Back to the fjords
Just back from a seven-day cruise to the Norwegian fjords with stops at Haugesund, Skjolden and Stavanger.
A fourth port of call was cancelled because of Storm Floris which followed us across the North Sea, bringing with it heavy swells and strong gusts of wind. So instead of sailing to Olden in Nordfjorden, as scheduled, we stayed overnight in Skjolden in the sheltered waters of Sognefjord, Norway’s longest fjord, while we waited for conditions to improve.
(A similar thing happened two years ago when a stopover at Skagen in Denmark was cancelled because of high winds. On that occasion it worked out quite well because it meant a second day in Copenhagen which gave us additional time to explore that rather pleasant city.)
Our final stop before returning to Southampton in the early hours of yesterday morning was Stavanger where two of the main attractions are the Canning Museum and the Petroleum Museum. In Haugesund the Herring Museum has pride of place and the names alone give you some idea of life before and after the oil boom that catapulted Norway from being the poorest country in Europe at the beginning of the 20th century to one of the richest, thanks to the discovery of significant reserves of oil and gas in the Norwegian sector of the North Sea in the late 1960s.
That said, one of the things that strikes me about Norway is that it doesn’t show off its wealth. In fact, you would be hard pressed, even in Oslo let alone the smaller provincial towns and cities, to identify where the revenue has gone. Aside from some infrastructure projects (roads and bridges, mostly), the Norwegians appear to have been modest with their spending. You’ll struggle, for example, to find any vanity projects among the rather plain modern buildings, many of which are as grey as the weather.
Instead, much of the revenue has been invested in a welfare state that is said to be the ‘envy of the world’. Furthermore, knowing the oil and gas will eventually run out, a sovereign wealth fund was created with a view to benefiting current and future generations. (I read somewhere that every Norwegian receives a substantial lump sum on their eighteenth birthday - more than enough to pay a deposit on a property, for example - but I can’t find the source so don’t take my word for it.)
Anyway, this was our third trip to Norway via cruise ship and in addition to the fjords I think we’ve visited most of the main towns and cities, albeit with the caveat that cruise stops generally offer little more than a snapshot of the local area.
One part of the country we haven’t visited is the northernmost region which takes you to the edge of the Arctic Circle, but that’s a twelve-day cruise from Southampton and I don’t think I have the stomach for it. Literally. (I’m going on a diet, starting tomorrow.)
That apart, we’ve run out of destinations we can sail to direct from Southampton which is why we’ve started to repeat ourselves, with diminishing returns. Going back to the fjords, which we first visited in 2010, seemed like a good idea when the UK was sweltering in 30 degree temperatures six weeks ago, but the weather in Norway last week was mostly overcast (with occasional sunny intervals and showers alongside blustery winds) so if you’re a sun-seeker you might want to consider a different destination.
