About 20 minutes outside of Haugesund, we took a detour toward the Nordvegen History Center and Viking Village. There was a small possibility that some of my distant, long-deceased relatives were buried in the graveyard behind Avaldnes Kirke there, so why not visit and absorb a little of the native culture while we were in the neighborhood?
Alas, most of what we got were pictures. We took a quick look around inside the church and got a few photos, but a girl there offered to answer any questions we had. I thought of one shortly after we left, but didn’t get the chance because the church had closed before we got back. It was like a sphere with a vertical loop and a horizontal loop and the horizontal one had a bunch of little candle holders on it. While we were inside, she added a few candles, then took one off and blew it out. Mom thought that perhaps people lit them in prayer for dead relatives or something, but the one the girl blew out was still about two inches long. I thought maybe adding and removing candles around the loops (if they had wicks of certain lengths or something) was a type of clock or calendar or something, but like I said, I didn’t get the chance to ask.
We headed down a short hill to the History Center and started talking to the kid working behind the desk there (dressed up in the proper ancient Norwegian attire, of course). He said that we could pay there for the tour of the Center, but the Viking Village closes at 4:00 (it was about 3:15 at the time), so we might want to go down there first. It was a 10-minute walk at a normal pace, but since Mom and I are a tad gimpy nowadays, it seems more accurate when you double the time, especially when there are long hills to climb and descend to get to the village.
Yeah, lots of hills there, but it’s the natural contour of the land—whaddya gonna do? We headed up and down on the trail, avoiding wet spots, dog droppings and what looked like a little kid’s fake mustache. Why a kid would be wearing one of those while trekking to a Viking village was beyond us, but we were more concerned about the time.
It turned out that we needn’t have worried. The “4:00 closing time” was really just the time when they stopped giving tours around the village. Given that we showed up and didn’t ask for any help, we were left to wander around and take pictures of all the buildings there. A lot of them looked like huts where people could live, store food, have a fire indoors, etc., but one down by the harbor was a giant boathouse where you could store longboats after pulling them out of the water. You could also put a bunch of picnic tables around it where families could eat, but I don’t think Vikings were really big on the whole “tablecloth” thing.
After taking some pictures and absorbing some centuries-old Norwegian culture, we headed back up toward the History Center. During the trek, we saw that mustache again, only we realized it wasn’t a mustache this time—it was a big, black slug crawling along next to the path. We took a nice close-up photo (Who knew slugs were so photogenic?), then walked about ten yards before I almost stepped on a second one. It wasn’t long after that before we saw a third. Why they were appearing all of a sudden, we’re not sure. It had been damp and moist for a while today, but maybe slugs are slow to react to changes in the weather.
When we got to the top of the final hill and back to the parking lot, I wasn’t really in the mood to go back to the History Center for even more walking. We weren’t feeling particularly enriched and no long-dead relatives had risen from the grave to say “Hi”, “Boo!” or show off a ghostly sword for me, so we took off toward our hotel, the Scandic Haugesund, instead.
The directions were good enough and the roads were easy enough to follow this time that we only missed one turn and drove around the block two or three times before pulling over and walking around the building to get to the reception desk. Thankfully, the parking lot was underneath the hotel, so we drove down and parked right next to the elevator to bring our bags upstairs. The lot wasn’t very full at that point, but it could be in part because the hotel was built back in March, I think. It was a very young, very modern hotel.
Yes, very modern. There were a lot of straight edges in our rooms, especially in the bathroom. There were square tiles over all the walls, a square sink and, well, the toilet seat curved a little, but probably only because sitting down and having corners jutting into the backs of your legs would be a tad uncomfortable. Trust me, they were some plush digs.
When we went downstairs and asked the girl at the reception desk where some good restaurants were, she pulled out a city map and pointed to two places. One was really good and really expensive; the other—To Gross—was also good and had some traditional Norwegian dishes. Since we’re trying to eat more culturally diverse cuisine versus hamburgers and fries all the time—that’s only happening about half the time—we opted to walk to To Gross, which was supposed to be just a couple blocks away.
It sort of was. She showed us how to get there, but had circled a couple intersections where it might be during the course of the conversation, so we ended up walking around for an extra five blocks or so, which thrilled Mom to no end since her legs were pretty much burned out at that point. Surprisingly, we covered about three city blocks and saw six pizza places. It wasn’t a college town, but I figured there were a lot of young people living in the area.
We ended up asking someone else for directions, which ended up being very close to the last spot she circled on the map. Still, we walked inside, got a table and told the waiter what we wanted. Aside from the whole “cultural diversity” thing, I’ve been ordering food that I’ve never tried before, which is why the waiter brought me an ox tenderloin for dinner. Yummy.
Tomorrow, we’ll be driving to Kristiansand. Time for yet another ferry, some mountains, some coastline or maybe even all three if we’re feeling really adventurous. We’ll see what we’re in the mood for when we get there.
