polar Museum, filled with artifacts, photos, and charts of the early explorers and hunters of the far north.

Just as I had promised the guests, we had all four seasons in the course of one day. Starting with rain, moving to a brief glimpse of sun, then snow squall, and back to gray skies.

It is still a very remote place, quite cold and dark in the winter and chilly and not dark at all in the Midnight Sun of summer. Summer solstice came a week ago, on June 21 so locals and visitors will not see the sun fully drop below the horizon for another month.

By the end of the 19th century, Tromsø was a major base for Arctic expeditions. Explorers like Roald Amundsen, Umberto Nobile and Fridtjof Nansen picked up supplies and often recruited their crew in the city.

As the Germans advanced northward in 1940 early in World War II, Tromsø briefly served as the seat of Norwegian government. Tromsø escaped the war without major damage, although this part of Northern Norway was one of the most closely watched places in the world.

It was just outside of Tromsø the great German battleship Tirpitz was finally bottled up and destroyed by the Allies after serving as the northern obsession of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill because of the threat it posed to Allied convoys and military vessels in the area.

*Tromsø in winter, on a previous visit.*

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28 June 2019:
Leknes, Norway:
Pastoral Times

June 28, 2019 Corey Sandler

By Corey Sandler

Leknes, a bit more than two square kilometers or just under one square mile, is home to about 3,200 people. Plus the occasional hundreds who descend from cruise ships who come to this beautiful part of Norway.

It is hard to think of a part of Norway that is not beautiful. Leknes has a leg up because of its location in the geographical middle of the Lofoten archipelago on Vestvågøy island.

I went with guests to visit the Lofotr Viking Museum in Borg, near Leknes. Europe’s largest Viking longhouse, a chieftain’s farmstead, it was discovered by a farmer in his field.

We saw re-enactors practicing old Viking trades and enjoyed a version of a 1,600-year-old recipe for lamb soup.

Out in the country you’ll see some old cabins, called rorbuer.

Along the water in the islands there still stand more than a few old rorbu, a traditional type of seasonal house used by fishermen. One end of the structure is on land, the other end stands on poles in the water allowing easy access to vessels.

They’re not much used for their original purpose anymore; instead they are used as vacation homes to fish money out of tourist’s pockets.

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27 June 2019:
Brønnøysund, Norway:
The One with the Hole in the Mountain

June 27, 2019 Corey Sandler

By Corey Sandler

The small town of Brønnøysund, population about 5,000, sits just below the Arctic Circle.

It has managed to hold on to an economy based around fishing in the open sea and in many fish farms, agriculture, the largest limestone mine in northern Europe, and our guests and most of the readers of this blog: tourists.

It also is home to the Fort Knox or the Tower of London of Norwegian government documents, the Registry. Marriage licenses, birth certificates, divorce decrees, tax filings: the essential detritis of society.

Bronnoysund is about 75 miles below the Arctic Circle, which means there is a short period of twilight between about 1 and 4 in the morning on the day of our visit. But not to worry: they have lights inside the Registry.

About 9 miles of 14 kilometers south of town, on the island of Torget, is Torghatten Mountain—Square Hat Mountain. That name for the place that rises like a colossal castle of sheer granite is apt. But the fact is that most people will remember Torghatten as the “one with the hole in it.”

The hole is a tunnel about 160 meters or 520 feet long and 20 meters or 66 feet wide. There are trails that lead to it, but most visitors see Torghatten from ships approaching or departing town.

According to legend, the hole was made by the troll Hestmannen while he was chasing the beautiful girl Lekamøya. When the troll realized he would not get the girl, he released an arrow to kill her, which is certainly not appropriate.

In any case, the story says the troll-king of Sømna threw his hat into the path of the arrow path to save her. The hat turned into the mountain with a hole in the middle.

If you don’t buy the story about the troll and the girl and the arrow, scientists say the hole was formed during the Scandinavian ice age, about 11,000 B.C.E. Ice and water eroded looser rocks, while the harder ones in the mountain top resisted erosion.

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26 June 2019:
Ålesund, Norway:
In a Reflective Mood

June 26, 2019 Corey Sandler

By Corey Sandler

In Ålesund, it’s nearly impossible to avoid slipping into a reflective mood.

