A Norwegian Holiday (Part 1)
Leaving for Norway
In the summer of 2023, we decided to go on a trip to Norway, the Scandinavian country famous for its great natural beauty.
My first recollection of hearing about Norway is as a small child, learning about it in primary school as the ‘Land of the Midnight Sun’. Later on, one studied about its fjords, those peculiar geographic formations where the sea extended far inland between tall mountains. An early link to this distant land for me, who grew up in the picturesque tropical land of Kerala on the Indian subcontinent’s south-western Malabar coast, was a landmark Indo-Norwegian project in the little seaside village of Neendakara, near my maternal hometown of Kollam (Quilon) in Kerala. This project, which was established jointly by the governments of India and Norway in the 1950s under the auspices of the United Nations and funded by the Norwegian government, brought about radical improvements in the fishing industry, water supply and healthcare facilities in this part of Kerala.
Norway, located in the extreme north of Europe and extending into the Arctic region, is one of the three countries that constitute Scandinavia, the other two being Sweden and Denmark. The term ‘Norden’ is also used to refer collectively to Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Iceland, a group of countries with some shared features and affinities, distinct from the rest of Europe’s more southern countries. They are sparsely populated and rich in marine resources and have very high levels of health and literacy, much higher wages and much more social and economic equity in their societies compared to the rest of Europe. Interestingly, these characteristics of the Scandinavian countries are features that my own beautiful homeland of Kerala boasts of in comparison to the other States of India. The stark difference, however, is the very high density of population in Kerala unlike in Scandinavia.
Norway is the land of the Vikings, the famous seafarers who raided and colonised many parts of Europe and North America, and even the Middle East and parts of Russia, in the first millennium after Christ. The period of these Viking conquests, from the 8th to the 11th century AD, is known as the Viking Age. These conquests had profound cultural influences on not only the conquered lands, but also on Scandinavia itself.
Despite its extreme northern latitude, Norway has a fairly moderate climate because of the moderating influence of a part of the Gulf Stream that extends into the Norwegian Sea. Although we were going to Norway during peak Norwegian summer, we had to pack adequate warm clothing as the weather there could become chilly even in summer. It is said that one can experience all four seasons during a single day in this country. Parts of Norway are extremely rainy and, so, we got ready appropriate rainwear as well.
We had just a week to spend there and decided on visiting Oslo, Norway’s capital city located in the south east, as well as two other cities, Bergen on Norway’s west coast, famous for its world-renowned fjords, and Tromso in Norway’s extreme Arctic north, the northern-most city in the world. Although we initially toyed with the idea of renting a car and driving around the country ourselves, we dropped the idea subsequently as we thought it more prudent not to do so given our constraints of time.
Dubai to Amsterdam, en route to Oslo
The big day which we were eagerly waiting for, finally, dawned. Waking up early in the morning, we left for the airport, reaching there before 5 a.m.. At Dubai airport’s huge (and extremely efficient!) Terminal 3, we finished baggage drop, passport control and security formalities in a jiffy and reached one of the lounges. After having breakfast and resting there for a while, we headed through the sprawling terminal, past its numerous glitzy, duty free shops and a range of restaurants, to our boarding gate where our airplane, an Airbus A-380 Superjumbo (my favourite aircraft!) was docked. Our flight was initially to Amsterdam and we were to have a few hours break there before taking the night flight to Oslo from Amsterdam.
Our flight took off from Dubai on time at 8 a.m. and we landed in Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport just before 1 p.m.. It was bright and sunny in Amsterdam when we landed. Amsterdam Schiphol is a unique airport in that it is located below sea level.
We had lunch and spent time in the airport terminal till evening. By 5 p.m., our daughter, Karthika, came to the airport to meet us. We had tea with her in one of the restaurants in the airport and spent some time with her before she saw us off.
Onward to Oslo!
By 7 p.m. we checked in for the next leg of our journey. Fortunately for us, the massive crowds and huge delays which had plagued Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport during our visits there last year were absent this time and we could finish check in and security formalities rather fast. There was no passport control as we were travelling within the Schengen territory itself.
We, then, located a lounge, had an early dinner and rested there for a while. (I have to mention that we have found the fare on offer vastly superior in Dubai airport’s lounges). By about 8 p.m., we left the lounge and were on our way to our boarding gate.
Arriving at our boarding gate well on time, we waited there for a while before our Norwegian Airways Boeing 737 aircraft, with its distinctive livery, landed and docked at the aerobridge. In a short while, we boarded the aircraft and, after a half an hour delay, pushed back and began taxiing. Although it was well past 10 p.m. by then, it was still quite bright as it was summer in the Netherlands.
The pretty airport lights were twinkling all around us as our plane slowly taxied past numerous other aircraft in the busy airport to reach its designated runway for take off. Soon, our aircraft was zooming down the runway at full throttle and, in a short while, swept up smoothly into the twilight sky. It was a pretty sight to see the beautiful city of Amsterdam from up in the sky at dusk, with its thousands of glittering lights. We were on our way to Norway!
I stayed glued to the window with child-like excitement, taking in the incredible beauty of the twilight sky, surreal shades of crimson splashed across the horizon. The fiery sunset presented a stunning spectacle of kaleidoscopic colours as we headed north, flying over the vast expanse of the North Sea and the mass of fluffy clouds floating far down below us.
The flight from Amsterdam to Oslo took just about one and a half hours. The crenelated Norwegian coast soon came into our view. The coastline of Norway is characteristic in being quite craggy owing to the innumerable fjords and ‘sounds’ that indent it (a ‘sound’, in contrast to a fjord, is much broader and has a gently sloping topography). Shortly thereafter, we started our descent into Oslo.
Oslo, Norway’s capital, is located in south-eastern Norway at the head of a wide, bay-like fjord, the Oslofjord. We landed in Oslo’s Gardermoen International Airport at midnight. It being summer in this extreme northern latitude, it was not entirely dark, although it was midnight, when we touched down in Oslo.
Arriving in Oslo
Oslo’s impressive Gardermoen airport terminal was not very crowded at that late hour.
After collecting our bags, we went down to the train station inside the terminal. Barely an hour after landing in Oslo, we were on a high speed train, the Flytoget, speeding to Oslo Central Station in the city centre located about 50 km away. The journey from the airport took just 20 minutes by this high speed train which travels at a speed of up to 210 km per hour.
It was a bit chilly when we got off the train at the Oslo Central Station which looked deserted at that unearthly hour.
We had booked our accommodation in a nearby hotel. At the station, when we approached some railway staff to get help to find our way to the hotel, one of them asked us if we were from India. When I replied in the affirmative, he smilingly entrusted us to a Sikh gentleman, one of his colleagues. This courteous gentleman, Mr. Baljit Singh, spoke to us in Hindi (which we can manage to speak somewhat, although we are from non-Hindi speaking South India) and walked with us to the station exit to guide us. We thanked him and, crossing the large square in front of the station, walked the short distance from the station to our little hotel located about five minutes away.
Reaching the hotel, we finished checking in and reached our cosy little room. Thoroughly exhausted from our extremely long journey, we crashed out and slept soundly.
(To be continued in Part 2)
