Farewell to Inderøy!

[Picture placement is about worthless in this blog, but I still tried to add some.]

Thursday was our completely free day; nothing planned whatsoever. So we decided to drive to Sweden; one to say we have been there, and two so I could get a geocache in another country. The drive was only a little over an hour or so away from our cabin, so it was a nice drive and we passed a really neat place to stop on the way back. We drove over the border and I found a geocache right away. I wanted to find at least two, so we drove a short distance and I went up into the hills to find it, only to be stopped by too much water. We then drove a few miles up the road to the top of the mountain and I went out to find another one. There was still a lot of water, but I was able to miss most of it; on the way there. My feet were soaked through by the time I got back to the car. But I found another geocache, so it was all worthwhile. We then drove back to Norway and stopped at the actual border. There was a sign that we took pictures of and also of the actual rock monument marking the border. They have open borders, so there was nothing we had to stop at. There was a customs place, a couple miles into Norway, but no one was manning it when we were there, so we just kept on driving. We stopped at a neat waterfall to take pictures, and then continued on to the place we saw before.

The top of the mountain in Sweden

Standing on the Norway/Sweden border

There was a suspension bridge over the river that we crossed and then started walking up the trail. There were a couple paper signs at the trailhead, but we couldn’t read them. Luckily we never found out what they meant. We walked down the trail and came to the place we had seen from the main road. The trail turned into a walkway that was made of rebar and wood that hung on to the side of the rocks. This walkway wove in and out following the rocks, up above the river, until it ended up at another smaller suspension bridge that crossed over a waterfall, partway up the falls. It was a great view and we took many pictures of it and the impressive walkway. We then worked our way back until we found a branch in the trail that went down to the river’s edge and we went down and took more pictures. There was also a nicely built lean-to type building with a fire pit that we stopped and looked at. After we were done taking pictures we hiked back to the starting bridge. We took more pictures, screwed around with filming a video clip of us walking across the bridge, and then we went back to our car and headed back to Åsen.

David walking on the "pathway"

The first suspension bridge

The bridge over the waterfall

A neat picture of the swirling water in a still part of the river

We stopped off at the mall on the way back for some dinner. The mall does not look that big from the outside, but it is actually quite large. It has 170 stores and 22 restaurants; in what felt like the middle of nowhere! So we went and ate at the same restaurant we ate the day before and then headed back to our cabin. On the way we stopped off at the store and picked up a couple boxes to mail items home. We placed the couple books we each had from Hammerfest (gifts from Liv Hanna and Ernst) into the box and then stuff the rest of the room with clothes that we hadn’t worn or didn’t need any more. We packed quite light for our trip, and we didn’t even need all that we brought! We spent the last few hours of the evening relaxing before retiring for the night.

Heffi (Kvistad) and Sverre Lilleeng

For Friday Jan Olav had made plans for us to drive down to Trondheim and meet Heffi and Sverre Lilleeng. Heffi was a Kvistad and wrote a book about her family many years ago. She let me use some of her research in my family history book, so I have had a little contact with her over the years, mostly through Jan Olav. Heffi and my grandfather Alfred were third cousins; a little distant, but not that far! Heffi also gave me a picture she had of my great-great-great-grandfather Lorents Wittrup Pedersen Kvistad; probably my greatest family heirloom.

Jan Olav drove down to Åsen and together we all went to Trondheim. I didn’t think we would be there that long, but we ended up visiting for about 4 hours. Heffi is 87 years old and Sverre is 91 years old, so we didn’t think they would be up for too much visiting. But I really wanted to meet her and visit with her. She was very excited to meet us and hear more about us. She has a copy of my book, and I think she has studied it intently! Obviously she loves genealogy, but she was also a teacher so she is very studious. Our family is the first Kvistad family she knows of that emigrated to the U.S. and uses a variation of the Kvistad name. There were other Kvistads who moved to the U.S., but they dropped the Kvistad name and used Pederson instead.