This handsome city includes an interior harbor for small vessels, surrounded by a handsome collection of Jugendstil buildings, the Germanic version of Art Nouveau style.

Like many built-up cities of its time, Ålesund suffered from a great fire; the one here came in 1904 and reconstruction was partly funded by and absolutely influenced by German kaiser Wilhelm II.

We have been to Ålesund many times and it is always a place that gratifies me as a photographer. The trick, for me, is to find a new way to reflect on its appeal.

You can see more photos from our visit of two weeks ago in the blog entry for June 4.

Bales of hay in the countryside; some local wags call them Troll Eggs.

Today I went with a group of guests on a day-long trip inland to lunch at a spectacular restaurant atop Mount Stranda, a substantial ski resort about 3,400 feet above the fjords.

We traveled by coach, ferry, and ski gondola in each direction. Here is some of what we saw:

**All photos by Corey Sandler, 2019. All rights reserved.**

For most of our time we were above the clouds, but there were brief intervals of clearing and reflections of yet another wondrous part of Norway.

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25 June 2019:
Flåm and Gudvangen, Norway:
Up and Over and Around

June 25, 2019 Corey Sandler

By Corey Sandler

We arrived early this morning in Flåm, one of the busiest tiny places in Norway. There is not much here except for the base station for the extraordinary train that climbs up the mountain range…and a rather good craft beer brewery that for some reason set up shop here.

We were last here on June 5, and you can read more details about the train and the town in the blog entry for that day.

After about two hours at anchor, Silver Wind went around the corner to Gudvangen through one of the most handsome fjords in Norway…which is about as high praise as I can offer.

I went with a group of guests on an all-day excursion that began with a tender into Flåm to meet up with the morning sailing of the Future of Fjords catamaran to Gudvangen. The name of the vessel reflects the vision of its owners: it is an all-electric boat, made of lightweight carbon fiber and powered by battries that deliver 450 kWhr of power to each of the two propellers. It glided at 16 knots through the fjord, leaving no smoke and only wake in its path.

Aboard the futuristic *Future of Fjords* boat.

*Silver Wind* at anchor, reflected in the glass of the *Future of Fjords.*

From Gudvangen we went by coach up into the mountains and then onto the mainline of the Norwegian railroad that connects Oslo to Bergen. We rode across from Voss to Myrdal, and there transferred to the famed Flåmsbana railroad that descends down to the sea.

At Kjossfossen (the Kiss Waterfall) a hyuldra lures.

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21-23 June 2019:
London, United Kingdom:
Through the Tower Bridge to the Top of Norway and Around the Corner to Copenhagen

June 21, 2019 Corey Sandler

By Corey Sandler

We’ve come to our third loop of northern Europe this season on Silver Wind.

We entered the Thames Estuary about noontime and made our way up the river, passing through the London Tower Bridge in early evening to our dock alongside HMS Belfast across from the Tower of London.

In doing so we completed our round-trip from the U.K. to France, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway without once having to enter an airport. That is among the many charms of sea travel.

Safe travels to guests leaving us here in London.

***An homage to Hitchcock’s* Rear Window *near Millennium Pier***

Early on Sunday morning we–with the assistance of tugs–backed away from the dock and went through the bridge in reverse, turning around to face down the river near Greenwich.

We’re off on a cruise that will enter into the North Sea and up the west coast of Norway to its top at Nordkapp. Then we’ll turn back to the bottom of Norway and around the corner to Copenhagen, Denmark.

Here’s our plan:

I hope you’ll join me here in these pages.

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19 June 2019:
Oslo, Norway:
The Monumental City

June 19, 2019 Corey Sandler

By Corey Sandler

We have reached the apogee (and final port of call) of this cruise. Late this afternoon we will exit Oslofjord and head for the North Sea, and from there back to London. It has been a lovely excursion from the United Kingdom to five countries: France, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway.

Oslo is the capital and largest city of Norway, a mid-sized country, a bit smaller than Germany or Finland, a bit larger than Poland or Italy. It is Europe’s fastest-growing capital and the third-largest city of Scandinavia.

