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June 25th: Lofoten Islands - Viking House and Fishing Village, Norway

Our ship moored offshore so that the lifeboats could be used to transfer us to the dock at the small port of Gravdal in the Lofoten Islands. The Lofotens are a chain of islands reaching out into the North Sea just West of Narvik, Norway. We had booked a Princess tour for the afternoon that included a reconstructed Viking chieftain's house and an old fishing village, and set off on our way shortly after 1 p.m.

Although we had a low-hanging layer of clouds and intermittent light rain, the scenery was still magnificent. with the steep moutainsides plunging into the fjords all around us.

The Viking Chieftain's house was much larger than I had imagined, with several adjoining rooms in a row under one long, high roof. The design was based on the archeological excavation of the actual ruins, dating from 500 A.D., that had been discovered by accident about 100 feet away. The story goes that in the 1980s, the local farmer had purchased a new plow that turned over the earth about 5 centimeters deeper than his old one, and that was enough to throw up some remnants of the old artifacts. Obviously the site became an archeological dig and ultimately that resulted in the painstaking reconstruction of the old Viking long house.

The large central room in the center was used for ceremonial purposes, and it was flanked on one side by the bedroom of the Chief and his domestic living quarters, and on the other side by first a storeroom, then a workroom, and finally by the slave area and the stables. The ceremonial room had large, intricately-carved posts supporting the roof, as well as carved log statues of Odin, Thor (Thor carries a hammer around, so everything looks like a nail!), and some other male and female gods. Those were reminiscent of the totem poles of the Northwest aboriginal tribes in the U.S. and Canada, but the Vikings had carved only 1 god per statue rather than stacking them up, and had several such poles standing at different places around the room. Since everything was recreated it was all hands-on and especially the old Viking arms and armor was there for us to try on.

The workroom intrigued me both with tools such as a treddle-operated wood lathe and various drills and saws, many of which looked quite modern. So even in 500 A.D. the Vikings had a quite advanced iron-age culture it seems. Another workbench looked like a cobbler's bench of later days and it appears that they made their own shoes from leather obtained from the farm animals. A very pretty, colorful, and intricately embroidered tapestry was a little over 1 foot wide but extended for maybe 10 feet along one wall of the work area. That made me think of the Bayeaux Tapestry. Several dish-shaped wood carvings were also painted as decorations and hung along the walls.

The bedroom had one nice bed for the Chieftain and his wife, but apparently everyone else just slept on the floor. At my age, that makes my joints ache in sympathy as I would surely be stiff after a night on the floor, even if carpeted! One girls used a weird hand-held spinning wheel and was busily spinning a wool yarn while another was weaving at a big loom. Another girl was sewing leather uppers to the soles to make surprisingly modern-looking shoes and yet another was making mittens using a, I guess, Viking type of crocheting. Dyed wool yarn was hanging from on a wheel suspended from the ceiling.

After viewing a very nice movie about the consolidation of Norway under King Harold Fairhair and the emigration to Iceland of some of the holdouts and dissenters from his rule, we hopped back on the bus and drove up over the mountains and through tunnels, including one under the fjord, to an old fishing village located on Nus Fjord. The old fishing houses were built right next to the waterline on stacked of boulders, and the boat was hanging right under the floor so that the men could easily hop down into the boat and sail off to work!

The fishermen's houses were mostly red as that was a cheap "paint" composed of animal blood and cod liver oil, both of which the fishermen had in great abundance, and only the richer townsfolk had houses painted in yellow or blue as those were imported pigments. We got to go inside a small cod liver oil processing plant, but that was not Monika's favorite place! Monika's favorite was the old Landhandel, the "we've go everything" general store typical of small villages everywhere.

After a slow but picturesque bus ride back to the dock, we re-embarked on the Caribbean Princess, but we were way too late to have dinner with our tablemates in the dining room. Instead, we settled for a light repast in the buffet before turning in for the night.