Both Heffi and Sverre have minds as sharp as anyone I know! I think Sverre was a teacher of some kind in his working days, but he has also authored many books. One book was about WWII in Norway, and this book was just published in 2011! We talked about his experiences during the war, with were quite impressive. There are many things that we see in movies and on television, and even people we know who fought in the war, but he is the first person I have ever visited with who can remember Nazis parading down his town’s streets! Sverre imitated them marching down the street and giving the Nazi salute; it was actually quite humorous. We could tell that they were starting to get tired (we were too!) so we politely said that we had to leave. David and I both wished we could speak Norwegian, because we could have visited with them again for many hours just listening to their stories! Sverre spoke some English, but quite often used Jan Olav to translate, and Heffi spoke quite a bit English, but was a little rusty and had Jan Olav translate a few words when she got stuck. They were two very impressive individuals and it was an honor to meet them and be able to visit with them.

After we said our goodbyes, them waving to us from their front porch until we were out of site, we headed back to Åsen. We dropped Jan Olav back at his car and then we went into our cabin and grabbed our boxes to send home. We stopped off at the store and mailed our packages and then we headed back to the same mall and ate at the same restaurant for the third day in a row. Are we creatures of habit?? It was fairly late by the time we got back home, so we just started preparing for our departure on Sunday. We knew we had a long day planned for Saturday, so we wanted a head start on our packing.

Saturday was our last day in Inderøy; what a way to end our time here! Jan Olav’s sister Ingunn and her husband Gunnar invited us out for the day. They were going to bring us out to climb the Skarnsunddetbru (Skarnsund Bridge). This bridge is a concrete cable-stayed suspension bridge (the longest of its kind in the world for two years) that is 3,310 feet long, with its longest span at 1,739 feet. It has two 499 foot tall concrete pylons that hold up the multitude of large diameter cables. I saw this bridge while researching the area for our trip, so when driving around with my parents, I told them we should go and take pictures of it. We went and took many pictures of the bridge and enjoyed the view. I didn’t really want to tell Ingunn and Gunnar that we had already been there, so I just left it at that and we could go out and see it again. They were also going to try and see if we could go out on the oldest wooden sailing ship in the world that is still in use; the Pauline (pronounced Poe-leena) built in the 1860s. This was the neat old sailboat that we saw in the harbor with my parents a few days before when we were out exploring Inderøy. Gunnar told us to meet them at their house around 11:00am and we would go from there.

The Skarnsund Bridge

The Skarnsund Bridge

David and I showed up at their house a little apprehensive; we weren’t exactly sure how the day would go. We had met Ingunn and Gunnar and their two sons, Andre and Espen, at dinner on Saturday. We were only with them a short time, but we really enjoyed their company and they were very outgoing. So, we were apprehensive about how the day would go, but not about the company we would be enjoying. When we got to their house we went in and visited for a short time, and then Gunnar said we should get our day started! He handed us each a pair of gloves for climbing the bridge and he loaded his backpack into their car. David and I both became a bit nervous. What exactly were we climbing? How were we going to climb it?

There is the saying that “It is not what you know but who you know.” In basic terms, Gunnar is the head of police for the Inderøy area; with that he knows many people and has many connections. He told us that we were going to climb one of the pillars of the bridge. Remember, we do not really know them that well, and we don’t know how daring they are with extreme sports, so I had thoughts in my head of them planning on us scaling the column and repelling down! Gunnar told us that he knew the man who has the keys to the column and that we were going to climb it on the inside. Phew, a bit of relief! Then he told us that we were going to climb up ladders to the top. What?? Gunnar liked to joked with us and see our reaction. Thankfully. Then he told us that most of the way was switchback stairs and then ladders at the top, and that the gloves were mainly because it was dirty/dusty inside. Ok, but it was still a long ways. Plus, he told us that the top of the column has a fence around it that is about two feet tall, but he quickly laughed that one off and told us they have a taller fence. I am not really afraid of heights, but this was way up there and I was imagining a chain link fence at the top with the wind whipping around. So we began our ascent.

