Day 3: Ålesund and Molde
Oct. 20th, 2004 07:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lprovenPolarlys, about 50km north of Rorvik, in the North Atlantic off the coast of West Norway. About 8-9 hours away from the Arctic Circle
For more than a century, Hurtigruten has been the primary link tying the northern half of Norway together. I've heard southern Europeans marvelling at "what persuades people to live 'up here'" – but we are only just leaving the Norwegian midlands. Our starting point, Bergen, is firmly in the South by local reckoning, notwithstanding that it's north of anything short of the Orkneys or Labrador. Today, the boats are not so important– although they're still used for local transport, the train line now runs through Trondheim up to Bodø, there's a motorway network spanning the entire country and many villages of only a couple of thousand people have their own airports. Life in these small northern towns is much like that of the rest of Europe now, thanks in part to the infrastructure paid for by North Sea oil.
Ålesund was once the favourite retreat of prewar Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm. He came every summer for many years to this tiny fishing community – and he was the first to come to its aid when disaster struck. In midwinter 1904, fire broke out in a fish-preserving factory by the docks – where most of town's poor women worked, the widows of fishermen lost at sea. It quickly spread thought the all-wooden town, engulfing the whole town and overnight rendering nearly 2000 people homeless – in a season when temperatures routinely drop to –20°C. The town wasn't connected by road or rail to anywhere else and no-one could afford motor vehicles; the people piled their possessions and children onto handcarts and pushed them out into the night to nearby villages and farms.
The Kaiser's ships arrived just four days later, bearing blankets, clothes, food and building materials, long before help from southern Norway. The main street is still named Keiser Wilhelm gata – using the Norwegian spelling of the Emperor's title. Rebuilt in stone, the houses were designed in then-painfully-modern Art Nouveau style – or Jugendstil as it is in German. The main chemist (or Apotheke) is now an art gallery, but its fittings, including scrollwork wooden inlays on the counters and a cast-iron till disappearing under a froth of frilly metal foliage, have been preserved.
What didn't occur to them was to paint the houses, and by the 1960s it was considered the most ugly town in Norway: grey and cold and bleak, in contrast to warm, welcoming wood. Sadly, then followed a rash of modernisation: in the centre of town, a towering rock pillar, home to thousands of nesting seabirds, was dynamited to make way for a new town hall – in ferroconcrete. A towering block in the best '70s monolithic style, it is now crumbling and rusting and quite spectacularly ugly. Even on a Saturday afternoon, this medium-sized town of 40,000 is quiet. The shops are fashion boutiques, sports shops inundated with trendy trainers and photo studios. A small shopping centre is haunted by moody teenagers and the first store I encounter is The Body Shop – where I gladly buy some lip balm from a plump blonde teenager in hipsters and thick-soled trainers. The food stores and local businesses are all dead, displaced by shopping centres 10km out of town. The ring of islands around the harbour are all linked into most of a circle by bridges and undersea tunnels, although the ends don't quite meet, so going from the island at one end to the next involves a long drive – and the government-funded tunnels all charge tolls.
Now, moves are afoot to brighten things up. The surviving old houses are painted bright colours: yellow and orange and pink and the uniquely Norwegian "barn red" – a deep hue the colour of drying blood, which covers the walls of most farms and country houses. Many shops and hotels bear moulded floral wreaths and other decorations on their façades, which are no longer the sole splashes of colour. The old warehouses on the wharves are converted now, holding luxury flats or Comfort Hotels; down by the modern dock where the Polarlys awaits is a Radisson SAS.
In the midst of this rears a small grassy hill, its top crowned by a signal tower and still ringed with cannon – although these are now just receptacles for many empties of the local supermarket chain's authentic German pilsener. There's graffiti too, rare in Norway. It must be an awful place to be a teenager; there is no escape. Hiding up here is another colourful stone house holding a local museum, but alas the imminent departure of the ship prohibits a visit. Outside, though, is an amazing relic: Brudde's Egg. It's a steel ovoid, 14' long and completely closed – there is a tiny windowed turret, a hatch, a small keel and rudder and a stubby mast at the very front.
In 1904, this was the latest thing in lifeboat design, and Brudde proved its seaworthiness the hard way. With three other men, he sailed it from here to America. It took them five months – inside a closed steel egg just high enough to stand in, if it contained no ballast or other contents. History does not record how they stored enough fresh water, but at least toilet facilities would be easy.
Despite this, it was a commercial failure. Only 22 were built and this is the last to survive, although it sailed again in 2001. Yet Brudde was eventually vindicated: now, all emergency vessels are enclosed with roofs, just like his visionary design, and the Polarlys' lifeboats are provided by Brudde A/S.
(A personal aside. This was a very affecting visit for me; this is where Kjersti spent her early years, although the family left after only three or four years here. A local shop is even called Vic. Thunem – a distant cousin of the family. Formative years, though, her elder brother tells me.)
