Gee, Mark, thanks. A couple of sandwiches on a plate. That’s exactly what I came looking for when I searched online for pictures of the Norwegian port of Ålesund as seen from the Sky Princess cruise ship.

I aim to please, and then I turn around and fire in the opposite direction. It’s my way.

We returned to our balcony, ordered some drinks to be delivered to the room, grabbed our books, and waited for the sail away from Ålesund. We love having a balcony on a cruise ship for this very reason, and we love being able to have drinks delivered to us anywhere on the ship with Princess Cruises. It’s a terribly civilised way to depart a port that avoids all that mingling with other passengers on the top deck.

From the balcony we could see some other parts of the town that we’d likely try to check out if we were to return here on some other cruise. Despite its medieval stone look, the Ålesund Church was also one of the new constructions of the early twentieth century utilising some of the architectural styles of the time, as explained in the previous post in this travel series, and it would be nice to see that up close; and the Aksla Viewpoint on Mount Aksla (bit of a coincidence) holds some appeal if I ever feel brave enough to try to persuade Marie to make the 418 steps climb up there.

Ålesund is located at the entrance to the Geirangerfjord and benefitted from some beautiful rocky sights as a result. What else is new on a Norwegian fjords cruise? Geologists struggling to find a vacation that will satisfy the needs of family members who don’t share quite the same passion for geology as they do – there are more of them than you think – could do a lot worse than suggest a cruise on the fjords of Norway.

The final bit of Norway’s land mass that we passed on Sky Princess as part of this cruise was the island of Godøya to which we’d paid a visit first thing on this day in order to see the Alnes Lighthouse. That had been on the island’s northern side whereas we were passing to the south, but that made it interesting to see the mountainous form of Storhornet from the opposite side.

The open sea marked the start of the transit towards the next country on this cruise and the point at which we hit the shower and changed, ready for the evening.

I mentioned that there was a reason that we went for something light to eat when we got back aboard the ship and that reason was that we’d booked the Crown Grill speciality dining on the ship for that evening. Past experience told us to eat light beforehand, so that’s what we did, and we still felt full to bursting by the end.

All that remained after food was to take a drink back to the room to enjoy the sunset at close to midnight. It never got much darker than this and the sun would start to rise again very soon afterwards. That’s what happens when you cruise in the height of summer.

In the next post in this cruise travelogue series we’ll spend a quiet day at sea heading from Norway to Iceland, and the views will be… not quite what we were expecting.

But first, the story so far…

We were in Ålesund, the final Norwegian port on our 2022 Sky Princess Norway and Iceland Cruise and we’d spent the morning of this beautiful, sunny, summer day in Norway at first Godøya to see the Alnes Lighthouse, then at Giske to see the white marble church. The afternoon was free time for us to have a bit of a wander around the town, and that’s what you’re going to see in the pictures in this article.

We were dropped off fairly close to where Sky Princess was docked, as you can see below. You’ll also see a shop called Bunnpris which we’d noticed in another port earlier on this cruise. We continued the very adult conversations we’d already had about this retail chain.

“Ooh, Bunnpris! Shall we head in to see what the pris of their bunn is?”

“Excuse me, sir. This bunn. I’m interested in the pris.”

This is one of the many reasons why you never want to go on a cruise with us.

It was to the harbour that we headed because it looked like it would have the prettiest views of Ålesund and the highest probability of getting a drink somewhere. We like to drink local alcohol in local places for the experience when we travel, so don’t judge us. We almost immediately came upon a statue of a young fisherman. It’s one of the staples of ports in Norway that if there’s a tradition of fishing then at some point you’ll find a statue to honour the men (it’s mostly always men) who braved the seas to bring food ashore.

A more aesthetically-pleasing art sculpture (to me) was a little further along the waterfront of Ålesund Harbour; this being one of Harald Grytten, a local historian and former director of the town’s museum who was instrumental in cataloguing the architecture and teaching local history in public. The statue, sculpted by Olaf Leon Roald, is named The Wanderer and was erected in 2013.

We were exceptionally lucky with the weather on our cruise ship visit to Ålesund, as not only did we have beautifully intense blue skies to contrast with the bright colours of the waterfront buildings, but we also had only the faintest of breezes giving us gorgeous reflections on the surface of the water. A great day for attractive photography in Norway. You’ll also see a nice example of a contemporary, abstract, metal sculpture set in Ålesund Square. Sadly, I don’t know anything about it, but I like the look. It’s like a jellyfish went for a swim in a sea of mercury.

