I will find it hard to keep your attention on matters Norwegian in early August. Like Ping, Pang and Pong in Turandot your thoughts will be turning to getting back to your country estates and bagging a few grouse.
But before we get to the butts, remember Trondheim, invaded and occupied in April 1940 and not liberated until May 1945. England awaited the same fate. In the dark days of August 1940, when German invasion seemed imminent (not the right word if there is a word for something more imminent than imminent), something rather British happened. By an Order in Council, it was authorised that grouse shooting could start a week early on the 5th of August. David Kirkwood, MP for Dunbartonshire East, proposed that the Home Guard be given permission by estate owners to shoot their grouse as it would give them target practice in addition to providing nourishment for the nation; killing two birds with one stone, one might put it. However it was put, it fell on deaf ears.
It is a seven hour train journey heading north through Lillehammer and the Dovrefjell mountains to Trondheim. I have been part of the way before, going on a cross-country skiing holiday, staying in a hotel where Scott tried out equipment for his ill-fated expedition to The South Pole. It was intensely cold and hard work to make much progress on skiis. One day we went with picnics to the cabin that Dronning Maud was fond of skiing to. It was not palatial; a dark garden shed crammed with other picnickers.
Today’s journey is more comfortable, although it was disappointing that the window view was mostly blocked by a pillar but I had not reckoned with the Norwegian flair for good design. The conductor apologised that the seats had not been re-configured before the train arrived at Oslo and swivelled them round to face in the opposite direction (forward). Now there are good views of a hilly terrain with plenty of forests, meadows, lakes and rivers. The sky is cloudy and grey, the cloudbase so low that ridges sometimes appear above the clouds. In the mountains there are still vestiges of snow, enough to patch a parlour maid’s apron, so long as it is a small patch.
Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim is worth more than the few words I will write. First, it is the oldest medieval cathedral in Europe. It became an Archbishopric in 1163 and the diocese then included Iceland, the Faroe Islands, the Hebrides, Orkney and the Isle of Man. Its architecture was influenced by English cathedrals, specially Canterbury. Most of the original structure was destroyed by two fires in the early 18th century.
It was here, in 1906, that Haakon and Maud’s Coronation took place. There have been no further Coronations in Norway as subsequent monarchs, mindful of the population’s leaning towards social democracy, have opted for services of benediction. A further link with Britain comes in the form of the White Ensign, presented by the Royal Navy when Trondheim was liberated at the end of the war. Incidentally, the cathedral suffered no damage in the war; the Allies made one bombing raid in July 1943, targetting the German submarine pens in the harbour.
My companion, Robert, is a photographer and he took these pictures in Trondheim.
