Oslo-Rjukan-Heddal-Notodden-Oslo

We recently returned from a one-week vacation in Norway. Like last summer, we decided to explore the country we live in, and decided upon a stay in the town of Rjukan, followed by a visit to the Blues Festival in Notodden, where Robert Plant and his band The Sensational Space Shifters were playing. On the way to Notodden, we stopped in Heddal to see the beautiful stave church (stavkirke) that has become a major tourist attraction.

   

Rjukan is a small town located in the Tinn municipality in Telemark county. It is mainly famous for its Vemork hydroelectric power plant, built by Norsk Hydro under the leadership of Sam Eyde who was the founder and first CEO of Norsk Hydro from 1905 until 1917. Vemork opened in 1911. Sam Eyde decided to build Vemork in Rjukan because the Rjukan waterfall (Rjukanfossen), a 104-metre waterfall, facilitated the generation of large quantities of electricity (info from Wikipedia). Vemork was mainly involved in fertilizer produciton, but also produced heavy water (deuterium oxide, D₂O). During WWII, this interested the Germans who were occupying Norway at the time (the Nazis invaded Norway in April 1940), since Germany was on a mission to produce an atomic bomb, and heavy water is useful as a coolant and moderator in a nuclear power reactor. Vemork was the target of heavy water sabotage operations by the Norwegian resistance during WWII; this exciting piece of history was recently the subject of a very well-made Norwegian TV series, Kampen om Tungtvannet (The Saboteurs in English) that was shown on Norwegian television this past January. It has since been sold to many other countries, and I recommend it highly if you get a chance to see it. You can read more about it here on IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3280150/?ref_=nv_sr_1

The Vemork power plant is now the site of the Norwegian Industrial Workers’ Museum and a museum documenting the history of Vemork and Rjukan during WWII and the well-documented sabotage operations (see Wikipedia for more information about Rjukan, Vemork and WWII history).

Besides Vemork, Rjukan is famous for having placed large reflecting mirrors on the surrounding mountainside in order to illuminate the town square with reflected sunlight (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/06/rjukan-sun-norway-town-mirrors). This was actually an old idea (from the early 1900s) resurrected and realized in 2013; the reason for it was that between September and March, Rjukan does not get sunlight since the surrounding mountains block it, and this was a way of providing light for Rjukan’s inhabitants. The Krossobanen (an aerial tramway) was built in 1928 with the same idea in mind, to be able to give Rjukan’s inhabitants a view of the sun during the long winter months.

In July 2015, the UNESCO World Heritage Committee approved the inscription of the Rjukan-Notodden Industrial Heritage Site on its World Heritage List, something the town of Rjukan is understandably quite proud of. You can read more about the background for the decision here: http://whc.unesco.org/en/news/1316/

Sam Eyde’s strong influence on Rjukan is apparent to this day. You cannot help but notice that it is an extremely well-planned and -designed town, with lovely homes (all with different architectural styles), parks, and official buildings. A statue of Eyde stands prominently in the town square, which was undergoing extensive renovations when we were there in late July. We did a lot of walking around the town and got to know it quite well; it is very charming and lovely during the summer months. I can imagine though that it is less charming during the winter months.

We also climbed the Gaustatoppen mountain (1883 metres/6178 feet high) that overlooks the town of Rjukan; the summit offers incredible views of about one-sixth of Norway on days with excellent visibility. Unfortunately, the day we decided to climb it was a foggy and overcast day; it started out as a gray day and evolved into a foggy one after a few hours. When we reached the summit, you could really only see a few feet in front of you. But the climb itself was worth it; it is advertised as family-friendly, but in reality is for adults in reasonably good shape. Most young children (I’d say under 10-years old), no matter how sporty, will not enjoy this climb very much, as it is quite strenuous. We met a family with young children on our way up; they ended up turning back. You can read more about it here: http://www.visitrjukan.com/en/best-travel-tips/opplevelser-paa-rjukan-til-inforboks/gaustatoppen-summer  We did not walk down the mountain, but rather opted to take the Gaustabanen back down; this is a cable railway built inside the Gaustatoppen mountain that was built by NATO during the Cold War era. For more information, check out this link: http://en.hardangervidda.com/Top-5/The-Top-5-Attractions2/Gaustatoppen-and-Gaustabanen-cable-car

We also took an afternoon boat ride on the railroad ferry MS Storegut, which operates as a tourist attraction these days between Tinnoset and Mæl on Lake Tinnsjø. It was in operation as a railway ferry from 1956 until 1991; while we were onboard, the last captain of the ferry gave us a short talk about his experiences as captain of the MS Storegut and about how he was sorry to see it taken out of service. It was a beautiful boat trip, as you will see from the photos in my next post. We were lucky to have good weather that day in order to really appreciate the surrounding landscapes.