Let’s get around to the architecture that Ålesund is famous for. Late nineteenth and early twentieth century Art Nouveau is what you’ll see a lot online, and it’s fine and perfectly correct to describe the style of Ålesund’s buildings in that way, but if you’re feeling a little bit art-snobby then why not berate people by telling them that, as with lots of art movements, there are branches off them and national or local flavours to them on occasion, and that’s the case with this town in Norway where the prevailing architectural style is actually Jugendstil, a style originating in Germany?

So, why would a Norwegian town have an awful lot of buildings designed with an eye towards floral patterns and geometric patterns and naturally-flowing curves and, most importantly, a young, Germanic feel? The answer is Kaiser Wilhelm, the last German Emperor and King of Prussia. It was probably your second guess, if you’re honest with yourself.

In the early hours of the morning of the 23rd January, 1904, a fire broke out in Ålesund that quickly spread thanks to strong winds and the fact that the entire town was built from wood. One person died – a woman who went back into her house to get her purse – while ten thousand residents were forced to flee, mainly on foot with what they could carry, seeking shelter where they could (which wasn’t many places at all). News of the fire spread almost as quickly as the fire itself and the Kaiser sent a telegram of condolences while the fire was still being extinguished. His personal interest in Ålesund was that he had frequently spent time in the region, and he was subsequently one of the first to send aid in the form of shelter materials, food, and medicine.

When Ålesund was rebuilt it was done so with stone, with better facilities, in the early twentieth century style of the times, and, thanks to Kaiser Wilhem’s connection to the town and generosity, with architects that included many from Germany.

We enjoyed more of the views of the town along the harbour front before deciding we’d quite like a drink.

There weren’t a huge amount of places open when we arrived, which we initially thought was weird considering there was a cruise ship in port until we remembered that most of the passengers on cruise ships are as tight as anything and would rather head back aboard to eat and drink than pay anything extra ashore. Not us, though. However, of the first couple of places we looked at we could see they were rammed with people so we ended up at a small pub called Smutthullet a bit further back from the main tourist spot. It felt like a locals pub more than a tourist pub, despite – or maybe because of – the odd scarves above the bar, and it served Norwegian beers, so we stayed for a couple and divested ourselves of money into the local economy.

All that remained was to simply walk back to the ship. There were many other things we could have done in Ålesund with some more time to hand: there’s an aquarium, and we like aquariums; there’s the museum which would have told us more about the history and the architecture; there’s also the hike up the hill for the views over the town that would have seen my wife kill me had I even suggested it. We might do one or two of those the next time we hit this part of Norway, though.

In the next part of this cruise travelogue series we’ll wave goodbye to Ålesund from Sky Princess, and goodbye to Norway too as we sail away and head towards our favourite European country, Iceland, on a cruise ship for the first time.

The photograph below is not Giske Church. What can I say? I like interesting looking buildings, even if they’re silos or warehouses or agricultural constructions or bus shelters or sheds. And I also like people on excursions looking at me as if I’ve grown a new head when I stroll away from the group to take pictures of things they almost certainly consider dull. Confusing people is my thing.

Giske Church dates from the twelfth century and is built from white marble – the only Norwegian church built from marble – of unknown origin. I know what you’re thinking: aliens! But that would be silly. All the trolls kill any aliens that approach Norway. Everyone knows that. All that can be said for certain is that the marble was transported to the island over water because the bridge and tunnel that connects it to its neighbours now are far more modern constructions, and that suggests that the people who built the church had considerable wealth. In fact, it was built for the Giske (or Arneson) family, and was originally a family chapel. The island of Giske and the Arneson family feature in the Norwegian Sagas, and a birth in the family recounted in Stein’s Story in the Saga of Olaf Haraldson would be that of the progenitor of the Norwegian Royal Family.

The white marble of Giske Church isn’t immediately obvious thanks to a covering of plaster and chalk that clearly doesn’t protect it from wear, given the relative hardness of marble and chalk, but perhaps discourages anyone from thinking “Ooh, white marble, that’ll look nice in the downstairs loo!” I think the worst of people.

