When you think of Scandinavian furniture your first thought will likely be IKEA. The giant Swedish furniture company has provided affordable furniture to Swedes since the 1940s and worldwide starting from 1963 with their first store in Norway.

But IKEA isn’t the only contributor to Scandinavian design. In fact, arguably, it’s the least important, at least in terms of design. Throughout history, Scandinavian designers have been creating furniture that has gone on to become iconic and renowned around the globe.

Let’s take a look at some of the most striking examples of furniture design from the Scandinavian countries and their Nordic neighbours.

A modern design developed over centuries

The Scandinavian style developed organically over a number of centuries, but what we mostly think of today was really honed in the mid-20^th century, when global trade in both goods and ideas became much easier. As with most major styles, the Scandi style grew up around two main factors.

Firstly, you have the materials that are available. Scandinavia is rich in forest land so it’s only natural that wood has always played a key role. Natural textiles are also easily crafted from both plant and animal sources. There’s also a slight lack of the more vivid dyes required to make bold, vibrant colours so shades would tend to be more muted.

Secondly, there’s the conditions you have to deal with. Scandinavian winters, especially in more Northern areas can be long, cold and dark. This means that lighter colours dominate, to reflect more of the natural light available.

Also, with a fair amount of rain and snow around, carpets are a rarity. Wet carpet is more of a liability so homes will mostly have wooden floors, which help make smaller rooms feel bigger and also cleaner. Warmth gets added to rooms with rugs in the commonly used areas.

Pinpointing design principles

We can characterise the Scandinavian style broadly as being fairly minimal, with monochrome bases accented with pastels and earthy tones. Splashes of colour are often included for visual interest but on the whole, there’s great use of brown, beige and light green tones.

There’s also an emphasis on lighting, as the dark nights mean people need to maximise the light from powered sources, without wasting too much. Lamps are common, to focus the light where it’s needed. After all, if a person is only occupying a corner of a room, there’s no need to waste resources lighting up the whole place!

The minimalist ideas, and the desire to avoid clutter, means that it’s easy to overdo. Once you add too much furniture you move past Scandinavian design into something else. A couple of chairs and a small sofa makes a nice Scandinavian room, but add much more and it loses its core identity.

The design principles also both feed into and extend out of the culture of cosiness and contentment that are known as hygge. In contract to the stark minimalism of come countries, Scandi design lends itself to creating places that have a cosy simplicity.

Arne Jacobsen

Many, but by no means all, of the most famous designers associated with Scandinavian design are Danish. In fact, at least ten of the most iconic chair designs are the work of just two Danish designers.

Arne Jacobsen was primarily an architect, who happened to create some of the world’s most enduring furniture too! His architecture was primarily functional, but inspired by others such as La Corbusier, refused to accept that functional had to mean ugly or boring.

Three of his most loved chair designs came about in the late 1950s when he took on the job of designing the SAS Royal Hotel in Copenhagen (now the Radisson Collection Hotel, Royal Copenhagen). This was the city’s first skyscraper.

Designing everything from the building, through the interiors, to the cutlery in the restaurant and the ashtrays sold in the hotel shop, Jacobsen gave us the iconic Egg, Swan and Drop chairs as part of this project.

Among other designs of his, we have the Series 7 Chair, one of the most practical, and copied, stacking chair designs created, as well as the Egg table and the Oxford Table Lamp.

Hans J. Wegner

The second of our prolific Danish dynamos was Hans J. Wegner. Despite Jacobsen giving us many iconic chair designs, Wegner is truly the ‘Father of the Chair”. Over his career he designed over 500 different chairs.

At least 100 of those entered mass production and many are iconic designs that are still available today.

From the age of 14, Wegner worked as an apprentice cabinetmaker under H.F. Stahlberg, where he developed an affinity for working with wood. He designed his first chair at the age of 15 before joining the army at 17. An exhibition by the Copenhagen Cabinetmakers Guild inspired him to become a furniture designer 

As a student, one of his first commissions was to work under Arne Jacobsen and Erik MĂžller to design the furniture for the Aarhus City Hall, which they were designing together.

In 1938 he took a break from his studies to work on the project but delays due to World War II meant he ended up working firstly on the Nyborg Public Library.

He never returned to his studies and ended up opening his own studio in Aarhus. After the war he returned to Copenhagen and it’s there that he produced his most recognisable designs.

The Peacock Chair came in 1947 and the Wishbone Chair and Round Chair both came in 1949.

The 1950s brought us the much lover Papa Bear Chair and in the 1960s, the playful Ox Chair – with or without horns – and the beautiful Shell Chair that was admired by designers but hated by people who actually had to sit in it!

Other notable Danish designers

Kaare Klint is often referred to as the Father of modern Danish furniture design. His most notable piece is the Safari Chair. Inspired by the directors chairs of American movie productions, Klint set about making a stylish version for home use.

It features a wooden frame with fabric seat and back with leather straps for arms.

Coming a little later than the others, Verner Panton was a designer who is most notable for using plastic. The Panton Chair, his most enduring legacy, is a stackable chair moulded from a single piece of plastic – the first of its kind in the world.

Finn Juhl was known for pushing wood to its very limits. Creating curved wooden pieces, usually out of dark woods such as teak rather than the more popular oak, his major legacy is the Chieftain Chair. It features a curved wooden back, curved seat and curved arms, upholstered in leather.

A contemporary of Hans J. Wegner, Borge Mogensen actually employed his fellow designer for a time. The best example of his design is the Spanish Chair, a wooden armchair with saddle leather for the back and seat.

Nanna Ditzel studied under Klint and others in Copenhagen in the 1940s. She designed jewellery, textiles and cabinets but her best loved work is the Hanging Chair. Often known as the Hanging Egg Chair.

Not to be confused with Jacobsen’s Egg Chair, the appearance is more like Henrik Thor-Larsen’s Ovalia Egg Chair, best known as the chair Will Smith drags across the floor in Men in Black.

The Hanging Egg Chair is a self-contained chair hanging from a chair attached to a metal pole. It allows free movement with rotating and swinging motions.

Norway and Sweden

While it’s true that the worldwide image of Scandinavian design comes mostly from Denmark, there are a couple of notable designers from Norway and Sweden to know about.

The biggest contributor to Scandinavian design to come from Norway was Ingmar Relling. Working primarily in wood with leather upholstery, the Siesta Chair is a design classic that has been seen around the world, including in the White House!

Other designs include the Orbit, a beautiful chair with a curved wooden base on two legs, with a sumptuous matching ottoman to rest your weary legs. The Daybed is a sofa with attached table that folds out to give a comfortable pillow that’s perfect for a quick nap.

