25 September 1066

Some say that the Viking Age died 25 September 1066 at Stamford Bridge, on the River Derwent east of York, along with Haraldr Sigurðarson, called harðráða, king of Norway. Harald was a formidable and ruthless warrior. Half-brother to King Ólafr Haraldsson, later called Saint Olaf, he was 15 when he fought among Olaf’s army in [...]

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The Northern Dawn

Aurora borealis — not “rosy-fingered Dawn” of Homer’s Odyssey, but dawn in the north, the northern lights, nordlyset, a mystical, impossible glow in winter’s nighttime sky. Many years ago in northern Illinois my father called us out into the front yard to watch surprising, shimmering colors in the northern sky. Pale, low on the horizon, [...]

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Fantoft Stavkirke

Fantoft stavkirke, built around 1150 in Fortun, Sogn, Norway, during the great era of wooden church construction in the 12th Century. By the 19th Century most communities were replacing their old stave churches with more modern, usually larger, structures, and by the end of the century most of the old buildings were gone. It is [...]

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Syttende mai i Trondheim

My brief comment on Constitution Day lacks color, ceremony, pageant, and a glimmer of the day’s importance. Fortunately Britt-Arnhild Wigum Lindland of Britt-Arnhild’s House in the Woods has supplied what I missed. See her photographs of this year’s day before and day of celebrations in Trondheim.

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Syttende mai (Constitution Day)

The 17th of May marks the day in 1814 when a group of delegates in Eidsvoll, Akershus, Norway, approved a constitution that declared Norway to be an independent country after nearly 400 years of Danish rule. Despite the fact that Norway remained under Swedish rule for the next 91 years, the constitution adopted in May [...]

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Hely Familia

My grandmother, Anna Jacobsen (born Åsa Åmundsdatter Kvamsøy), was 23 when she emigrated from Norway to the United States in 1903. She returned to Norway only once. In 1937 she traveled alone to visit her father, brother, and sister. This picture was a souvenir of that trip, probably taken on a mountain overlooking Øystese on [...]

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På Fløyen

Here’s a picture from our visit to Norway in June 2001. Our week in Bergen came roughly in the middle of the trip. On 14 June it rained only a little bit, so we rode Fløibanen from the center of Bergen to the top of the mountain for the famous view from above the city. [...]

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