The interior of the church contains an impressive range of colourful, wooden carvings, feeling very medieval in their look but actually dating from a little later, carved by Jakob Sørensøn Giskegaard in the late eighteenth century when a series of renovations were undertaken after a long period of neglect.

The church and cemetery are still in use these days, and the gravestones are worth a look around if you visit Giske. A protected marble grave in the cemetery holds one of a pair of doomed lovers from a local story that the guide there will be only too willing to share with you. And if you think that’s a way of me saying I can’t quite recall the specifics of the tale then you’re absolutely right. But look, head to new places, spend some money locally, learn some things. That’s what travelling should be all about.

We had a little bit of spare time after our visit inside Giske Church to enjoy the surroundings before our bus returned to pick us up. With the church located on the southern point of the island we had some pleasing views to Godøya where we’d been earlier in the day, helped by the beautiful weather.

This concludes a very short but enjoyable enough excursion on our Sky Princess cruise, and in the next part in this cruise travelogue series we’ll be dropped off to explore Ålesund on our own.

Our Princess Cruises excursion was due to take us to the nearby islands of Giske and Godøya, and if you know anything about cruising or anything about islands then your first thought might be that this would involve one or more boat trips. It’s a reasonable thought, but then you have to factor Norway into the equation. A weird fact about Norway is that it really likes tunnels. We’d previously driven through the longest road tunnel in the world (still, at time of writing) when we’d visited the Borgund Stave Church in 2013, and we’d encountered a few smaller ones through hills on this cruise already, but in Ålesund we’d get to experience underwater tunnels for the first time. Why does Norway like tunnels? It’s either a Freudian sex thing or wanting to appease trolls. With Norwegians, either is equally likely.

Our bus took us via tunnel underwater to Valderøya first, then over a bridge to Giske, then another underwater tunnel to Godøya.

You’ll probably be able to guess already – indeed, you may well have searched the internet for the Giske and Godøya excursion on a cruise that you’re planning, so you’ll know – that our destination on Godøya was the Alnes Lighthouse.

The present Alnes Lighthouse – the fourth to serve the island as a navigation aid for fishing – dates from 1937. The first lighthouse in 1853 was little more than a window in a wall lit dimly with three candles so as not to confuse vessels with the lighthouse on Runde, and operated for only a few months in winter. This was replaced by a lantern that could be hoisted up a pole. In the 1870s a small guard house was built and the lighting time extended to most of the year but attracting anyone to work the beacon proved difficult due to the poor conditions so a larger, better residence was constructed and in the early 1890s moved to its current location. In 1928 the lighthouse was connected to the electricity grid and a backup gas light was installed.

Getting off the bus we were told that we were free to visit the lighthouse or the former lighthouse-keeper’s residence (now a café and exhibition centre) during our allotted time, and that our excursion included a pancake and drink in the café. We headed straight for the lighthouse. Inside we were greeted by art from local artists on the walls and steep steps up a few floors that wouldn’t feel out of place on a warship. They’re the sort you walk down backwards for safety, so bear that in mind if you’ve got any mobility issues or are a generally clumsy oaf. My wife, who has a history of falling down steps, actually managed okay, though.

At the top of Alnes Lighthouse we were treated to some lovely views courtesy of the natural beauty of Norway and a spectacularly bright and sunny June day. We also might have been treated to a phallic shadow that made me snigger.

There wasn’t a lot of room at the top of the lighthouse so we limited our time admiring the Godøya scenery in order that those other members of our cruise excursion who’d hit the monument rather than the café first could see the sights and grab some photos of their own. We’re considerate like that. We then headed off to get our included snack which was fine, pleasant enough, but nothing outstanding.

We spent the remainder of our time at Godøya wandering down to the shoreline. The beach there was rocky and absolutely gorgeous. Norway is not short of wonderful views.

In the next post in this cruise travelogue series we’ll move onto the second part of this day’s excursion while in Ålesund when we stop on the island of Giske to visit the church there.

But first, we had to wait for all the passengers to board Sky Princess. We could tell from the fact that tender boats were still heading from the ship to shore that not all of them had; cruise ships track who is on and off the vessel at all times. We waited and watched, and our scheduled departure from Olden came and went.