As one of the few female designers in the mid-century Scandinavian design scene, Sweden’s Greta Magnusson-Grossman did more than most to popularise the concept around the world. After establishing herself as an architect and designer in Sweden, she moved to California in 1940 at the height of World War Two.

There, Great opened a studio on Rodeo Drive, selling premium Scandinavian furniture and homewares to the rich and famous in Beverly Hills. Alongside this, she designed fourteen houses in Los Angeles, earning a reputation for making the most of ‘difficult’ plots that were oddly shaped, small or in awkward places like halfway up a hill!

Greta’s most enduring legacy can actually be seen in the design of lamps. Most notably, the Cobra Desk Lamp and the Grasshopper Floor Lamp. The desk lamp featured an adjustable neck that has been copied in thousands of lamps since and the floor lamp has a thin, minimalist design to allow it to fit in the tightest of spaces.

Alvar Aalto

Moving slightly away from Scandinavia, there are several Finnish designers whose work embodies the principles developed in Denmark, Sweden and Norway.

Born in the late 19^th Century Alvar Aalto was one of the first Finnish designers. Also working as an architect, and including textiles and glassware, he is best remembered for two pieces.

The Model 60 Stool is a stacking stool from 1933 that is still in production today. It was originally designed for the Viipuri Library in Vyborg as a relatively cheap stool that could be stacked neatly when not needed.

Experimenting with bending wood, Alvar created a stool that required no joinery and so could be mass produced easily. With bent legs and seats in a variety of colours, the stools look as beautiful stacked as they do in use.

They can be seen the world over in Apple Stores where, along with his similar High Stool they provide seating for customers.

One other notable contribution to design is the Aalto Vase. Using rippled sides round an oddly shaped base, the vase cleverly evokes the shape of waves on the water, as a nod to the water inside.

Eero Saarinen

Possibly the most famous designer on the list to many Americans, Eero Saarinen is maybe best known as the designer of the Gateway Arch in St Louis and the main terminal at Washington Dulles International Airport. Born in Finland, Eero moved to the US with his family at the age of 13.

In furniture Eero designed the Tulip Chair. Instantly recognisable with its round base, thin stem and red upholstery, the design was one of a long line of collaborations with the American office furniture manufacturer Knoll.

This chair gave rise to the ‘Pedestal Group’ of similar furniture including a stool, side chairs, arm chairs and a range of tables.

Eero Arnio

Similar to Verner Panton of Denmark, Eero Arnio worked primarily in plastics. In the 1960s he produced the Ball Chair, a more rounded version of the Ovalia Egg Chair and then later produced the Bubble Chair, which was a similar chair but suspended from the ceiling.

Because of their avant garde nature, his works were often included in science-fiction films in the 1960s and 70s. Another notable design was the Pastil Chair, designed to mimic the appearance of a beanbag but moulded out of a single piece of plastic.

His Tomato Chair is moulded to look like three spheres, with a space cutout to form a seat, like a clump of tomatoes. Finally, unsurprisingly, his Screw Table was designed to look like a large screw that had been driven into the ground.

Many of these iconic furniture designs from Scandinavia are available to view in museums. MOMA in New York has an extensive collection of furniture designs and similar museums in cities around the world also showcase design excellence.

Do you own any of these iconic pieces of furniture? If not, which one would you most like to see in your home? Let us know in the comments below.

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When you think of competitive skiing, you probably think of Alpine or downhill skiing where you strap two skis tightly to your feet and get from the top to the bottom of a mountain as quickly as possible. But the Norse people like to do things a little differently.

Nordic Combined brings two very different disciplines of skiing–cross-country skiing and ski jumping–together into one exciting and daring endurance event.

Cross-country skiing

The word ski comes from the Old Norse word skĂ­Ă° meaning stick of wood. Skiing was originally used as a means of transportation in snowy areas. The same concept developed independently in a number of areas around the world.

There’s evidence of skiing in Scandinavia going back at least 5,000 years so it’s widely considered to be the first place where it developed.

The practice started being used for recreation and sport in the 1800s. Unlike Alpine skiing, where skis are tightly connected to the boots at the front and the back, cross-country skiing only connects the boots at the front. This allows the skier to propel the skis forward more easily.

There are two main styles of cross-country skiing: Classic and Skating. In classic style, the skis are parallel and this is mostly used on prepared pistes with two well-worn tracks or on fresh snow. With the skating style, the skis are used at an angle and the motion is similar to skating.

As early as 1767, a Danish-Norwegian general codified four disciplines of cross-country skiing for military competitions. One of these was ‘long racing', in which skiers wearing full military kit would race for 15 minutes over flat ground.

The sport developed further over the years and competitions were held in Norway and, eventually, other countries. It was contested at the first Winter Olympics in Chamonix, France, in 1924.

Ski jumping

Possibly the most terrifying form of skiing imaginable, ski jumping involves skiing straight down a long, steep, curved ramp before launching into the air and landing as far down the hill as possible.

The recorded origins date back to 1808 when Olaf Rye recorded a jump of 9.5m – not much by today’s standards but still impressive. The first competition with prizes was held in HĂžydalsmo in 1866. This was won by Sondre Norheim, who is considered to be the ‘father of modern ski jumping.'

Unlike most jumping events, it’s not simply the furthest distance that wins in ski jumping. Distance counts towards the points total but style points are decided by judges and added on. This means that the technique used is also important.

Distance is measured relative to a K-point, set at 90 or 120m from the takeoff point. Competitors are awarded a set number of base points (usually 60) for reaching the line, with extra points per metre over, and points deducted if they fall short.

Read more: Fun Facts About Skiing

The five judges award up to 20 style points each based on ski steadiness in flight, body position, balance and landing. Since 2009, gate and wind factors have been added.

Because aerodynamics play an important part in distances, if the wind changes direction scores can be adjusted to take account. Likewise, gate position is sometimes moved to make sure skiers can reach a proper take-off speed before the end of the ramp.

Like the other Nordic discipline of cross-country, ski jumping featured in the first Winter Olympics in 1924 and has been contested ever since. This was also when the Olympics was introduced to the more arduous sport of Nordic Combined.

Combining the Nordic disciplines

In competitive skiing, most participants choose and stick to a single style, be it downhill, jumping, cross-country, etc. Each style is very different and the skills involved are unique to their section.

Combining the two, rather like a triathlon combines swimming, running and cycling, means that those taking part need to be proficient in both the endurance of cross-country and the daredevil adrenaline rush of ski jumping.

