Day 11: Maihaugen & Giant's Country
- The Day Distilled: Bright green countryside dotted with beautifully kept historic buildings, and a candlelit dinner in a historic mountainside hotel.
- Women of the Day: Every summer for nearly 1,000 years, Norwegian farms released their livestock from winter barns and entrusted these precious animals to a high-status milkmaid and a hardy cowherd girl. These young women lived in the mountains with the livestock and were responsible for caring for the cattle, sheep, goats, and pigs as they grazed on the mountainsides, and for producing dairy products for sale (and winter use) by the farmers. Their resourcefulness and skills were vital to farms’ survival.
- Ship’s Log: Even in an inland farming area, the Lom stave church reminded us of the sea – each of its rooftop edges held a distinctive dragon-headed Viking ship prow up into the sky, creating striking silhouettes that were simultaneously graceful and menacing.
Time to go back to school!
After so much time spent on and near the sea, it was strange to suddenly be driving inland! Our first stop was Maihaugen Open-Air Folk Museum. It was a lot like Skansen, but smaller, greener, and with fewer people. A docent led us into a one-room log cabin schoolhouse, where she taught us how to pronounce “ø” and “å” – we weren’t very good, but it was fun to try! She also told us about life on an 18th century farm, while we sat at the long communal table of the main house, where the family and all the farmhands would eat together.
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Living roofs are nothing new
We had a couple of hours to wander freely through this beautiful park. Just like at Skansen, we were struck by the solidity and beauty of the buildings. They were made to last, and to be nice to look at over the centuries, too. I especially liked the sod roofs of so many of the buildings. They were so colorful with grasses, flowers, and mosses, not to mention practical and functional.
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Have I mentioned Scandinavian woodworking yet?!
Then it was back on the bus to visit the Lom Stave Church (Lom Stavkyrkje), a gorgeous all-wood church built in 1158. A docent gave us a really nice tour of the colorfully painted interior, describing how the church was built, expanded, and renovated over the centuries.
Gosh, the Vikings and their descendants could (and can) do amazing things with trees. This building was just lovely. |
We got to sleep in a museum! Sort of.
Finally, we wound up and up a mountain to our home for the night: the beautiful, remote Røisheim hotel. Renovated from an 18th century farmstead, Røisheim had rooms in a variety of beautifully restored buildings around a grassy courtyard. It was like spending the night at a Scandinavian open air museum. Mom and I were content to be in a more modern room than some of our tour companions. It wasn’t sumptuously furnished, but we didn’t have to climb a stepladder into a barrel tub to take a shower!
The hotel served an amazing four-course dinner in their candlelit dining room. That night, we fell asleep to the sound of the roaring snow-fed river across the narrow road from the hotel. For more photos from Day 11, check out the slideshow below. |
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