After MSC Preziosa had made her departure, our captain turned Sky Princess around to face out of the fjord and present the tender boat boarding side towards the pier in Olden in order to shorten the time needed for boat trips. We could still tell that we were waiting on people, though, as the view from our balcony (now, thankfully, out of the direct sunshine) allowed us to look back to the village where the Princess Cruises gazebo and some members of the crew were still hanging around. That suggested to us that whoever was late was on an organised trip because cruise ships don’t wait around long if you wander off on your own and don’t get back on time.

Eventually, we saw a couple of buses pull up, a queue form on the shoreside, and everyone – including the crew on the pier – pile aboard the final tender boat. There was a small amount of ironic cheering from some of the balconies on the ship. But not from us. We’re very reserved.

Sky Princess departed from Olden a fair bit later than planned, but with this being the height of summer in Norway there was plenty of bright sunshine to show off the Norwegian landscape as we gently cruised along the fjords. Green hills, snowy mountain peaks, flat water, pleasantly warm, supremely tranquil. If you’ve not cruised the Norwegian fjords then make the effort to do so.

It’s not true that you can ever get tired of viewing the fjords in Norway, but it is true that you can get hungry so we interrupted our balcony-staring time to head down to the dining room for dinner. The food on this particular cruise was of a high standard and this meal was no exception.

We are creatures of habit on cruises – we’ve discovered what we like to do and keep doing it – so with dinner out of the way we would typically head to some lounges in the evening on a Princess Cruises ship, take part in a quiz if one’s on, enjoy the music if not. However, the light, even fairly late in the evening was superb, the scenery was superber (shut up), and we decided we’d risk heading to the bar at the aft of the ship. This isn’t a location we’d normally visit at any time on any ship because it can get busy on pleasant sea days plus you’re forced to drink from plastic glasses like a child and, depending where you end up, you might be near filthy, stinking smokers too. But the aft bar on Sky Princess was quiet with only a few other passengers around and we got to experience some incredible views in relative solitude.

Yes, that’s a 24K Gold Margarita and a Dirty Banana. Cocktails of champions.

Eventually returning to our cabin and heading out to the balcony we became immediately aware of a lot of noise. This turned out to be some fast boats with groups of Norwegians on them waving flags and shouting. Our first thought was that this might be some form of protest against cruise ships because Norway is a bit funny like that, but this actually just turned out to be happy, possibly drunk, fjord party types. Much loud music and whooping and waving ensued. And that answers the question of what Norwegian locals get up in the evenings in the fjords.

The day’s sail away along the Nordfjord and out to the open sea concluded at well past midnight when the sky was ablaze with post-sunset colours. Sky Princess turned northwards. In the next post in this cruise travelogue series we’ll be visiting Ålesund where we had a far less lazy day planned.

A pretty Norwegian port would have to suffice, we decided, and luckily for us the weather was utterly glorious.

In the previous post in this series there are photos of Olden from the top deck of Sky Princess, if you’ve missed that and want to see even more Norwegian landscape gorgeousness.

We gave the organised excursions enough time to get most of their passengers ashore before wandering down to take the tender boat from Sky Princess to the small pier at the end of the fjord. Olden can accommodate a cruise ship berthing alongside, but the space was already taken up by MSC Preziosa. Not a major problem when you’re cruising in fjords, though, as it would take some very odd weather to affect the typically still waters, so tendering tends to be a simple and quick process.

The photographs of Olden in this post generally follow our very gentle, very slow stroll from where the ship’s tender boat dropped us off, heading southwards and clockwise around the shoreline of the village and up one side of the fjord until it looked like we were running out of sights to see, then retracing our steps back, past the pier, forming a large U-shaped route up to where Preziosa was docked, which just so happened to be alongside a pub. What are the odds of that!?

The pretty church we initially passed, then doubled back to venture inside (since we saw it was open), was the Old Olden Church. Built on the site of former churches that themselves dated back as far as the thirteenth century, this building was built and consecrated in 1759 and served as the parish church in the county until 1934 when a new church was built to take over the role. The Old Olden Church was left as a museum and site of interest for tourists.

After leaving the church, we followed the shoreline road over the Oldeelva river. This river runs into the Nordfjord off the Briksdal Glacier; a popular destination for cruise visitors to Olden. It’s only the fact that we’ve seen other glaciers and my wife’s old hip and knee injuries were flaring up a bit that chose not to head to Briksdal on this port visit, but I suspect that if we were to return to Olden on a ship in the future then we’d likely either book an organised trip or take the land train to it if the port wasn’t absolutely heaving with tourists on that particular day. The clear blue skies helped the spectacularly beautiful views look even better.