The first major competition took place at the Holmenkollen ski jump in Oslo in 1892. It quickly proved popular, and regular competitions continued. In the 1920s, there was even a Royal connection as future King Olav V, then Prince Olav, competed in the Holmenkollen competition.

Along with its two constituents, Nordic Combined featured at the first Winter Olympics in 1924. 

The sport originally started with cross-country, followed by ski jumping. This was reversed in the 1950s when leads in the cross-country were becoming impossible to overcome in the jumping section.

Gunder Gundersen

The that’s in use in most modern competitions was eventually established in the 1980s, by Gunder Gundersen. In this, the winner in the ski jump starts the cross-country section first, followed at intervals based on placement.

Each point in the ski jump is worth a time penalty (4 seconds in the individual race, since 2008). The winner, then, is simply the first person to cross the finish line.

Proving that sport is universal, the Gundersen Method has since been applied to other multi-sport events including the Modern Pentathlon where the start of the cross-country race is staggered based on points accrued in the other disciplines.

Nordic Combined competitions

Like all skiing competitions, Nordic Combined is regulated and overseen globally by the International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS).

The three main international competitions for Nordic Combined are the Winter Olympics every four years, the FIS Nordic World Ski Championships every two years and the FIS Nordic Combined World Cup every year.

It can be quite confusing at first, as the World Cup isn’t a single competition but a series of meetings over a whole ski season. It bears a lot of similarities to the Tour de France cycling competition and, in fact, the current leader is awarded a Yellow Bib to wear. The winner isn’t from a single event but over the course of many.

The World Cup currently consists of four types of events. Firstly, the Individual Gundersen with a single ski jump in the morning, followed by a 10km cross-country race, with starting times decided by the points in ski jumping. This makes up the majority of World Cup events.

Occasionally Mass Start events, where the cross-country event takes place first and skiers start together in one big group. Their result provides a points advantage or disadvantage in the ski jump, as in the original days of the sport.

The Nordic Combined Triple is arguably the most gruelling. Over three days, with competition each day. On day one there’s the Prologue – a single jump and a 10km ski. On the second day, the Individual Gundersen, the best 50 from day one compete in a single jump and a 15km ski.

On the third day, the Final Individual Gundersen, the best 30 go forward to compete in two jumps and a 20km. This is a winner-takes-all event, earning extra points towards the skier’s total as well as prize money just for the event.

Read more: The History of Skiing in Norway

The two remaining competitions are for teams. The Team Event involves a team of four. Results from their four ski jumps are combined to give their position. This is then followed by a 5km ski-relay. The Team Sprint is for two skiers. Their ski jump scores are combined again and used to determine their position in the sprint ski. Each of the pair skis 7.5km for a total of 15km, but in alternating laps of 1.5km.

The 2022-23 World Cup started in Ruka, Finland, with the Ruka Tour, in November 2022 and made its way through Norway, Austria, Estonia and Germany (the French leg had to be cancelled due to poor conditions) before finishing in Lahti, Finland, in March 2023.

The Triple took place in Seefeld, Austria, the Team Event took place at the World Championships in Slovenia and was not included in the World Cup reckoning. The Team Sprint was included, and that took place in Lahti, along with the final Individual Gundersen.

World Cup results

The 2022-23 World Cup was won overall by Johannes Lamparter of Austria with 1367 points. In second was Jens LurĂ„s Oftebro of Norway followed by Julian Schmid of Germany. The reigning champion of 4 years, Norway’s Jarl Magnus Riiber came in fourth place.

The trophy for Best Ski Jumper went to Japan’s Ryƍta Yamamoto, perhaps unsurprisingly as he has achieved the second longest ski jump in history! The trophy for best skier went to Norway Jens LurĂ„s Oftebro.

The Nations Cup, awarded to the country with the most points overall, was won by Germany with 4295, ahead of Norway with 4168 and Austria with 4053. Fourth placed France only managed 1393, showing how dominant Germany, Norway and Austria are in the competition.

As for total medals, that was dominated by Norway with 22 out of a possible 34 Gold plus 12 Silver and 7 Bronze. Their 41 medals didn’t quite double second-place Austria’s 22 but it was close! Germany managed 25 (but fewer Gold than Austria) to finish third. That’s 88 out of a possible 102 shared by just three countries.

Women in Nordic Combined

Opening up Nordic Combined to women has been a very recent and slow process. 2020-21 was the first season with a women’s World Cup in the sport. There was hope that it might be included in the Winter Olympics in Beijing 2022 but the IOC refused saying the sport “needed time to develop a competitive scene”.

Apparently, however, they don’t feel that four years is long enough. They have already ruled that Nordic Combined will once again be the only Men’s only sport at the Winter Olympics in 2026.

Part of the problem is that, as they say, the sport doesn’t have enough competitors to make it much of a spectacle. So far, one competitor, Norway’s Gyda Westvold Hansen, has basically dominated all of the women’s world cup events. She won every event at the 2022-23 Women’s World Cup with 1000 points, almost double her nearest rival’s 589.

Unfortunately, this has led the IOC to look at the men’s sport too. Even though it has been fiercely contested in every Winter Olympics to date, its future is far from assured. The inclusion of Nordic Combined in the 2030 Winter Olympics may be in doubt.

The IOC feels that the audiences are too low and there’s little public interest. Further, the domination by just three nations and the relative lack of nations even sending competitors makes it not a true global sport.

Hopefully the IOC won’t make any hasty decisions and we will see this excellent Nordic sport continue to survive. However, much like football, the Olympics is far from the pinnacle of the sport. So perhaps it’s not a great problem.

After all, we’ll still have the FIS World Cup to watch and that’s where the real action happens.

Have you ever watched Nordic Combined? Perhaps you've even given it a try? Let us know in the comments below.

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A city that has been dubbed the ‘Barcelona of Norway’, Kristiansand is a small but vibrant city in the south of the country. But the city can trace its history all the way back to the Stone Age.

Join me as I take you on a journey through the city’s history, from early beginnings to the modern city we know today.

Location

Located in the far south of Norway, Kristiansand is the southernmost major city in the country. It can be found by following the coastal road E18 straight down from Oslo. The city lies on the Skagerrak, the strait between Denmark and Norway.

This location makes it ideal as a port and until the opening of the Kiel Canal in 1895 it was a crucial city in terms of maritime trade.

It’s still a busy port today and is a popular cruise ship port. The city is the most important stop on the railroad between Oslo and Stavanger for freight coming from or going to the rest of Norway.