*Silver Wind* at the dock below Akershus Castle today.

It includes a green space with a sprawling sculpture installation that is a wondrous, strange, uplifting, and disturbing theme park of humanity: Vigelund Park.

A set of intriguing museums, including one that houses a nearly-intact Viking ship.

Another holds Fram, one of the pioneering Arctic exploration ships of Fridtjof Nansen.

And a third memorializes the unusual vessel Kon-Tiki, a balsa wood raft that was at the heart of a theory by Norwegian adventurer
Thor Heyerdahl. He theorized that the islands of the South Pacific were populated by explorers from South America. Interesting theory, though more modern analyses point elsewhere.

**Reflections of a monumental city. All photos copyright 2019 by Corey Sandler, all rights reserved.**

And there is a monument to global peace, funded by Alfred Nobel, one of the developers of dynamite and other explosives that greatly increased the death rate of modern warfare.

Modern Oslo is the hub of government for Norway as well as much of the country’s trade, banking, industry, and shipping. It is also considered one of the most expensive places to live, somewhere in the company of Singapore, Paris, Melbourne, and Tokyo. In return, residents receive one of the world’s best packages of social services.

**The amazing Vigelund Park in Oslo, a theme park of humanity**

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18 June 2019:
Gothenburg, Sweden:
Sweden’s Second City

June 18, 2019 Corey Sandler

By Corey Sandler

Gothenburg is the second city of Sweden, behind only Stockholm.

We came to the tie up at a new, very old dock: the America Cruise Terminal in the inner harbor. Its name hints of its history.

It was from here, more than 100 years ago, that the first liners departed for North America, continuing until 1975. America Cruise Terminal, Amerikaskjulet, is on the same side of the river as the city center, within walking distance of downtown.

At one time, Gothenburg was the largest trading port in the Nordic countries, and when Swedish emigration to the United States increased, Gothenburg became Sweden’s main point of departure.

The city’s early design was heavily influenced by the Dutch, Germans, and Scots, and Dutch planners and engineers. As a result, it has many features in common with other Dutch cities such as Amsterdam, Batavia (Jakarta), and New Amsterdam—today’s Manhattan in New York.

Here are some photos from today:

**Handsome warehouses and merchant’s homes along the canals.**

**The Fiskekorka, a fish market styled after a stave church.**

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17 June 2019:
Aalborg, Denmark:
Up Over Down Under

June 17, 2019 Corey Sandler

By Corey Sandler

Aalborg is in North Jyllland at the narrowest point of the Limfjord, a shallow sound that separates North Jutlandic Island from the rest of the Jutland Peninsula and connects Aalborg to the Kattegat about 35 kilometers or 22 miles to the east.

The earliest settlements date from about the year 700. Lindholm Høje is the largest Iron Age and Viking Age burial place in Scandinavia. More than 700 graves have been found.

The lower part of the burial site has been dated to the Viking Age of about 1000 to 1050. The upper section is centuries older, from the 5^th century, the Iron Age.

Most of the graves are marked with rocks either in a triangle or as the traditional Viking stone ship.

The settlement was obviously a significant trading center, with glassware, gems, and Arab coins found at the site.

The settlement was abandoned about the year 1200, probably because of sand drifting from the western coast, a consequence of extensive deforestation.

Aalborg’s position at the narrowest point on the Limfjord made it an important harbor during the Middle Ages. Evidence of its importance can be seen in half-timbered mansions built for prosperous merchants.

Here are some photos from today:

By the middle of the 20th century, Aalborg had become known as the “city of smoking chimneys”, highly industrialized and with a population approaching 100,000. Many of the factories have now closed, replaced by knowledge and communication enterprises, and production of rotors for wind turbines.

In 2008, the Utzon Center was opened on the central harbor of Aalborg. Its design and art are credited to the noted architect Jørn Utzon, winner of the Pritzker Prize, born in Copenhagen but raised in Aalborg.

You’ll find within designs and boats and usually a few examples of another Danish invention from nearby: Legos, from Billund in South Jutland.

Appropriately, Billund is a little place, population of about 6,300. But its factory is responsible for the majority of worldwide LEGO production.

