August 9th – 17th

We finally left Grimsbu and headed toward Oslo. Because of the road situation we arranged a Bunk a Biker stay. It should have taken 2 1/4 hrs back to Elverum but took 5. A campground 10mins from ours was inundated by the river, the cabins circled by water. We had 2 detours, one was quite a long one and several single lane places where the road had fallen off sideways. The flooding on farmland is so sad…bales in the middle of a big lake and in places the river was 4 times it’s usual width. The rivers were really tumultuous.

At the place we are staying (which is just near our campground from Sat), there is a small power station dam that is damaged. They can’t open the spillways so are deciding whether to blow it up! In other areas shown on tv there are many people evacuated, streets flooded, just a mess…very reminiscent of our summer!.

On the way here though, we stopped by a huge stainless steel moose. 10.2m high and 11.3m long. The area is mostly forest and large numbers of moose, bear, wolf, several deer species, lynx and wolverine

An update on the Norway situation. Over 4000 people have mandatory evacuation and some rivers are 4m higher than normal. It is the worst flooding in 50yrs. The rivers are yet to peak… probably overnight and tomorrow

Aug 12th….we made our way to a Home exchange apartment in Oslo for a couple of days. Today was a maritime museum day. We visited 3 museums all next to each other. The first was the Norwegian maritime museum, followed by the Fram museum (Polar expeditions) and the Kon-Tiki museum. The first one was about maritime travel in or from Norway for several thousand years. It featured a canoe from the Iron Age that would have been used in rivers and fjords through to cruise ships.

The Fram museum was all about polar expeditions Inc Roald Amundsen on board the Fram sailing to Antarctica. It also covered the discovery of the way through the Northwest passage. 10,000 yrs ago the Bering Sea was a landbridge traversed by early humans. Around 5000yrs ago boats were used to cross as the ice had melted, although still was a frozen bridge in winter. The Fram is here in the building and was placed first, and then the museum built around it.

The last museum covered the trip of Thor Heyerdahl and his 5 crew in 1947 on a balsa log raft from Peru to the Pacific islands. He was testing a theory about the Pacific being populated or connected from South America.

Aug 13…GD and I went seperate directions today. I went to the Norsk Folk Museum and he went to the Science and Technology museum. I spent several hrs checking out buildings and exhibitions from the 1100’s through till more modern times. Information on each picture

Graeme went to the science and technology museum

Aug 14….Yesterday on the suggestion of our host Kerstin, (near Gothenburg)

we visited the Tanum rock carvings. These are thought to be from the Bronze Age and there are several sites. They have a replica Village of that time. Some of the rock carvings have been painted to make them more visible. People have lived in the area for at least 8000yrs and where the carvings are now quite elevated, they were once at sea level.

15th Aug…We had a great stay with Kerstin and today, again at her suggestion we travelled back roads to a sheep farm that has a fabulous cafe. You order what you choose and they fill your basket with cups, coffee, water for tea, milk, cutlery etc and then you can find a nice spot to eat. Very pretty, although today there was an issue with wasps everywhere

16th Aug…. we rode from Sweden over the bridge into Denmark. It is the first road toll we have had to pay and it really caught us out. However after a bit of fumbling around getting a wallet out of bike pants and direction from a helpful young worker I managed to get it paid. Thank goodness I didn’t have rain gear in as well!!. It is a long bridge that then continued into a long causeway and then a tunnel. Beautiful views both directions. Including the 2nd bridge into mainland Denmark, it cost nearly $90!

Then we visited the Tree Tower…. something I saw in a FB post once. GD was quite pleased I suggested it in hindsight. It was fabulous. It is a 3.2km walk all up, 900m lovely boardwalk through the forest and past a high ropes and zipline course, and on the return you walk through the course with people ziplining all over the place above you. The remaining distance is the up and down if the tower. It was built in 2018 and uses through and above the forest canopy. It is a beautiful structure and the walk up and down is a gentle spiral ramp that allows for wheelchair and pram access. The tower is 45m high. Its structure is core ten so will not need any protective maintenance for 100+ years. The steel on the underside of the ramp is beautiful (in my opinion). The views at the top are fantastic and we had a lovely day for it.

Last night we stayed with Stefanie and Thomas again as we needed to pick up the rollbag we forgot last time. Got to catch up with Gitte, Stefanie’s Mum who had visited in NZ.
17th Aug….Today we headed south to Hamburg, via an old city called Ribe. The town was a centre of commercial activity in the early 8th century. Trade contacts were mostly with Frisia and England. Of the over 300 sceatas ( a small thick silver coin) found in Denmark, 216 come from in or around Ribe, most of them the Wodan type, and these were likely minted in Ribe in the early eighth century. Early in the ninth century a 2-meter wide ditch (a demarcation rather than a fortification) was dug around the town, enclosing a 12-hectare area. Later that century the ditch was replaced by a moat, 6 to 7 meters wide. Archeological evidence shows Ribe was “an active and impressive market place” in the eighth and ninth centuries, and again at the end of the eleventh century, but there is little evidence from the period in between; the town may have dwindled or even disappeared.

The church was founded in the Viking Era as the first Christian church in Denmark by Ansgar, a missionary monk from Hamburg, under permission of the pagan King Horik.

Recent archaeological excavations in Ribe, have led to the discovery of between 2,000 and 3,000 Christian graves nearby under other buildings. They have been dated to the ninth century, indicating that a large Christian community was living peacefully together with the Vikings at the time.

Construction on the Ribe Cathedral started in 1110, on top of the earlier timber church built in 860. The church is now built of various blocks and bricks as over time it has been damaged by fires and other events requiring parts to be rebuilt and extensions made.

We started off in beautiful weather and about 80km before Hamburg we hit rain again! Luckily it stopped in time for us to hit hideous traffic coming into the city. We have a home exchange for 2 nights in a small suburb in Wilhemsburg which is on the island in the middle of the Elbe river, surrounded by ports and shipping.