Prehistoric Kristiansand

The earliest evidence we have of human life in Kristiansand dates to 6500BCE. A well-preserved skeleton of a woman was found in SĂžgne in 1996 that was dated to approximately this time.

Grauthalleren, located on Fidjane is believed to be a stone age settlement, which would put it at somewhere between 4000 and 2000 BCE.

A neolithic ritual enclosure known as a Sarup was discovered at Hamresanden in 2010 and this dates back to 3400 BCE. Excavations near Oddernes Church have uncovered settlements dating back a few centuries either side of the start of the common era.

These settlements are unique in Norwegian history as most of the evidence we have from this period points to isolated farms rather than settlements of many different buildings. Other excavations near the church have uncovered the largest pre-Christian burial ground in Norway.

The stone church itself was originally built in 1040 but there’s evidence that one or more wooden churches existed on the site before. This all points to the fact that the area likely had a fairly large population before the Black Death arrived in Norway.

There was a busy port and village by the River Otra, on the lowest point of modern-day Lund, and a harbour on the island of FlekkerĂžy in the 15^th and 16^th centuries.

The harbour was fortified under King Christian III in 1555 and in 1635, King Christian IV ordered a Royal Palace to be built there.

Christianssand

King Christian IV is known to have founded a large number of towns. He visited the area of modern-day Kristiansand in 1630 and 1635 and then, finally, in 1641 formally founded the town of Christianssand on the opposite bank of the River Otra.

The town was laid out in a grid style, as can still be seen today in ‘The Quarters’ (Kvadturen). Merchants from around Agder were given Royal privileges and tax-exemptions to move to the new town.

In 1666 the town was heavily fortified and became a garrison town, then in 1682, Christian IV ordered the bishopric to move there from Stavanger.

Christianssand suffered from a devastating fire in 1734 that tore through the town damaging or destroying many of the buildings.

Maritime history of Kristiansand

Later in the 18^th century, between the American Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, the town was a major centre for ship building. It’s the only area in Norway where Oak trees grow well, which are important for building sturdy ships.

The Napoleonic Wards brought disaster to the town. As an ally to the French, Denmark-Norway suffered relentless attacks from the British. The continental blockade and dangerous naval warfare made it difficult for any of the merchants to trade.

It was only in the 1830s that that town began to recover. Shipbuilding gathered pace in line with the growth in the Norwegian shipping industry. There was also a great number of lobsters proliferating on the coast, which were trapped and shipped to the markets of London.

A healthy town

One development which saved countless lives was the establishment of a quarantine station for maritime traffic and a hospital at OdderĂžy Island.

At the time, cholera was rife throughout Europe and thousands were dying. In comparison with Drammen, where between 1833 and 1866, 366 of 544 patients died, Kristiansand had only 15 deaths in the same period.

The 19^th century also saw the establishment of Eg Sindssygeasyl, the second psychiatric hospital in the country. This led to an influx of highly trained doctors and related professionals. It also served to provide a larger number of jobs for women in nursing and patient care.

Twentieth-century Kristiansand

Like most of the world, the story of 20^th century in the area is one of industrialisation. The rapid proliferation of hydropower in the south of the country led to a rise in heavy industries, and much more cleanly than countries that relied on burning coal for fuel. A nickel refinery was established, which still exists to this day.

While the First World War devastated much of Europe, for Kristiansand, as a neutral trading town, it was an economic boom.

This didn’t last long, however, as the problems with the Gold Standard in the 1920s, along with the world economic crisis of the 1930s – the Great Depression – severely curtailed spending and, like all trading towns, Kristiansand suffered.

The Second World War, unlike the first, was a terrible time for the town. The German navy and air force attacked the town severely until, after two failed attempts, they managed to capture and occupy the city.

After the war, rebuilding led to great developments in Lund and VĂ„gsbygd. Industry started to suffer, as in many places, during the 1980s but the town revitalised itself quickly, becoming a key area for marine and off-shore equipment and drilling technologies.

In the year 2000, one of the darkest days in Kristiansand occured when the bodies of two young girls were discovered two days after they went missing. The Baneheia case, named after the recreational area in which they were found, would go on to become Norway’s biggest ever judicial scandal.

What’s in a name?

Kristiansand is named after the Danish King Christian IV who founded the city on 5^th July 1641. The ‘sand’ refers to the sandy headland that the city was built on. 

It was originally spelled Christianssand, occasionally Christiansand, until 1877 when spelling reform to make place names sound ‘more Norwegian’ came into place and it became Kristianssand.

Some historic companies still retain the original spelling in their names. In 1889 a further change took place to drop an s, giving us the Kristiansand of today.

In 2012, the mayor proposed reverting to Christianssand as being more historically accurate and traditional but this did not receive widespread support among the population.

Experience history in Kristiansand today

Kristiansand boasts a large number of museums where you can discover more about the history and culture of the area. While they’re all worth some of your time, the best ones are described below.

The is an open-air museum where you can visit a large number of old houses dating all the way back to 1585. These are arranged into a couple of farmyard areas and there’s a school classroom from the 1800s. You can get a guided tour through the museum and learn all about the history and culture of the area.

At MĂžvik, just outside Kristiansand, you can find the Cannon Museum (kanonmuseum). The cannon battery from the second world war is the second largest cannon mounted on land.

Along with one in Denmark it was used to control shipping in the Skagerrak. Part of the ammunition railway has been reopened so passengers can enjoy a train ride around the area.

Built inside the only existing Gestapo headquarters from World War II, The ARKIVET Peace and Human Rights Centre is a fascinating look at one of the most gruesome periods in modern Norwegian history.

The story of the war is conveyed through a series of permanent and temporary exhibitions and is a must-visit for anyone keen to see how the war played out in Norway.

Finally, the Natural History Museum and Botanical Garden offers a much more sedate experience. You can see how natural history changed from the Ice Age to the present day. Highlights include a mineral exhibition, Norway’s largest collection of cacti and a rose garden dating back to 1850.

Kristiansand today

The modern city is one of Norway’s most popular places to visit. The city attracts around one million tourists each year, to enjoy its wide range of attractions.

It is well worth a visit for anyone, as it can provide a beach holiday, city break and history tour all in one fairly small and accessible location.

Have you visited Kristiansand or is it on your bucket list? Let us know in the comments.

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Norway has a long association with trolls, from ancient texts and fairy tales to the more recent media of TV and cinema. Not to mention their ever presence in Norway’s souvenir shops!

In a similar way to recent TV series reigniting interest in the Viking Age, two recent troll-themed movies have increased interest in the mythology of trolls.