Our walk in Olden took us to some decent vantage points from which to see the stunning Norwegian landscape and the two cruise ships in the fjord on that day. It’s a wonderful feeling to suddenly grasp the size of everything around when you see the vessel you arrived on dwarfed by nature. I know that there will be people who’ll look at the photos below and think that the ships spoil the views of the fjords and the mountains and the green hills, and I understand that point of view, but fortunately for me there are few enough cruise fans who visit this site as it is that I don’t think I have to worry about anyone who actually doesn’t like cruising popping along to leave a derogatory comment (that I likely wouldn’t allow to be published anyway; dictator of my domain, and all that).

We headed back around to the opposite side of the fjord, passing back over the river and through the village (with a quick stop to look for souvenirs as we always try to spend some money ashore, even if it’s on some right old tat, when we cruise around the world), making our way to where we knew a pub was located. This was right where MSC Preziosa was docked.

The pub was the Mølla Gjestehus and it was fairly quiet when we arrived. We soon guessed that because most of the MSC ship’s passengers were filing aboard it might be leaving soon (and, indeed, it would leave before Sky Princess). We found some seats on the terrace near some officers of the Italian vessel who were making sure to spend money in the port on food and drink (we approve of this), and grabbed ourselves some locally-produced beers and ciders.

I won’t lie: the drinks were… not great. Or, let’s say that they weren’t to our taste. The important thing for us when we try local drinks, though, is not that they’re nice, but that they’re local. You don’t have to like a thing to appreciate a thing. I’m thinking of having that printed up on my business cards.

More of those beautiful Olden landscape views accompanied our short walk back to the pier and a small wait in a long queue to take the tender boat back to Sky Princess.

I hardly need tell you again that Olden is incredibly beautiful, but it is, and we were fortunate enough to have good weather for this visit. It is, however, a village, and if you’re not a hiker or looking for things to do ashore that don’t involve trips to nearby lifts and glaciers or more distant waterfalls and churches then you might struggle a little for interest. Oh, the struggle of being in Olden with nothing but those views.

In the next post in the cruise travelogue series I’ll share photographs of the sail away from Olden along the Nordfjord, and it’s an absolutely beautiful one that the photos don’t do enough justice to.

Just because we didn’t have any firm plans, it didn’t mean that other people didn’t, because there were a load of excursion options for those who fancied the idea of letting Princess or one of the local businesses whisk them away to see other sights. Ordinarily, we’d have done the same but there was nothing that really grabbed our eyes from the offerings; we’d seen a glacier before, we had no desire to spend a few hours in a bus to a waterfall or church, and the popular skylift at nearby Loen might be something we do one day but we simply weren’t sold on it on this occasion. You’ve got to be in the right mood. We opted to simply have a bit of a stroll around, as much as we could, and that meant we could be sensible and let everyone with schedules get off the ship first and do their things. To eat up some time before the queue for the tender operations eased off a bit we took a gentle amble around the top deck of Sky Princess to get the 360 degree view and snap a few photos.

Olden is a stunningly beautiful port in Norway.

We weren’t the only ship in port on this day, with the MSC Preziosa also visiting and snatching the dockside area ahead of us for easier embarkation and debarkation of her passengers.

The bright sunny day and surroundings of steep, ice-topped mountains around the fjord valleys of Olden meant there were no shortage of incredible views and photographic opportunities to explore. As we completed a circuit of Sky Princess we could see other individuals and couples doing almost exactly the same thing.

In the next post in this cruise travelogue series we’ll be ashore and going for a walk around the port of Olden where, if you’re lucky, I might just have taken some pretty photos to share.

This post, for the most part, will simply be photographs of the view from our balcony on Sky Princess as we cruised away from Skjolden and down the fjords.

There’s not a lot to describe that was new in the evening aboard Sky Princess either. At some point when you’re cruising – or just travelling in general – you do get into a rhythm and find what it is you like so just keep doing it. The good thing about cruising, though, is that the outside keeps changing while you’re doing that. We had a very good dinner in the main dining room, took part in the movie quiz where we finished second, then drank and danced until gone two in the morning.

With this cruise on Sky Princess taking place this far north in the height of summer, the sky never got dark so before we headed back to our room for the night we popped out briefly onto the ship’s (admittedly underwhelming) promenade deck just to snap a shot.

