It’s about 1:30 PM here and we’re about an hour and a half gone from Trondheim, the ancient capital once called Nidaros, founded by Olav Tryggvason. The sun, since it crawled up at about 9:00AM has been hovering about a hand’s span above the horizon. We got up early this morning and took a bus ride through town which took us to a vantage to see the city from above. Because of the geography most of the places we visit have something like that but the view from this one was particularly spectacular. We also went through the university here which is fairly large. There are something like 20,000 students out of 180,000 total population in the city. We saw a fortress on a hill and then went into the city center to the Nidaros Cathedral which is built on a bend in the river in town. It is a beautiful building with a large rose window in the front and three rows of statues of saints and other religious figures in alcoves along the outside around the window and entrance. Inside, under the window, is an enormous pipe organ that is currently being renovated for the coming 200th anniversary of the Norwegian constitution. The organ has something like 9000 pipes according to our tour guide.
We walked back through town and got a little taste of daily Norwegian life. There was a mall with a McDonalds and a bunch of clothing stores including one called “Bik Bok” which I think is a great name but is probably just “stuff and things” in Norwegian. I’m still trying to keep up with the picture uploads but the quanity of neat stuff and the intermittent internet are conspiring against me. I did make some progress this afternoon though so I’m through yesterday evening at least.