Lego is derived from the Danish phrase leg godt, which means “play well”.

Lego produces something like 36 billion bricks per year, and if you will allow for a bit of poetic license, it is the world’s largest tiremaker.

Little tires.

But back to Utzon in Aalborg. He was a reasonably successful architect in Scandinavia, and he built a well-regarded home of his own north of Helsingor, near Kronborg Castle, as in Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

But he came to the world’s notice in 1957 when he won an international competition to design the Sydney Opera House in Australia, the unmistakable stack of shells along that harbor.

He said he went to Kronberg Castle often as he designed the building to be installed on Sydney’s Bennelong Point, realizing the Sydney Opera House would be like Kronborg, viewed from all sides.

His design was lauded, but there were problems in construction and cost overruns. Sounds pretty ordinary for advanced architecture.

He was effectively banished from Sydney in 1966 following a dispute with local government in New South Wales. Utzon was not invited to the opening ceremonies when the opera house was inaugurated in 1973, and his name was not mentioned during any of the speeches.

Things did change, though.

Utzon came back to Sydney in the late 1990s and was engaged in update projects at the opera house. And in 2003, Utzon was awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize for his work.

In 2007, the opera house was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

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16 June 2019:
Copenhagen, Denmark:
Mermaids, Princesses, and Kings

June 16, 2019 Corey Sandler

By Corey Sandler

Copenhagen is the capital of Denmark and its most populous city, with a bit more than 2 million in its metropolitan area.

It is, today, a very modern city with advanced infrastructure, extraordinary culture, and an exuberant lifestyle—in a quirky Scandinavian sort of way.

Copenhagen is situated on the eastern coast of Zealand, islands stitched together by bridges, tunnels, and promenades.

Aside from Hamlet, not all that much is melancholy in Denmark.

It’s a place where almost anything goes, from the classic century-old amusement park of Tivoli Gardens in city center to Hans Christian Andersen and the Little Mermaid—whose statue is within walking distance from our usual docking space.

To a septugenarian queen who once consorted—in a proper princessly way—with Elvis, Dean Martin, and Shirley Maclaine.

Today was bright and sharp, much like the residents of Copenhagen:

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15 June 2019:
Travemünde, Germany:
On the Borderline

June 15, 2019 Corey Sandler

By Corey Sandler

Travemünde is a borough of Lübeck, Germany, at the mouth of the river Trave, with a population of about 13,500 residents and many thousands more summer tourists.

The settlement began as a fortress built in the 12^th century by Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony, to guard the mouth of the Trave, which leads inland to the city of Lubeck.

The Danes subsequently strengthened it. Those fortifications were taken down in 1807 as Travemunde became a popular seaside resort.

And so today, what had been a fishing port and then a Hansa trading port is mostly luring tourists.

**A panoramic view of today’s waterfront taken from aboard ship.**

Excluding the interruptions of the two world wars, that role continued even during the years of a divided Germany. It is not quite at the mega-yacht level of Saint-Tropez, and that is a good thing because the city has retained or restored its old-world appearance.

At the end of World War II, Germany was split into two quasi nations, the Federal Republic of Germany—known to the outside world as West Germany, and the German Democratic Republic, or East Germany, a puppet state of the Soviet Union.

And Travemunde ended up right on the line.

Until 1989 the border between East and West German was behind the Priwall, the spit of beach across from the town. Most of Priwall was a military area and off-limits to the public.

Most of the world’s attention was focused on the concrete and barbed wire wall erected between the Russian and the other sectors of Berlin, the capital city that sat like an island inside of East Germany.

The Berlin Wall was erected in 1961.

Here at Travemunde, the border fencing and walls were erected much earlier, beginning in 1952. It was referred to as the Inner German Border, no less real than the Berlin Wall but not much noticed outside the region.

Nearly 50,000 East German guards were charged with watching – day and night – what East Berlin termed the “anti-fascist protection wall” (although all fortifications were directed against the east).

On the other side, another 20,000 West German border police and customs officials monitored the “zone border”, a name reflecting Bonn’s official position of refusing to recognize the division or the other German state to the east.

