Viking Homeland Finale

It has been so much fun being on this cruise, it’s hard to find the time to write another entry.  So, I’ll make this the last one.

We left Denmark a couple of days ago, and we have had three stops in Norway.  We like watching both Olympics (winter and summer), and in 2018 Norway won the most medals in the last winter Olympics.  They had 39 medals.  Canada was second with 31. I mention this only because their population is only 5 million.  

But, if you live in a country where everything is so steep, you have the lungs and legs of someone that can handle major challenges.

If you wish to see a bigger version of any picture, double click on the picture.

The fjords and mountains are all around, and there is nothing quite like it.  The steep mountains provide thousands of waterfalls. The only negative that comes to mind is the 260 days it rains each year.  I guess that’s why we don’t have many waterfalls in southern Utah.

If you look hard, you see at least a couple of water courses ‘waterfalling’ straight down to the fjord.

With so much of the country composed of mountains, agriculture is very limited.  Only 3% of Norwegian land is suitable for agriculture.  Lucky for them, they can produce giant marsh mellows.

Luckier yet, is they have had North Sea Crude Oil since around 1970.  It’s some of the finest crude oil that begs the highest dollar, euro, or whatever, as it so good.  So the country went from a poor Scandinavian country to the richest in Europe. With such new wealth, it’s easy to understand the tree sweaters the residents in this small town make.

Our presumptive favorite is this elaborate sweater.  I do want to point out that not all the trees in Norway are so protected, in case it crossed your mind.

Our last days on the trip are in Bergen, Norway.  Bergen, and what surrounds it, is very beautiful.

It is here we learned that even though they have a great amount of North Sea oil, they don’t promote using it.  They sell most of it.  All the rain, snow, mountains, and streams produce 99% of their electricity via hydroelectric means.  The other 1% is geothermal and they pay relatively little for their electricity.  They encourage the use of electric cars in very big ways:  no sales tax on the purchase, no parking fees, and no tunnel, highway, or bridge fares.  Norway has the most Teslas per capita of any country in the world.  BTW, Norway has the highest price per gallon of gas in the world for further encouragement - a fourth way they encourage their population to buy electric cars.  

Some of the wooden buildings in this port city date back to the 1300’s when it was a major trading port in northern Europe.  The buildings are still standing, but not necessarily plumb.

We wondered why Norway citizens are supposedly the happiest of all countries in the world even though they pay high taxes which can be a negative factor.  For their high taxes, all public education, including college is tuition, is free, everyone has medical coverage, and all employees are paid a living wage.  Once a year, by law, all employers have to give their workers ‘vacation pay’ which amounts to 10% of their salary.  I think our President made some comment about hoping to get Norwegians to immigrate to the U.S.  Norway wants us to immigrate to their country.  We would get free college tuition and free healthcare even though we are not citizens.  But then we remember the 260 rainy days per year we’d have to deal with.  We won’t be going back to school!

We have come to the end of our vacation.  No more pampering from the cruise ship staff.  Back to cooking, shopping, cleaning, etc. which will be a bit of a shock.  We did have a great time and we feel fortunate to have had this experience.  We hope that all goes well with you too!

BTW - we managed an overview picture of Bergen with a hint of blue sky.