On the way back through the ship towards the elevators that would take us to our room I decided to capture some photos of some of Sky Princess’s interior spaces with nobody around. I find these sorts of pictures a little unsettling. I’ve seen a lot of cruise bloggers going out of their way to take photos and videos without people in them, and it never feels right to me. Not only that, but it’s not really representative of what being on a cruise ship is like. Ships aren’t wall-to-wall with noisy people (the lazy “Butlins at sea” trope spouted by the bigoted sub-moronic), but they aren’t ghost towns either, and I prefer to see what they’re like and give people a better expectation for what travelling by cruise is like. It’s also why I don’t like a lot of the TV adverts you see for cruising either, showing the happy family on a ship with a capacity of several thousand, apparently blissfully happy with perhaps just a dozen others; you’re going to upset some people with those misrepresentations, you know.

The next port of call on this Sky Princess cruise would be one we’d cruised to almost a decade before: Olden.

The Sognefjellet Road is known as Sognefjellsvagen or the less exciting Norwegian County Road 55, and it incorporates the highest mountain pass – nearly one and a half kilometres – in northern Europe. It’s renowned for its views which were spectacular even on a day of low, full cloud cover like we had.

I’ve mentioned before that I don’t like taking photos through the windows of buses when we’re travelling but the urge took hold of me as we headed for Skjolden. I upped the ISO levels and set the aperture to get a decent chance at fast (and therefore sharp) shots and clicked away as we passed by mountains, valleys, waterfalls, trees, fields of snow, lakes, and tendrils of cloud clawing at all of it.

Excitement on the journey back came as we were negotiating the hairpin bends and narrow road down the mountains on the approach to Skjolden. There were passing points on the road, but not many of them, and the problem was the cloud was thick and clinging to the ground dropping visibility down to very little indeed. Our bus driver drove sensibly, which was nice on account of none of us wanting to die, but we suddenly reached an impasse where cars and vans coming up couldn’t get past us. Now, if you drive then you know that the general rule is that traffic coming up a hill has priority over that coming down, but if you’ve ever seen a bus then you know that traffic that isn’t a bus can take a hike as far as the bus is concerned. Numerous attempts were made for everyone to squeeze over as much as possible; I had some nice views of the rock face a few centimetres from the window for a while too. But ultimately, the wider vehicles trying to come up had to back down until they felt safe enough to pull over onto ground that wasn’t falling away precipitously. When we eventually started driving again we were already overdue getting back to the ship, although we knew we still had time to spare before it left.

Despite our extended jam on the road we still had time to make a final stop, albeit an understandably brief one, and this was the Åsafossen waterfall. From parts of Skjolden it’s actually visible along the road, and it was a very fine example of a waterfall. You can never get tired of seeing waterfalls, and that’s part of what makes Norway such a fabulously beautiful country to visit.

There was a small incident while we were at this stop when one of our fellow passengers on this cruise excursion fell over and smashed his face in quite nastily on the stony surface.

In addition to the waterfall and the wonderful landscape and the cows there was one other point of interest where our bus stopped, and that was a sculpture known as The Hand, but more formally The Wittgenstein Monument.

The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein retreated to Skjolden in the early twentieth century – and his life is a very interesting one, worth a read – learning Norwegian to talk to the locals while there and away from academics that he felt were affecting his thought processes. This monument is only a few years old, made from pine, and contains a speaker in the wrist section that started talking while we were there, almost making a small child fall over in fright before running away crying. Great stuff.

In the next part of this cruise travelogue series I’ll cover our cruise away from Skjolden and what we got up to aboard Sky Princess in the evening.

“Okay, so behind that glare is this amazing waterfall. Truly jaw-droppingly beautiful!”

“Ooh! Sounds great. And what about this one?”

“Oh, yes, I can tell from the brightly illuminated back of the seat and bit of the curtain here that the flash against the window pane is obscuring a chasm beside the road through which a thundering river flowed.”

“Wow! I’d have loved to have seen that!”

“What are you implying, Ethel?”

To these photos then: they are, pretty much as you see, a few samples of the Norwegian landscape in this part of the world. I suspect I was trying to grab interesting shots of the low cloud putting out feelers through the mountains and around the tree-tops. Not with a lot of success it must be said.