Before you could reach the metal fence that was the official line there were a number of other barriers.

Towns and roads from one to five kilometers away from the border, half a mile to three miles away, were considered restricted zones and free travel was difficult. People considered “politically unreliable” or likely to flee, were removed from the restricted zone in two waves of forcible resettlement, in 1952 and 1961.

Then came a control strip, a signal or trip wire fence, and then a 500-meter or 1,800-foot-wide protective strip monitored by armed guards in watchtowers equipped with high-intensity floodlights.

By one estimate, nearly a thousand people were killed trying to escape from East Germany across the inner border.

A LÜBECK ALBUM

Up the river Trave, about 15 miles away, is Lübeck in the Schleswig-Holstein region. It was the leading city of the Hanseatic League, and became a very wealthy place through trade.

Mostly rebuilt after the war, it includes a large collection of Brick Gothic structures, and the entire city—population about 219,000—is on the UNESCO World Heritage Site list.

I went today with guests for a revisit, and after enduring a rain storm of biblical proportions, we enjoyed a stroll through the wet streets and coffee and marzipan at the famed Niederegger cafe.

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14 June 2019:
The Kiel Canal, Germany:
The Inland Passage from the North Sea to the Baltic

June 14, 2019 Corey Sandler

By Corey Sandler

The Kiel Canal is, in terms of number of ships, the busiest artificial seaway in the world. About 35,000 commercial vessels make the transit per year, an average of about 100 per day.

That is about double the number going through the Suez Canal or the Panama Canal.

Now, I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. The Kiel Canal is not the most interesting canal in the world.

We do not rise up 85 feet from the Atlantic and sail across a once-deadly isthmus and then go down 80 feet to exit in the Pacific Ocean, as you would do in the Panama Canal.

And we do not cruise through the desert sands as you would do in the Suez Canal.

But the Kiel is a relaxing and pretty crossing of the north German countryside.

The canal connects the North Sea (via the Elbe River) to the Baltic.

Before the Kiel Canal–and for ships too wide or too long or too tall–the alternative is the much longer and more exposed trip around the Jutland Peninsula in Denmark, passing through the Øresund Strait in front of Copenhagen.

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11-12 June 2019:
Honfleur, France:
Impressions of Normandy and a Tapestry in Bayeux

June 11, 2019 Corey Sandler

By Corey Sandler

Honfleur is a medieval gem, hidden in plain sight, between the major French port of Le Havre across the Seine to the east and the D-Day beaches of Normandy to the west.

The town sits on the southern bank of the estuary of the River Seine, which winds its way inland past Rouen to Paris.

To the east is Normandy, the site of the D-day landings of June 6, 1944. We just missed the international commemoration of the 75th anniversary. Speaking for myself, I felt better about my visit–perhaps my tenth– without the distraction of bloviating politicians.

Here are some scenes from 11 June at Omaha Beach, the American cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer, and at Arromanches.

THE D-DAY BEACHES AT NORMANDY

**The American Cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer.** **Photo by Corey Sandler**

**Remains of the Mulberry landing docks at Arromanches. Photo by Corey Sandler**

BAYEUX

Also along the Normandy coast is the handsome city of Bayeux, home to one of the cultural treasures of humankind: The Bayeux Tapestry. It depicts the events leading up to the Norman conquest of England culminating in the Battle of hastings in 1066, from the point of view of the Normans.

**Notre-dame-de-Bayeux.** **Photo by Corey Sandler**

HONFLEUR

Honfleur was the birthplace of the artist Eugène Boudin and the composer and artist Erik Satie. And it was a favored place to visit for French painters Claude Monet and Gustave Courbet, English landscape artist William Turner, and writer and critic Charles Baudelaire.

While much of Le Havre on the other side of the river, and Normandy were pounded by the Allies in the lead-up to the D-Day landing or by the Germans in defending it, Honfleur survived the war relatively untouched.

During German occupation, authorities in Honfleur allowed the River Seine to silt up the harbor, making it of little military value. After the war, the harbor was dredged and was once again useful.

As a result, Honfleur is among the best preserved towns in Europe.