Trollhunter and Troll both take a fantastic look into this world but in very different ways. While it’s obvious that any well-made films coming out of Norway should be celebrated, sometimes we can have fun pitting them against each other!

Overall, it seems many of our readers prefer Troll but a few of you love Trollhunter more. So, why not take a look at the two, side by side, and see if we can come up with a winner?

An introduction to Trollhunter

The film from director AndrĂ© Øvredal was released in 2010. Trollhunter (Trolljergeren) tells the story, in fake documentary ‘found footage’ style, of a group of students investigating a series of fatal bear attacks in Norway.

Before too long, they meet up with a mysterious stranger who eventually leads them to realise that trolls are not only real but that they’re what’s actually behind the ‘bear attacks’. He’s the titular troll hunter who is quietly tasked with taking care of the problem while the inept government tries to keep it all covered up.

An introduction to Troll

From director Roar Uthang, the 2022 Netflix movie Troll is more of a traditional ‘creature feature' in the mould of King Kong. A company blasts its way through a mountain to build a tunnel, only to awaken a mountain troll that lives there.

The Troll them goes on a rampage through Norway and it becomes a race against time as a team of scientists and soldiers try to distract the troll before it turns its attention on the highly populated capital, Oslo.

Now, let's compare the two movies in terms of storyline, acting, mythology, landscapes, direction, and much more.

Storylines

The storyline in Troll is a clear attempt to show the link between environmental destruction and the trolls. The troll is awakened by workers blasting a tunnel through the mountains.

Just like Godzilla is a response to mankind’s obsession with nuclear weapons, Troll offers a timely reminder that environmental destruction will ultimately cause us more problems than it solves.

In Trollhunter, questions about the environment are raised, but in a much less obvious way. Instead, the movie leans more into Norway’s bureaucracy as a key element. Trolls are a Norwegian ‘problem’ that the government are ineptly trying to keep quiet for fear of raising panic.

Both of the storylines are great, so it’s tough to choose. But for me Trollhunter offers a slightly different storyline to the obvious ones that we usually see in the movies.

Winner: Trollhunter

Acting

A lot of the time, acting is all about the script. If you have a great script, you can get a good result with less-skilled actors. The real magic comes when you have great actors who bring out the best of a bad script.

In Troll, the script is
well
it’s not great! It’s cheesy, and the whole thing is filled with every trope such that you can almost predict what the actors are going to say before they say it. Ine Marie Wilmann as the scientist Nora Tiedemann is very good at delivering these lines in a way that minimises their obvious nature.

Trollhunter is more of a comedic film, with a good comedy script being played well by good comedy actors. Otto Jespersen as Hans, the titular Trollhunter, gives a great comedic turn as the gruff and unfriendly character. His dry delivery and perfect timing is one of the things that makes the movie so great.

Both films have some great acting, and showcase a more down-to-Earth and wry Norwegian style rather than the over the top American style that we’re more sued to. For me, Troll slightly edges it here because the actors do a much better job of turning the trite, clichĂ©-packed script into something more believable.

Winner: Troll

Mythology

We all know the mythology of Trolls. They hide under bridges, they die in sunlight and they can smell the blood of Christians. Both films make good use of the elements of mythology.

Trollhunter briefly dares to ponder why it’s Christians and not Muslims, for example, that Trolls can smell. They also evoke the story of the Three Billy Goats Gruff with a troll under a bridge. As it’s a comedy film, they clearly know how to have fun with the subject.

Troll’s mythology seems a little more limited. There’s the sunlight element and the Christian element but they’re done in a slightly more ham-fisted way, as if they’ve been tagged in to a cut-and-paste storyline to make it more Norwegian. Many other reviewers have noted that it would probably be a better movie if it made more of these elements.

Winner: Trollhunter

Landscape

Any movie shot in Norway is bound to be beautiful. Even the big cities are only a few minutes away from breath taking countryside and postcard scenery. I’d challenge anyone to make Norway look anything less than perfect on a cinema screen.

In Troll the landscape is, in fact, a key element in the movie. The blast for the tunnel awakens the landscape itself, in rage at man’s actions. We see a lot of the scenery when the troll is rampaging.

As a found footage film, Trollhunter rarely focuses in long shots on the scenery and, because trolls hate sunlight, most of it happens in the dark. It has some beautiful shots, however, especially when the students are making their way around the country and it’s definitely a worthy contender.

Winner: Troll

The Directors

Trollhunter is the debut feature film by AndrĂ© Øvredal. He has since gone on to direct Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, written by Guillermo del Toro, and The Autopsy of Jane Doe and Mortal. His work is mostly related to horror and terror and weird things happening. 

His forthcoming film The Last Voyage of Demeter is based on a chapter in Bram Stoker’s Dracula telling the story of a ship sailing to London with a cargo of unmarked boxes. Set for release in August 2023, it stars Corey Hawkins and Aisling Franciosi.

Troll is the latest film directed by Roar Uthaug who had 5 previous works under his belt. The main one that he is known for is the 2018 reboot of Tomb Raider starring Alicia Vikander as Lara Croft. Other works include disaster movie The Wave, and Cold Prey.

Uthaug’s work is generally closer to the big disaster movies, with huge earth-shattering events portrayed with stunning visual effects.

It’s always tough to compare two directors but with these two it’s perhaps easier. Both are Norwegian and both were born in 1973. Their films too have similarities and they clearly enjoy situations of terror and stress, along with some decent well-timed comedy moments.

Overall though, I think AndrĂ© Øvredal just edges it for me. As a debut feature, and with a pretty small budget, Trollhunter is an impressive piece of production. Netflix never confirm how much they spend on movies but it’s likely Troll cost much more.

Winner: Trollhunter

Compared to Other Films

The most obvious direct comparisons to Troll are the Japanese-style Kaiju monster movies. Godzilla and King Kong have been brought to screen so many times that every time there’s a remake it’s hard to imagine why!

While Troll is better than a few of these adaptations, it falls way short of the big-budget versions. That said, it holds its own as being a worthwhile creature feature and it’s definitely a positive to see different ideas being brought in, rather than the same old monsters.

Trollhunter is often compared to The Blair Witch Project, which was one of the first and certainly the most enduring found footage films. It is not as directly terrifying, and it doesn’t use unseen, unspecified horrors off screen to hype up the tension.

Being played as a comedy is also a quite rare in the world of found footage movies. You get the tension and horror of the events as they unfold but you also get a rich seam of dry humour that’s typical of Norwegians.

If I was recommending a good creature feature, would I recommend Troll? Maybe, but I’d probably put it quite far down the list. But in terms of found footage, even with the modern resurgence of the genre with footage supposedly pieced together from laptops and mobile phones, such as 2023’s Missing, Trollhunters holds its own.

