Olympic Norway

I reached Norway by train from Sweden and got off at Lillehammer for the 1994 Winter Olympic Games. The little town was swarming with people from all over the world, an experience I also had two years earlier at the Games in Albertville, France. On this itinerary, however, I don't want to talk to you about sport and the many events I saw but about the places I visited. The Games were in fact also the pretext for seeing resorts such as Tretten, where I stayed in a guesthouse, Hunderfossen, where the bobsleigh track was located, and of course Lillehammer dressed for the party with multicoloured parades, shows in the square, etc. What's more, I took the opportunity for a trip to the North, wrapped in deepest winter with abundant snow.

So, partly by train and partly by bus, I returned to Trondheim and Bodø (where I had already been) and saw for the first time the Lofoten and Vesterålen archipelagos. The Cathedral of Trondheim, reached by train, welcomed me with heavy snowfall, offering all the charm of its Gothic structure. Then I went on by bus to Bognes, from where a ferry lets you reach the Vesterålen directly, avoiding many kilometres and the town of Narvik. After crossing the bridge that connects the island of Hinnøya with Sortland on the island of Langøya, I slept in a guesthouse in Stokmarknes. Early in the morning I took the small boat that calls at all the ports of the Vesterålen and Lofoten, small villages, the largest of which is Svolvær, all with colourful wooden houses and structures for drying fish. The islands rise from the sea with majestic mountains completely bare of vegetation and covered in snow.

The little cruise stops at Bodø, kissed by a pale sun and gripped by the cold. With a local bus we go to the surroundings to see, near a bridge, a natural whirlpool called the maelstrom. Between the modern town and the whirlpool, the only interesting thing nearby is a big moon that shows itself almost at human height. I return to Lillehammer via Trondheim. At the end of the Games, a stop in Oslo (already visited on a previous trip) to see again, this time under the snow, Karl Johans gate as far as the gardens and the Royal Palace, the Town Hall and the waterfront. Absolutely not to be missed: Trondheim. The Lofoten and Vesterålen archipelagos. For further information on this country see the tour of NORWAY.