Honfleur dates back at least to the 11^th century. From the start it was an important port for the transit of goods from Rouen to England. With the outbreak of the Hundred Years’ War, though, the tide ran the other way: Honfleur was occupied by the English in 1357 and again from 1419 to 1450.

Back under French control, it was used as the staging area for attacks on the English coast: Sandwich was assaulted and severely damaged in 1450s.

After the end of the Hundred Years War, the port was used for both trade and as the embarkation point for exploration: Local shipowner Binot Paulmier de Gonneville departed Honfleur in 1503 looking for a trade route to India. His ship “L’Espoir” (Hope) made it all the way to Brazil, the first French ship to touch its shores.

Three years later, native son Jean Denis went to Newfoundland island and the mouth of the Saint Lawrence in what is now Canada. That’s the course we’ll be following two months from now, when Silver Wind crosses over from London to Iceland and to the New World.

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9 June 2019:
London, United Kingdom:
Through the Tower Bridge to Scandinavia and Back

June 9, 2019 Corey Sandler

By Corey Sandler

We arrived early this morning in London, one of the most spectacular waterborne approaches in the world.

It was a superb morning, with the extra added excitement of a hot air balloon regatta overhead near Greenwich.

Here is some of what we saw today:

The Tower Bridge spans were raised for us and we moved slowly and carefully to our dock across from the Tower of London alongside the retired light cruiser HMS Belfast, a ship that saw duty in some of the critical battles of northern Norway during World War II.

For guests leaving us here, safe travels. And to new friends, welcome aboard.

We’ll rest here for the day, backing out through the bridge early on Monday.

Silver Wind tied up to the floating dock alongside HMS Belfast in the River Thames.

*The Tower of London reflected in a modern building near Millennium Pier on the River Thames. The Tower is off the starboard side of our ship as we are moored to HMS Belfast.*

Our schedule calls for visits to Honfleur in Normandy, France and then through the Kiel Canal in Germany for visits to Copenhagen and Aalborg in Denmark, Gothenburg in Sweden, the capital city of Oslo in Norway, and then back one more time to London.

Here’s our plan:

I hope you’ll join me here in these pages.

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7 June 2019:
Edinburgh (Leith), Scotland:
The Athens of the North

June 7, 2019 Corey Sandler

By Corey Sandler

We have sailed back across the North Sea to the glorious city of Edinburgh, Scotland.

Welcome to a famous city, the capital of Scotland, a place that is among the more commonly mispronounced locations in the world.

Resist the urge to call it Edin-BURG.

In Scotland and Northern England, starting from King David I in the 12^th century, significant communities were awarded the status of a Royal Burgh, never mind the spelling.

Elsewhere there are places that spell the word in the Scottish sense but pronounce it in the Germanic style. Like Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania, and Lansingburgh in upstate New York.

It is the equivalent of the word borough, which is in use in many places around the world, and the spelling of that word includes one of those magically invisible “O-U-G-H” vowel-like sounds.

Places like downstate New York, where New York City is made up of five boroughs, which is different from the remainder of the state which is divided into counties.

If you really want to sound as if you are either very, very knowledgeable—or extremely out of touch—you can try one of the old nicknames for Edinburgh:

“Auld Reekie”, meaning Old Smoky,

Or “Edina”, the source of the first part of the city’s name, before it became a burgh.

Or this one: “The Athens of the North”, s nod to the many classical designs for grand buildings.

We went for a long walk in the morning sun. Here is some of what we saw today:

**The memorials to the explorer David Lingstone (born about 35 miles west of Edinburgh, and celebrated throughout the United Kingdom), and in the background that of author Sir Walter Scott.**

**All photos by Corey Sandler, copyright 2019. All rights reserved.**

More Photos of Edinburgh from Previous Visits

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5 June 2019:
Vik and Flåm, Norway:
Fjords, Falls, and Rails

June 5, 2019 Corey Sandler

By Corey Sandler

Our last calls in Norway are two small settlements in a spectacular fjord, in many ways an encapsulation of the history and legends of the country.

We began with an early morning visit to Vik, on the southern shore of the Sognefjorden. Like much of Norway, it is a tiny settlement in an outsized setting. The municipality spreads across 833 square kilometers or 322 square miles, with about 2,700 residents.