And then on to Molde, only a couple of hours steam away but much longer by road; to get around the fjords and rivers, one must backtrack and go far inland. The only landmarks here are the church and the football stadium and the ship pauses for only three-quarters of an hour and then is off.
For more than a century, Hurtigruten has been the primary link tying the northern half of Norway together. I've heard southern Europeans marvelling at "what persuades people to live 'up here'" – but we are only just leaving the Norwegian midlands. Our starting point, Bergen, is firmly in the South by local reckoning, notwithstanding that it's north of anything short of the Orkneys or Labrador. Today, the boats are not so important– although they're still used for local transport, the train line now runs through Trondheim up to Bodø, there's a motorway network spanning the entire country and many villages of only a couple of thousand people have their own airports. Life in these small northern towns is much like that of the rest of Europe now, thanks in part to the infrastructure paid for by North Sea oil.
Ålesund was once the favourite retreat of prewar Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm. He came every summer for many years to this tiny fishing community – and he was the first to come to its aid when disaster struck. In midwinter 1904, fire broke out in a fish-preserving factory by the docks – where most of town's poor women worked, the widows of fishermen lost at sea. It quickly spread thought the all-wooden town, engulfing the whole town and overnight rendering nearly 2000 people homeless – in a season when temperatures routinely drop to –20°C. The town wasn't connected by road or rail to anywhere else and no-one could afford motor vehicles; the people piled their possessions and children onto handcarts and pushed them out into the night to nearby villages and farms.
The Kaiser's ships arrived just four days later, bearing blankets, clothes, food and building materials, long before help from southern Norway. The main street is still named Keiser Wilhelm gata – using the Norwegian spelling of the Emperor's title. Rebuilt in stone, the houses were designed in then-painfully-modern Art Nouveau style – or Jugendstil as it is in German. The main chemist (or Apotheke) is now an art gallery, but its fittings, including scrollwork wooden inlays on the counters and a cast-iron till disappearing under a froth of frilly metal foliage, have been preserved.
What didn't occur to them was to paint the houses, and by the 1960s it was considered the most ugly town in Norway: grey and cold and bleak, in contrast to warm, welcoming wood. Sadly, then followed a rash of modernisation: in the centre of town, a towering rock pillar, home to thousands of nesting seabirds, was dynamited to make way for a new town hall – in ferroconcrete. A towering block in the best '70s monolithic style, it is now crumbling and rusting and quite spectacularly ugly. Even on a Saturday afternoon, this medium-sized town of 40,000 is quiet. The shops are fashion boutiques, sports shops inundated with trendy trainers and photo studios. A small shopping centre is haunted by moody teenagers and the first store I encounter is The Body Shop – where I gladly buy some lip balm from a plump blonde teenager in hipsters and thick-soled trainers. The food stores and local businesses are all dead, displaced by shopping centres 10km out of town. The ring of islands around the harbour are all linked into most of a circle by bridges and undersea tunnels, although the ends don't quite meet, so going from the island at one end to the next involves a long drive – and the government-funded tunnels all charge tolls.
Now, moves are afoot to brighten things up. The surviving old houses are painted bright colours: yellow and orange and pink and the uniquely Norwegian "barn red" – a deep hue the colour of drying blood, which covers the walls of most farms and country houses. Many shops and hotels bear moulded floral wreaths and other decorations on their façades, which are no longer the sole splashes of colour. The old warehouses on the wharves are converted now, holding luxury flats or Comfort Hotels; down by the modern dock where the Polarlys awaits is a Radisson SAS.
In the midst of this rears a small grassy hill, its top crowned by a signal tower and still ringed with cannon – although these are now just receptacles for many empties of the local supermarket chain's authentic German pilsener. There's graffiti too, rare in Norway. It must be an awful place to be a teenager; there is no escape. Hiding up here is another colourful stone house holding a local museum, but alas the imminent departure of the ship prohibits a visit. Outside, though, is an amazing relic: Brudde's Egg. It's a steel ovoid, 14' long and completely closed – there is a tiny windowed turret, a hatch, a small keel and rudder and a stubby mast at the very front.
In 1904, this was the latest thing in lifeboat design, and Brudde proved its seaworthiness the hard way. With three other men, he sailed it from here to America. It took them five months – inside a closed steel egg just high enough to stand in, if it contained no ballast or other contents. History does not record how they stored enough fresh water, but at least toilet facilities would be easy.
Despite this, it was a commercial failure. Only 22 were built and this is the last to survive, although it sailed again in 2001. Yet Brudde was eventually vindicated: now, all emergency vessels are enclosed with roofs, just like his visionary design, and the Polarlys' lifeboats are provided by Brudde A/S.
(A personal aside. This was a very affecting visit for me; this is where Kjersti spent her early years, although the family left after only three or four years here. A local shop is even called Vic. Thunem – a distant cousin of the family. Formative years, though, her elder brother tells me.)
And then on to Molde, only a couple of hours steam away but much longer by road; to get around the fjords and rivers, one must backtrack and go far inland. The only landmarks here are the church and the football stadium and the ship pauses for only three-quarters of an hour and then is off.