Winner: Trollhunter

By The Numbers

Remarkably, both films clock in at almost the exact same runtime. Troll is 1hr 43 while Trollhunter is 1hr 41! Length of movies isn’t really an indicator of quality though, so let’s just say they both tell their story efficiently without much padding. They’re well edited to come along, do what they need and then leave us when the time is right.

According to the critics they’re both pretty decent movies. On Rotten Tomatoes, both score over 80% among professional reviewers with Troll edging out Trollhunter slightly, 89% to 82%. These are both impressive stats though and again we can’t easily say there’s moch to choose between them here.

According to audiences, however, things are much different. Trollhunter pulls in a respectable 72% among audiences. For Troll, the picture is not so good. Only 50% of the audience said they enjoyed the movie so clearly it seems people prefer Trollhunter.

Winner: Trollhunter

Availability

As a Netflix film, Troll is readily available to watch at any time. Netflix don’t guarantee to keep everything online forever but for the time being, anyone with an account can watch in any of the many dubbing and subtitled options.

Trollhunter is a lot harder to get hold of. When I first saw it, it was on Netflix. Recently it has been removed and is only available to buy or to rent in the UK (this may differ in other countries). I’m obviously not averse to paying for movies, but this is a barrier to anyone who just wants to stumble across a movie to watch.

Winner: Troll

Should you watch Troll or Trollhunter?

When I started to write this article, I didn’t set out with an agenda. I honestly wanted to think deeply about them and see which one I think ends up on top.

I think the main thing to take away is that both films are great and are worth watching when you have the time.

The final score is close but with a score of 5 to 3, Trollhunter is my winner.

What do you think? Did I get the right winner? Let us know in the comments below.

The post Troll v Trollhunter: Battle of the Norwegian Movies appeared first on 51łÔčÏÍű.

Erling Haaland and Martin Ødegaard were rarely out of the headlines during the 2022-23 football season. For many months it looked as if Arsenal captain Ødegaard would lift the Premier League trophy. In the end, his fellow Norwegian Erling Haaland got his hands on the trophy.

Whether you call it football, soccer, calcio or fotball–as the Norwegians do–the beautiful game is both enjoyed and played in most countries around the world.

For players from countries where the game is played at a lower level, the only real chance to shine is by moving abroad to play for one of the big European clubs. While Norwegian football seems to be increasing in popularity, the best Norwegian players have enjoyed great success in other countries over the years.

Nowhere is that more true than in England. Haaland and Ødegaard might be making the headlines today, but so did a group of talented Norwegians back in the 1990s.

Why Norwegians succeed in England

There are a few good reasons why Norwegians often find themselves playing football in England. Firstly, the harsher climate in Scandinavia makes them more accustomed to the conditions in the English winter, where cold temperatures make playing slightly more tricky.

Players that sign for English clubs from warm countries in Africa and South America often find that the winters, or at least the first one, come as a complete shock as they’ve never encountered temperatures so low before!

People of Norway learn to speak English to fluency, removing one of the big barriers to playing sport in a foreign country. Players can hit the ground running and understand most of what the coach is telling them without an interpreter.

Finally, Norway and England are geographically pretty close and, in terms of timezones, only separated by one hour. That means if any problems occur, it’s not too difficult to head home to spend time with family or consult professionals in their own country.

“We were kind of pioneers at the time,” Lars Bohinen told . He was one of the stars of the ‘first wave' of Norwegians who played in English football in the 1990s.

“We didn’t make any waves, we were just constantly being professional and producing performances. I think that’s why we had so many players doing well in England,” he added.

A game of two Norsemen

The 2022-23 English Premier League was clearly dominated by two Norwegian players. Manchester City and Arsenal finished as the top two teams. With Erling Haaland and Martin Ødegaard as vital members of their respective teams, you could say it was a Two-Norse Race!

But whilst these two youngsters have enjoyed huge success in the EPL this season, they’re far from the first to do so. In fact, since the inception of the Premier League in 1992, an amazing 74 Norwegian players have graced Europe’s most exciting league.

Some are barely remembered, of course, in careers that never really took off. Others, however, will be remembered fondly by fans of their clubs – and some by fans of all clubs – as true footballing greats.

Both players are still closer to the start of their careers than the end. Join me as I take a look at the success they’ve enjoyed so far and how they compare to their parents’ generation of Norse exports.

Erling Haaland

Medal winner and breaker of all the records, Erling Haaland enjoyed a phenomenal first season in England. A scoring record of 52 goals from 51 games across all competitions is virtually unrivalled in the game. He has taken the record for most Premier League goals in a season beating Alan Shearer’s 34 in 1994-5.

More amazingly, he’s taken a record from 1931! The record of 50 goals across all competitions was set by Aston Villa’s Tom ‘Pongo’ Waring and looked unlikely to ever be broken. But with one EPL game left, plus the FA Cup final and Champions League Final, he’s already smashed that with 52 goals and could potentially put it even further out of reach.

Born in Leeds (on which, more later) Erling grew up mostly in Bryne, near Stavanger. At the age of 17 he made his debut for Molde and scored a modest 14 goals from 39 games. This was enough to tempt Red Bull Salzburg, where in a single season he amassed 17 strikes from 16 appearances.

This attracted the attention of Borussia Dortmund, who gave him 62 games in two great seasons, and he rewarded them with 67 goals. Finally, the Premier League came knocking and Manchester City signed him and he had the stellar season described above!

Martin Ødegaard

By comparison, Martin Ødegaard’s season might sound tame. He’s ‘only’ scored 15 goals from 36 appearances – much less than Erling’s 36! But that still places him at number 7 on the goalscoring charts for the season. And there’s one more important difference: Martin Ødegaard is not a striker but a midfielder!

In that context it’s a great season. He’s Arsenal’s top scorer – ahead of their two main strikers – and is the highest scoring midfielder in the league. In goal contributions (goals plus assists) he’s on 23, equal with Kevin de Bruyne who is arguably the best midfielder in the EPL.

Martin was born in Drammen, south-west of Oslo, in 1998. At the age of 11 he joined Stromsgodset’s youth team and over the next few years worked his way up through the ranks. When he was 17, he caught the eye of Real Madrid, who bought him for around €3m.

He enjoyed great success in their reserve team – Real Madrid Castilla – but Madrid then sent him out on a series of loans.

In 2020-21, Martin played only 8 times for Real Madrid and in the January transfer window made it clear that he’d like to leave. Madrid loaned him to Arsenal, where he found fairly instant success. He’d found a club that wanted him and knew how to play to his strengths.