A thousand years ago or so, this fjord was a thoroughfare for the Vikings.

These days, cruise ships pass by pretty regularly in the summer. Most are headed directly for Flåm, but from time to time, one of them stops for a while in Vik.

I went with guests on a day-long trip from Vik, up into the mountains and then across the top by railroad and then down the hill to Flåm. Our first visit was to the very impressive Hopperstad Church, first erected about the year 1130. It is probably the oldest stave church in the world, and a living bridge between Viking mythology and Christian belief.

Here is some of what we saw there:

**Hopperstad Church in Vik. Photos by Corey Sandler, copyight 2019, all rights reserved.**

About lunchtime, our ship sailed around the corner to the even smaller settlement of Flåm, famous for its scenery and its railroad that ascends from the sea toward the sky.

The village of Flåm is at the end of the Aurlandsfjord, a small arm of the spectacular Sognefjord from the Norwegian Sea.

Flåm has been a tourist attraction since the late 19th century.

Truth be told, though: the port is basically a train station, a ferry slip, a cruise dock, and a few gift shops.

About 500,000 visitors come each year by ship or train; about 175 cruise ships come each summer.

The 20-kilometer (12-mile) Flåmsbana railway rises from the town at sea level to the high village of Myrdal on the steepest standard gauge railway in Europe. The maximum rise or gradient is about 5.6 percent; up 863 meters or 2,831 feet_(1:18) through 20 tunnels and across one bridge.

The trip takes about an hour each way, churning up the mountain at 40 kilometers or 25 miles per hour. Going down, they apply the brakes to keep the speed to 30 kilometers or 19 miles per hour.

There’s a spectacular waterfall about halfway down the mountain, which is high praise for a place like Norway. And, just for us, a huldra, a temptress of the forest emerged. I–and the other men in our group–barely escaped.

**The temptress emerges. Photos by Corey Sandler**

The idea for the train arose in the 1890s, when trade and tourism was beginning to grow in this part of Norway. But the technology was not yet ready, and construction only began in 1936.

After Germany occupied Norway in 1940, the line was completed. Germany wanted the railway to support their military aims as well as export of raw materials.

After the war, steam engines were replaced by electric locomotives. And the industrial and agricultural products were replaced by tourists.

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4 June 2019:
Ålesund, Norway:
Out of the Ashes

June 4, 2019 Corey Sandler

By Corey Sandler

There are many things terrible about a great fire. Lives, property, history lost.

But if you’re looking for something positive about the destruction of a city by fire, there is this: when a boomtown burns down and is rebuilt, the result is often a handsome showpiece of a particular style.

Such was the case in the core of the City of London after the Great Fire of 1666. The Chicago Fire of 1871. Virginia City in Nevada in 1875 at the peak of the silver mining boom. San Francisco after the earthquake and fire of 1906.

Ålesund was almost totally destroyed on January 23, 1904.

The familiar story is that the fire began after a cow kicked over a torch and in the cold night a wind-driven fire raced through the wooden town, destroying about 850 homes, killing one person, and leaving more than 10,000 residents without shelter.

German Kaiser Wilhelm had been a frequent vacationer to Ålesund and coastal Norway. After the fire, Wilhelm sent four warships with materials to build temporary shelters.

And then the town was rebuilt in stone, brick, and mortar in Jugendstil, the Germanic version of Art Nouveau style.

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3 June 2019:
Hellesylt and Geirangerfjord, Norway:
Up and Over

June 3, 2019 Corey Sandler

By Corey Sandler

We headed in from the Norwegian Sea on one of the most spectacular watery highways to the interior of coastal Norway, following a twisting and turning pathway along the big Storfjorden, then into the smaller Sunnylvsfjorden, and finally the even narrower Geirangerfjorden.

And just for fun, along the way, we sailed alongside an area of unstable mountainside that threatens the entire region if and when it finally lets loose. The thought of a tsunami in a narrow Norwegian fjord is enough to send the trolls into hiding.

In the morning, we made a stop in Hellesylt in the outer reaches. The local waterfall was in full force as the snows of winter melted.