The stairs in the column

Ingunn and Gunnar when we
were coming back down the stairs

 

The ladders near the top

Andre met us at the bridge for the trip up the column. Neither he nor Ingunn had ever been up it before, only Gunnar. He unlocked the padlock and opened the door, we all stepped inside, and Andre found the light switch. The stairs were steel, with grip holes drilled into them, which were Hilte drilled into the sides of the concrete walls. Their safety standards are not what we would expect in something like this, but then again, this was not open to the public. Each flight of stairs had some movement to them, and Gunnar told us to not have more than two people on a flight at the same time. He and Ingunn went first, and then David and I, and then Andre brought up the rear. It was a little intimidating because the stairs had many places where you could fall through, and many of the flights were slanting and the platforms between flights were leaning hard to one side. I kept looking at the Hilte drilled bolts into the concrete and wondering, “How good is Norwegian construction?” The flights of stairs got shorter as we went higher because the whole columns became skinnier as they reached the top. We finally reached the top of where the stairs went to, and we reached the ladders. The ladders were made of the same steel with a cage around it as it went up. The cage did not start until you were partway up off of the stair platform, the cage was little more than the minimal required to stop you from falling out (similar to the water tower at my parents’ Clearview home), and the cage actually overlapped over the stair platform we were starting from. Yes, a little intimidating once again. Ingunn was chosen to go first with Gunnar behind her. It took her a few tries to actually go through with it, with a bit of pushing from Gunnar; literally. Once she got going it wasn’t too bad and she continued up to the first platform break in between the sets of ladders. We all followed suit and came to the last ladder that brought us onto the top of the column. Gunnar went up the ladder and unlocked the padlock to the hatch that opened up to the top.

Gunnar propped up the hatch and went up and over the lip onto the top, and then we all followed. Luckily for me (and everyone else) the “fence” was a concrete wall about four feet tall or maybe a little bit higher. Wow, we were up there; and the view was amazing! It took a little bit to go and look over the edge, but looking down on the bridge below was an impressive site. The views all over the fjords boggled the mind. After many pictures, Gunnar opened up his backpack and took out coffee and snacks. That is what his backpack was for! We spent at least a half hour up on top of the column taking pictures, enjoying the view, visiting with each other, and David and I getting explanations to much of the landscape and the municipality of Inderøy in general. We then started our descent back down the ladders and stairs. After looking over the edge of the column at the top, the ladders and stairs did not seem as bad. It was still a bit hairy walking down the stairs, where each flight was angled a different direction and flexing and wiggling as we walked back down, but it seemed to go much faster and we popped out the door at the bridge level. Now looking over the edge of the bridge at the water far below wasn’t that bad!

The view from on top of the column

The view from on top of the column

 

The view from on top of the column

The view from on top of the column

 

Gunnar, Ingunn, and Andre at the top of the column

We walked back to their car and we started to head back to their house. We stopped off at a public, picnic type area that has a great view over the fjord and landscape. We took some pictures and signed a guestbook that was in one of the shelters, and then we drove back to their house. When we arrived at their house, Jan Olav’s (and Ingunn’s) mother Marna was there. (Jan Olav was busy, so he met up with us later at the harbor.) They brought out some food for a late lunch: sliced ham and mutton, pork and deer sausage, chicken wings, some flat bread, and a mixture of a few other things. We all sat around visiting for a while before we headed down to the harbor to sail onboard the Pauline.

She was a magnificent vessel! It was not windy enough, and we were not going too far out, so we did not use the sails, but it was still a great experience. The captain showed us around the ship, below decks, the crews’ quarters; there was beautiful woodwork everywhere. One of the reasons we were sailing out was to pilot in another vessel as it came in to the harbor. The vessel was another old, unique ship: the Hansteen. It is the only remaining steam sail ship in the world. It was built in 1866. We sailed out on the Pauline until we met the Hansteen and then we sailed alongside it until we reached the harbor. We then docked and the Hansteen docked a short time later. The weather forecast called for thunderstorms that evening, but when we boarded the Pauline it was cloudy with no rain. The entire trip took close to two hours, the last half hour to forty-five minutes it rained. Not only did it rain, but it down poured. We were all completely drenched by the time we got back to shore, and the rain let up within five minutes of docking, so we drove back the few minutes to Ingunn and Gunnar’s house and dried our clothes. While we waited for our clothes in the dryer, we visited more and they showed us pictures of their life, including pictures of their cabin up in the mountain. After our clothes were dry we went back down to the harbor for a light dinner.