At the end of the season, Arsenal bought him outright from Real Madrid for around €35m – not a bad profit for a few years of doing nothing!

After a great first season at Arsenal, Martin was made club captain ahead of the 2022-23 season and, as you can see, paid them back with their best season for years!

Norwegians in the 90s

Erling and Martin are not the only two Norwegians playing in Britain, but they are streets ahead of all others. It harks back to the first great influx of Scandinavians into English football back in the 1990s.

There were too many players to list them all here, so we'll just take a look at some of the biggest names.

Alf-Inge Haaland

Known affectionately as Alfie, Alf-Inge Haaland joined Nottingham Forest in 1993. His transfer took such a long time that it was started under manager Brian Clough and only completed under his successor, Frank Clark!

Mostly playing as a full-back and right-sided midfielder, his spell at Forest was successful and he was signed by Leeds United. He then went on to play for Manchester City who were, at the time, just recovering from a long period bouncing between the EPL and Championship.

His time in English football will mostly be remembered for a feud with Roy Keane. In a match early in his Leeds career, he taunted Keane on the ground, claiming he was feigning to get a penalty, when in fact he’d suffered a cruciate ligament injury.

Three years later, when they next met on the field, Roy Keane launched studs first into Alfie’ right thigh in what he later described as a pre-meditated attack due to the earlier incident!

But Alfie’s biggest contribution to English football is still evolving. In 2000, while he was still playing in Leeds, his wife gave birth to a son. That son they named Erling and, as you read earlier, he’s currently doing rather well for one of his dad’s old clubs, Manchester City.

Steffen Iversen

When it comes to kids outdoing their famous fathers, Erling Haaland is not alone! Steffen Iversen’s father, Odd Iversen was a highly prolific striker during his 18 year career in Norwegian football.

It’s hard to know how Odd would have fared abroad but if he was anything like his son then the answer would be very well! After a successful first season for Rosenborg at the age of 19, Steffen joined Tottenham Hotspur in 1996 for £2.3m. His debut came only 4 days after his last Rosenborg game!

In 1998-99, Steffen helped Spurs win their first major trophy for almost a decade, providing the assist for the Danish striker Allan Neilsen’s injury time winner. Steffen had also scored the winning goal in the semi-final against Wimbledon. He was top scorer that season, and the next, before a couple of years marred by injury.

In 2003 he joined Wolverhampton Wanderers on a one-year deal but he failed to regain his form, scoring only 4 times in 18 games. After that he returned to Norway for 7 years where he found instant success with VĂ„lerenga and then Rosenborg. He then returned to England for one last season, this time with Crystal Palace, but unfortunately the story was similar to the one at Wolves.

Lars Bohinen

Currently managing Norwegian Premier League side StabĂŠk, Lars Bohinen is best known among English football fans for his spells at Nottingham Forest, Blackburn Rovers and Derby County.

Known as a midfielder who chipped in with more than his fair share of goals, Bohinen also played for the national side. He scored 10 goals in his 49 appearances for Norway.

His managerial career has been less impressive, but he has managed several clubs in Norway's top tier including Sandefjord, Aalesund, Sarpsborg 08 and StabĂŠk. His son, Emil, followed his father into professional football and currently plays for Italian Serie A side Salernitana.

Henning Berg

One of the happiest accidents in Blackburn Rovers’ history, the manager Kenny Dalglish attended an international match between England and Norway in 1992 intending to check out Tore Pedersen.

He was injured, so Henning Berg took his place. Dalglish was so impressed he made buying him a priority, signing him in January 1993 for ÂŁ400,000. Tore Pedersen ended up signing for Oldham Athletic.

Henning quickly made himself a key member of the Blackburn Rovers defence. He was part of the side that won the Premier League title in 1994-95, in what to date is Blackburn Rovers’ finest achievement in football.

Two years later, Manchester United came calling and Henning moved there for £5 million – a joint-record at the time for a defender. He quickly settled into the side and enjoyed a season of being a regular before the arrival of Jaap Stam restricted his appearances. But when Manchester United won the league title in 1999, Henning Berg became the first player to win the Premier League with two different clubs.

Shortly afterwards, Henning returned to Blackburn, initially on loan, and enjoyed three more seasons, helping them win promotion back to the Premier League and then winning the league cup the following season. He then went on to join Rangers in the Scottish Premier League where he played his final season of professional football.

Ole Gunnar SolskjĂŠr

Saving the best for last, in my opinion by far the most successful Norwegian player of the older generation was Ole Gunnar SolskjĂŠr.

In the same year that Newcastle paid a then-record ÂŁ15 million to secure the striking services of Alan Shearer, Manchester United quietly bought the unknown 23-year old whose success at Molde had gone unnoticed by most.

The media expected Ole to play second fiddle to Cantona and Cole but scoring on both his debut as a substitute and his debut start, it soon became clear that Ole was not just there to make up the numbers.

He ended his debut season as Manchester United’s top scorer with 18 goals from 33 appearances. This earned him the nickname of the ‘baby-faced assassin’ for his youthful looks and ruthless finishing.

Over his eleven years at Old Trafford, Ole scored 91 goals in his 235 appearances in the league as well as 19 from 77 in the Champions League. He won every competition including a continental treble (League, FA Cup and Champions League) during a period where Manchester United were almost unrivalled in English football.

After retiring from playing in 2007, Ole spent 3 years coaching Manchester United’s reserves before joining Molde as manager where he found instant success. He briefly returned to England to attempt to save Cardiff City from relegation in 2014 but failed and returned to Molde.

Then, in December 2018, with Manchester United sacking Jose Mourinho after a poor run of results, Ole was announced as caretaker manager.

Ole’s time in charge of Manchester United was reasonably successful in some ways but failed to yield any trophies, or the kind of success that Manchester United fans demand.

Luckily for Ole he’ll always hold a place in their affections thanks to scoring the winning goal to secure the Champions League, and thus the continental treble, against Bayern Munich in 1999.

With success coming very early in their Premier League careers, it’s likely that Erling Haaland and Martin Ødegaard will go down in the history books as two of the greatest Norwegian footballers in the Premier League.

But it’s important to remember the players that went before them and blazed the trail that allowed them to follow.

Have you enjoyed watching any of these players play in the English Premier League? Let us know in the comments below.

The post Norwegian Footballers in the English Premier League: Then & Now appeared first on 51łÔčÏÍű.

Wherever you live in the world, you’ve no doubt heard of some Norwegian bands and singers. The likes of A-ha, Sigrid and Ylvis have all found success globally.