Once we left Rjukan, we drove on the mountain road Fv651 and passed through Tuddal, where we stopped to have coffee, and then on to Heddal where we ate elk burgers for lunch and visited the stave church there. Eventually we merged onto route E134 that took us to Notodden and the Blues Festival (http://bluesfest.no/). We rounded out a great week with a terrific concert by Robert Plant and his band; there were also some other really good bands that we enjoyed listening to. We ended up camping at the festival site for one night; the weather was sunny and warm during the day, and only a bit chilly during the evening. The following day we headed for home, after a great week away. I would like to return to Gaustatoppen at some point to climb it on a day with better visibility, as well as to hike/bike over the Hardangervidda plateau.   

The ever-growing world of apps and the QR Droid

The old idiom, ’you learn something new every day’, is true. The older I get, the more there is to learn every day, not less. The world of computers, smart phones, tablets, e-books and a myriad of other new gadgets ensure that this is the case. The advances and updates keep me quite occupied in my free time. The world of ‘apps’ by itself is overwhelming. I’m always rather surprised at how many apps there are out there whenever I use my smart phone to download yet another free app. New ones every day—some of them useful, others not. But I downloaded a rather useful app today, the QR Droid, after having been to the Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art here in Oslo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrup_Fearnley_Museum_of_Modern_Art) for the first time since it opened in its new location at Tjuvholmen on the Oslo waterfront. My husband and I went to see an exhibition called Untitled Horrors by the American photographer Cindy Sherman. Fascinating exhibit, well-worth seeing, sometimes bizarre, often unsettling, overall mesmerizing. What I noticed as I was walking past the photos was that many of the photo descriptions included a quick response (QR) code, and that some spectators were using their smart phones to scan the codes that then connected them to an online site that provided information about the photographs. Very smart, as it obviated the need for museum headsets that provide the same thing; at least that is what I assume was the case, since I didn't have the necessary app on my smart phone to try this at the museum. The museum provided free Wifi and a passkey on the entrance tickets. I’ve seen these QR codes many times before, but somehow had not gotten around to wanting to understand their utility until now. Although I have registered that shopping discounts and coupons are available for those who can use this system. Perhaps not completely fair to unenlightened shoppers, but there will be fewer of them as time goes on. The QR Droid app, besides allowing your phone to read a QR code, also lets you create one. I’m not sure yet how that would be personally useful, but I’m sure it won’t take me long to find out. I just checked out some customer reviews of this app, and one of them mentioned using it to create a QR business card. Others mentioned using it for web links and contact details. I see the potential. As I said when I started today’s post, you learn something new every day. That’s what makes life interesting. 

As an addendum to this post, I just tried creating a QR code for my blog, A New Yorker in Oslo, and it worked. Here is the QR code for those of you who would like to try it:

Vincent and Theo Van Gogh

I have been meaning to write a short post about the Vincent Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam (Van Gogh Museum - The Museum about Vincent van Gogh in Amsterdam - The Netherlands). My husband and I toured the museum in August; I found it to be one of the most interesting and emotionally-engaging art museums I have ever visited. I cannot remember that I have ever been moved to tears by an art exhibition, but this one had that effect on me. Van Gogh’s life lends itself to this type of reaction—he suffered from epilepsy, depression, and lack of self-confidence, and at the age of 37 shot himself in a wheat field in Auvers, France and died two days later. He was very close to his brother Theo who supported him at different times during his life; Theo died six months after Vincent and the two of them are buried side by side in Auvers. After Vincent’s death, Theo’s wife saw to it that Vincent’s paintings received the recognition they deserved; she came across in the exhibition as a generous and compassionate woman who had great understanding for her husband Theo and his close relationship with Vincent. 

I think the museum did a great job in depicting the emotional depth of the relationship between Vincent and Theo—you really felt and understood the empathy and love that Theo had for Vincent, and the utter humanity and frailty in their individual lives. I found myself thinking—‘there but for the grace of God go I’ as the expression goes. Because we all suffer from lack of self-confidence or from depression at times; and if you have experienced these then you have empathy for others who are weighed down or destroyed by them. By the time I got to the section that showed a photo of the gravesite where both brothers are buried, I was quite sad. I have never seen the Robert Altman film from 1990 about the Van Gogh brothers—Vincent & Theo—but I want to get a hold of it so that I can. It received very good reviews when it came out; I don’t know how I missed it--perhaps because I had just moved to Oslo and was not paying attention, or perhaps because the movie never opened in Oslo at all.

It is not easy to watch people you know and love sink into depression or mental illness. I have seen that happen in my own family and in friends’ families as well. It is terrifying to watch the descent into severe mental illness like schizophrenia; daunting to witness what chronic depression can do to a person’s overall health. It makes you realize that the brain is the last great frontier in a research sense—how the brain works, why do certain aspects of normal brain function go awry, what are emotions really and where are they based? There are so many questions that remain unanswered to date, and one can only hope that some of them get answered in our lifetime.