Here is some of what we saw:

**All photos copyright 2019, Corey Sandler**

At noon we headed to Geiranger, at the dead end of the fjord.

A GEIRANGER ALBUM

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2 June 2019:
Bergen, Norway:
Fire and Ice

June 2, 2019 Corey Sandler

By Corey Sandler

Bergen is a modern city set in an ancient town, the one-time capital of Norway and a place with a broken link to England.

The beautiful horseshoe harbor, framed by a handsome bowl of seven hills, has a bustling commercial center, an active fishery with a great public fish market, and a laid-back Scandinavian culture that meets up with a lively university and student culture.

Across its history, thought, Bergen has had its tough times. Plague and war, fire and ice.

Skies today began gray and threatening, with no fire or ice expected. Sun broke through at midday…forestalling a return to gray.

**All photos copyright 2019 Corey Sandler, all rights reserved.**

Bergen is said to have been founded by Olav Kyrre, also known as Olaf III. Olaf, the King of Norway from 1067 to 1093, was present at the Battle of Stamford Bridge in England.

That battle is considered the end of the Viking Age, or at least the beginning of the end. It pitted an invading Norwegian force led by King Harald Hardrada against an Anglo-Saxon army led by King Harold Godwinson.

King Hardrada and most of the other Norwegians were killed in a bloody battle. Olaf—the son of King Hardrada—survived and returned to Norway, where he founded the city of Bergen in 1070.

There are many intriguing alternate endings to that story:

London as a Viking capital?

Bergen as home of the occupiers of England?

Bangers and mash as the national dish of Norway?

Lutefisk in the pubs of Camden Town?

We’ll never know.

Bergen served as the capital of Norway in the 13^th century, and late in that century it was a Kontor, a trading post, of the Hanseatic League. Some of the homes and warehouses of the traders, Bryggen, still stand along one side of the harbor.

In truth, what we see in Bryggen has been rebuilt numerous times. Many fires and a disastrous explosion in the harbor during German occupation of Bergen during World War II destroyed much of what was original. But the Norwegians mostly rebuilt, as built.

A fresh monkfish…hoping to hide in plain sight. He may have seen a cousin on the menu aboard ship last night.

Inside Bryggen, the old Hansa merchant district

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Around the World with Corey Sandler

Monthly Archives: June 2019

30 June 2019:
Honningsvåg and Nordkapp, Norway:
The Far North

29 June 2019:
Tromsø, Norway:
Churchill’s Northern Obsession

28 June 2019:
Leknes, Norway:
Pastoral Times

27 June 2019:
Brønnøysund, Norway:
The One with the Hole in the Mountain

26 June 2019:
Ålesund, Norway:
In a Reflective Mood

25 June 2019:
Flåm and Gudvangen, Norway:
Up and Over and Around

21-23 June 2019:
London, United Kingdom:
Through the Tower Bridge to the Top of Norway and Around the Corner to Copenhagen

19 June 2019:
Oslo, Norway:
The Monumental City

18 June 2019:
Gothenburg, Sweden:
Sweden’s Second City

17 June 2019:
Aalborg, Denmark:
Up Over Down Under

16 June 2019:
Copenhagen, Denmark:
Mermaids, Princesses, and Kings

15 June 2019:
Travemünde, Germany:
On the Borderline

14 June 2019:
The Kiel Canal, Germany:
The Inland Passage from the North Sea to the Baltic

11-12 June 2019:
Honfleur, France:
Impressions of Normandy and a Tapestry in Bayeux

THE D-DAY BEACHES AT NORMANDY

BAYEUX

9 June 2019:
London, United Kingdom:
Through the Tower Bridge to Scandinavia and Back

7 June 2019:
Edinburgh (Leith), Scotland:
The Athens of the North

More Photos of Edinburgh from Previous Visits

5 June 2019:
Vik and Flåm, Norway:
Fjords, Falls, and Rails

4 June 2019:
Ålesund, Norway:
Out of the Ashes

3 June 2019:
Hellesylt and Geirangerfjord, Norway:
Up and Over

2 June 2019:
Bergen, Norway:
Fire and Ice

Cruise Photos and Stories by Corey Sandler