An Arctic town with a very old church

Monday – 24 June 2013 – Harstad, Norway

We docked 9 am at our first stop above the Arctic Circle, 68d 48m north latitude Harstad, Norway. We were off the ship promptly as usual to check out the sights of this third largest town in northern Norway. Harstad's sights are kind of hidden from the functional downtown. So a modest hike out of town seemed appropriate.

We walked along the one of the main roads from the town center towards the historic settlement of Trondenes, passing well kept but mostly uninteresting homes. Little sight was made of the locals as usual. We finally came to a lovely lake after about 2½ miles of walking and shortly after finally got to our planned destination, the 1200s Tondenes Church. This is the oldest church in northern Europe and is built on the site of a 1100s church mentioned in a Norse saga. How cool is that! The thick walls and gun emplacement fenestrations spoke of both developing architecture and various uses of the building through its more than thousand year history.

We were most fortunate that one of the ship's tours had just arrived so that the church's doors (and the nearby Toileten building) were open. We wanted to see the church's priceless altarpieces which were imported from Germany in the 1400s. We walked around the extensive graveyard. A lot of folks died in Harstad since 1200 and seemed to all be buried at Tondenes. It was a bit surprising however to find a soviet monument just beyond the church along a coastal path. A nearby sign (in five languages) pointed out that this site had been a prisoner of war camp for captured Russian soldiers during the German occupation of Norway during WW II. Over 800 soviet prisoners had been buried here.

We returned to downtown Harstad to find that a major festival was in progress. As many as tens of well behaved Norwegian and a few bewildered passengers from Silver Cloud were being serenaded by a very well amplified group of Russian rock singers. We returned to the ship for a hardy lunch and a nap, feeling that we had "done" Harstad as much as could be done.

On to further north Tromso tomorrow. All I know from our research is that Tromso is, "the capital of the state of Troms, located on the island of Troms, and the headquarters for seal and walrus hunters." (I didn't know they were that organized.) In addition, the ship's brochure says that Tromso, "is known as the best place to observe the Aurora Borealis". We'll look forward to seeing the Northern Lights after the sun sets. Oh wait, it won't set here for more than a month longer. My GPS lists the sunrise and sunset times as "----" and "----". But the brochure goes on to state, "Movies are shown at the Science Center of Northern Norway, where one can lean back in comfortable chairs to watch a beautiful film shot in the region of the Aurora." But there is a cable car in Tromso, and perhaps we can get a nice meal of salt cod and after a bank loan, a nice beer.