Norway, you beauty! More than everything we had hoped for and dreamed about! So much so that after just two days in Norway, we decided to extend our time in the campervan (therefore reducing our time in Portugal and Spain later on) by 2 weeks. This meant we could slow down and take more time to see, do and be in Norway.
After arriving via ferry in Larvik, our first stop was Drammen. Drammen is home to the Drammen Spiral (Spiralen Drammen), a 1650 metre tunnel that spirals 6 times up to the Skansen Ridge summit. The spiral is purely a byproduct of the city’s need for stone in the 1950s (see Logan’s blog post coming soon) but now houses coloured lights, troll footprints, and a family of “Spiral Trolls”. We were so intrigued, we went up it 3 times!
Our next stop was Oslo and a visit to ‘Akershus Festning’ – the fortified house of Aker! The building of the Akershus Castle and Fortress was commenced in 1299 under King Håkon V. It had a strategic location at the very end of the headland, and withstood a number of sieges throughout the ages. The castle was modernised and converted into a Renaissance castle and royal residence in the 17th century, then fell into disrepair before being restored in the 20th century (retaining its connection to the Norwegian military). Personally, we just thought it was cool that our surname, which is regularly misspelled and mispronounced, had a significant place in history.
From there we headed to Lillehammer, host of the 1994 Winter Olympic Games. On the way, Logan and I saw 3 moose but it was impossible to stop so by the time we had turned around, it was too dark to spot them again. We were then left to find a camping spot in the dark…we are using the website Park4Night to find free sites to park the campervan each night. The sites have been added on to a searchable map (with gps coordinates) by users over the years, and then regularly reviewed by other users so that the information is up to date. It has been an excellent resource, leading us to some really special places – and we have become much more cautious of reviews made in the summertime when roads are not icy! However, in Lillehammer we did not yet have this level of caution and we ended up putting the campervan through its paces to get to our selected site. With no way of turning around as the road got narrower, steeper and icier and the snow banks on the sides of the road got higher, Logan was cheered on by the kids as they counted down the distance on the gps, and we all breathed a sigh of relief as he pulled into our site for the night. Whilst our campervan was claimed to be “winterised”, German winter and Norwegian winter are not the same so we are extremely grateful for Logan’s ability to drive on some fairly questionable roads in some very questionable weather, and we purchased our own snow chains and snow ramps for our own peace of mind.
In Lillehammer, we had an awesome afternoon tobogganing at the Olympic Park. Zara was supposed to be with an adult, but Lucas soon worked out that having her as ballast on his toboggan made him much pacer so that we could actually race each other to the bottom. Such fun!
We also walked up the 936 icy steps to the top of the Olympic K90 and K120 ski jumps (still in use for training and competitions). It was mind-boggling to imagine stepping out on to the top of the jump!
We then had 2 fabulous days skiing at Kvitfjell – a ski field made up of 3 different mountain sides. We camped at the ski field parking lot so we literally skied from the campervan down to the chairlift that took you to the top of one side, then skied down the second side, then took a gondola over to where the chairlift took you to the top of the third side! It was supposedly a busy weekend but we skied all over the mountains with very little wait time. There were so many runs, all with different features, that we could all find our favourites whilst still skiing together. We introduced the kids to ‘night skiing’ – 3 hours non-stop skiing on a super wide t-bar slope with groomed trails, wide open spaces, fresh powder, giant rolling jumps and only a handful of other people! We skied back to the campervan in the dark, feeling super excited about this awesome adventure that we are having!
From Kvitfjell we continued north to Trondheim. The weather was absolutely beautiful so we took our time, enjoying the scenery and each other’s company.