Pauline in the harbor
(On a previous day)

The captian handling the rudder
(With Jan Olav and Ingunn at the right)

The captian and Gunnar

The crew tightening up one of the sails

Looking up the mast of the Pauline

Ingunn, Jan Olav, and Gunnar
below deck of the Pauline

 

 

Spotting the Hansteen from the Pauline
(The Skarnsund Bridge is in the background)

Looking at the Hansteen from the Pauline

 

The Hansteen cruising down the fjord

Me and Jan Olav on the Pauline

 

We went and ate on an old ferry boat, tied to the dock, which has been converted into an outdoor pub. The harbor is famous for its famous fish burgers; they serve many hundreds during their special time at the beginning of July. After Ingunn and Gunnar treated us to the fish burgers, Gunnar talked the captain of the Hansteen to let us tour his vessel. For about a year, a long time ago, this vessel was used as a Royal ship. Although the king was only on board one time (if I remember correctly), it was finished for royalty. The woodwork was exquisite, even though the interior was small, and it had pictures of the kings around the room. The engineer, who gave us the tour, showed us around the ship, including the steam engine room. The engine was quite large (and it was very hot in the room) and still uses coal to heat it. He opened the door to the furnace and showed us how the engine worked and was a very nice guide. We then left the ship and walked back up onto the dock a little after 9:00pm and we said our goodbyes to Ingunn and Gunnar. They were incredible hosts, and made our last day a very special one. We then drove back to our cabin in Åsen and packed our bags and didn’t get to bed until fairly late.

 

The Hansteen at the dock

Inside the Hansteen

 

A true porcelain throne
The Royal Bathroom onboard the Hansteen

The crews' quarters onboard the Hansteen

 

 

Sunday morning we got up, finished packing our bags, and picked up the cabin and then drove back up to Jan Olav’s house. We sat on his back deck visiting for about an hour and a half and then we went next door to Marna’s house and said our goodbyes. Then Jan Olav drove us back down to Værnes to the airport. We said our farewell and we went and checked in for our flight. We had about a two and a half hour wait, but we weren’t taking any chances on missing our flight. It turns out that it is quite the small airport, and we probably could have gotten there 45 minutes early and been fine. Oh well, it gave me time to write part of this blog.

Our flight was a little delayed because we had to wait for passengers from another flight that was running behind schedule, but it wasn’t too long. The flight went well and we arrive less than an hour later. I like short flights! We caught the Flybussen bus to the Brygge (wharf) and walked the couple blocks to our hotel. After checking in and dropping off our bags, we headed out to try to find some dinner. The weather forecast has been, and pretty much still is, rain, rain, rain. But when we got there, it wasn’t too bad. We walked around the wharf in search of some food and ended up, of all places, at TGI Friday’s. While we were eating, the rain came down; just as hard as it did when we were on the Pauline. People were ducking under any cover they could find until the worst passed. By the time we finished eating the rain had stopped, so we took our time walking back to the main wharf area. We looked through some of the food tents on the wharf and then started wandering over to the shops. And then it started to rain again. We barely made it to some little covered tourist kiosk before the monsoon came again. We waited under there, with many other people, for about five minutes or so before the rain stopped again. We then went over to the shops and browsed in a few of them and then wandered around some of the neat alleys of the wharf before heading back to our hotel. It was then 9:00pm and we were pretty tired out, so we just called it a night.

A neat alley on the wharf in Bergen

Looking back on the same alley in Bergen
(If you look carefully, you can see how badly
the buildings all lean. Quite the sight.)