The village we ended up in was Fossbergom and it was Lom’s administrative centre. While the focus of this trip would be to the church and to have some lunch, we started with a short visit to the Norsk Fjellsenter, home of the largest collection of archaeological finds discovered under retreating glacial ice. In fact, more than half of all finds in the world from retreating glaciers have been found in the mountains around Lom. The glacier archaeology centre was okay, and if you’ve a keen interest in seeing human life covered by ice then exposed in a warming climate it’s going to interest you, but I wasn’t blown away by the place. Part of that may have been the necessarily short time we had there; if we’d had a little more free time then it might have been different, and there are a couple of other museums nearby that would be interesting to us so I’d certainly not be averse to returning here at some point.

Here’s a little lesson in Norwegian for you, and this is just what I’ve picked up from having Norwegian friends and using multilingual social media platforms like Mastodon: foss means waterfall (you see that in Iceland a lot too with the names of their waterfalls, Gullfoss and Seljalandsfoss, etc.); berg means mountain. Fossbergom, as I’m sure you can now guess, has got some mountains and waterfalls near it. It also had an absolutely thundering river passing through – the Bovra – that I had to gawk at before our next stop on this excursion.

We gathered outside the Lom Stave Church and waited for our guide to arrive and lead us inside.

Lom Stave Church dates from the twelfth century, making it one of the oldest churches of its type in Norway. If you’ve read many (or any) of our other travelogue posts then excuse me while I sit down for a moment, I’m feeling a bit faint. Okay, now that I’ve got over that shock, then if you have read some other content, particularly any write-ups from our many trips to Norway now, then you’ll know that we like a nice stave church, and Lom made the third we’d seen after Borgund and Gol. Lom was definitely the largest and it was light and spacious inside too which made taking photos a lot easier for once. The church’s interior was not twelfth century but you could tell that just from looking. “Looks closer to eighteenth century to me,” I hear you think, and I think you’re right.

After a little bit of a chat about some of the church’s history and the pointing out of some of the architectural elements that make a stave church unique we were given a little bit of free time to explore, take photos, etc. and so I did, braving the very light drizzle because I’m tough and fearless.

Our last stop in Fossbergom was a short walk away that we nevertheless were bundled into the bus for. The Fossheim Hotel provided us with a lunch of salmon, vegetables, and potatoes, followed by cream and berries. I’m not a fan of berries and my wife’s not a fan of new potatoes so we both swapped some of our food around and it was all perfectly acceptable fare.

This marked the point in the day’s cruise excursion where we turned around and started to head back towards the ship, but we had a few stops to make on the way. The first of these stops was to see the Saga Column.

The 34-metre high Saga Column only dates from 1992, but its design is a bit older, and the monument’s location is interesting in that it’s not particularly significant. For the reasons behind all this we need to take a look at the sculptor, Wilhelm Rasmussen. We’d already seen some absolutely incredible Norweigan sculptures on the cruise before this one when we’d visited Oslo and taken a look at Vigeland Park (and you should too). The sculptor in that case has had charges of Nazi leanings levelled against him but without any justification. That, however, isn’t the case for Rasmussen. Rasmussen was a member of the fascist political group Nasjonal Samling (NS) that collaborated with the Germans during World War II, and he was an active member too. He had won a prize in the 1920s to design a monument to be erected in Oslo but it wasn’t completed before the war started and with NS being banned and his career justifiably ruined afterwards the decision was made not to complete it. However, a change of heart in the latter part of the century due to the column’s very Norwegian themes led to it finally being constructed in its present location.

From the bottom to the top, the imagery on the Saga Column is:

• The Battle of Hafrsfjord
• Dale-Gudbrand’s meeting with St Olav
• The Battle of Stiklestad
• The construction of Nidaros Cathedral
• St Olav, St Swithun, St Hallvard, and St Sunniva
• Sigurd Jorsalfare’s crusade to Jerusalem
• Battle of Kringen
• Norwegian mining and quarrying
• Battle of Dynekilen
• The seals of the bishoprics in the Middle Ages
• The Eidsvoll Men
• Harald Fairhair on horseback

Across the road from the Saga Column we could hear the nearby Leira River rushing through the canyon so had to head across for a few photos before it was time to leave.

In the next post in this cruise travelogue series we’ll complete our return to Skjolden by bus, including a stop to see a waterfall and a traffic jam caused by clouds.