Of course, Eurovision fans will have heard of even more. Artists such as Alexander Rybak broke out with ‘Fairytale' after winning in 2009 and Alessandra Mele won huge numbers of fans this year with her epic ‘Queen of Kings' narrowly missing out on a podium finish.

But one of the country’s biggest bands is one you may well not have heard of. recently announced they were reforming after a long hiatus. It’s safe to say that news has been very well received in Norway and with their many fans around the world.

Join me as I take a deep dive into one of Norway’s most distinctive musical acts.

Selling lots of tickets

When a band sells out a 24-date tour in around 2 hours, that is often headline news around the world. The likes of Beyonce, Taylor Swift and Madonna have recently made such headlines – and often for the wrong reasons. Ticket prices these days tend to start at multiple hundreds of dollars and rise into the stratosphere.

Kaizers Orchestra announced that their return to the live stage would come almost exactly ten years after they last performed.

The final concert of their ‘Siste dans' tour (Last Dance tour) was in Stavanger in September 2013. They put a total of 24 dates up for sale – six each in Stavanger, Oslo, Trondheim and Bergen – starting in September 2023.

After ten years away from the music scene it can be hard to work out whether there’s any appetite for a revival. Nevertheless, they obviously hoped that these dates would sell well. In the end, selling well was an understatement!

The tickets for those first 24 dates sold out in around two hours. They then extended the tour until it included eight extra dates in each venue. So now they will play 14 dates in Stavanger in September, 14 dates in Oslo in October, 14 dates in Trondheim in November and 14 dates in Bergen in December.

Amazingly, all of the extra dates also sold out quickly. That’s around 130,000 tickets sold – not bad for a band you’ve never heard of! So let’s take a look at how Kaizers Orchestra got to where they are and what people who are lucky enough to have secured a ticket to one of their concerts can expect.

The origin story of Kaizers Orchestra

Kaizers Orchestra formed in 2000 by Janove Ottesen, Geir Zahl, Terje WinterstÞ RÞthing, Rune Solheim, Helge Risa and Jon SjÞen. Ottesen and Zahl had been playing together for many years, most notably in the bands Blod, SnÄtt & Juling and gnom.

These bands had produced a few minor records, selling a few hundred copies, but never quite gaining the traction required for success.

Towards the end of gnom’s existence Ottesen wrote a song called Bastard, a gravelly-voiced, carnival-tinged folk rock song that’s evocative of Tom Waits. This was always well received and so, moving forwards, Ottesen continued writing in this style and Kaizers Orchestra were born, with a unique style.

Some of the other members had played in other bands with Ottesen and Zahl, while others were known to them from the local music scene. They initially recorded an EP of 4 songs, and this received good radio play during by:Larm festival in 2000.

This then got the attention of an independent Swedish record label, Broilerfarm, and allowed them to record their first album, ‘Ompa til du dĂžr' (Dance Till You Drop).

The album was an instant hit with critics and audiences alike. It went on to win the Best Rock Album at the Spellemannprisen (Norwegian Grammies) in 2001 as well as two Alarm awards (the cool, underground music prize in Norway).

The second album, ‘Evig pint' (Eternal Torment), was released in 2003. This was not as well received at the time and failed to match the success of ‘Ompa til du dĂžr.' Over time, however, it has been reappraised as one of their mostly consistently good albums.

Hitting the big time in Norway and beyond

After two fairly successful records, and a large fan base built in Norway, Denmark and the Netherlands, it’s not surprising that a major label would start to take notice. They put together a 30-track demo, showcasing the best of their talents, and sent it to all of the major labels.

In August 2005, they released the album ‘Maestro' and announced an international record deal with Universal Germany, taking them instantly from one of the smallest record companies to one of the biggest in the world. Despite receiving positive reviews, the album didn’t sell as well as Universal had hoped, which the band attributed to poor marketing from Universal.

After Maestro came a live album, Live at Vega and a break from touring. In 2007, Geir Zahl’s brother, Jan, released a book entitled Kontroll pĂ„ kontinentet (Control on the Continent) about the band’s rise from obscurity to one of Norwegian music’s biggest exports.

2008 saw the release of their fourth studio album, Maskineri (Machinery), which earnt favourable reviews and led to a return to touring. They toured the album through the summer and then in the fall released their second live album 250 Prosent (250 Percent) featuring recordings from the Maskineri tour.

They then decided to spend the rest of 2008 touring 250 Prosent and mainly playing older songs that had been dropped from their recent setlists. This was then followed in 2009 by the album VĂ„re demoner (Our Demons). This was a collection of songs written throughout the Kaizers’ career that had never made it onto a record before.

Violeta Violeta

In February 2010, the band announced that their next album would actually be a trilogy of albums called Violeta Violeta.

The first single from this ambitious project, Philemon Arthur & The Dung arrived in August, followed by Hjerteknuser (Heartbreaker) in October. This rapidly became their biggest selling single and remains so to date.

The first album, Violeta Violeta Volume I finally arrived in January 2011. It received mixed reviews that were, overall, more positive than negative. In April, to coincide with their tenth anniversary, the band played a sell out concert at the Oslo Spektrum – one of the largest concert venues in Norway.

In the summer, they started introducing Violeta Violeta Volume II to the world, performing the album in its entirety at the Øya Festival in Oslo. They finally released the album in November 2011 along with a recording of the Oslo Spektrum concert as Live i Oslo Spektrum on CD and DVD/Blu-Ray.

In 2012, the band started teasing the final part of the Violeta Violeta trilogy with an innovative marketing campaign known as The Kaizervirus. The first single was finally released in September and the album swiftly followed in November.

The tour that followed the release of Violeta Violeta Volume III in 2013 was announced to be their last. They toured extensively in the autumn months, including their first ever date in the UK, and then on September 15^th, after a run of eight shows at the DNB Arena in Stavanger, they finally left the stage for the last time.

A unique sound

Kaizers Orchastra’s unique sound is a large part of the reason why they’re so popular. In trying to write this article I’ve looked constantly for comparisons and found both many and few. At their core is a multi-instrumental heart – rather noisy – that evokes the sounds of travelling carnivals.

On top of that, however, there are many other layers. Different songs can have very different sounds, covering many different genres of music.

From folk-rock all the way up to the epic sounds that fill arenas, Kaizers Orchestra have something for most tastes. This is probably what makes them Norway’s biggest Norwegian-language export outside of the very different world of Norwegian black metal.

One other thing that sets their music apart from most is that they write songs to tell stories. Most of their albums weave a series of fantastic tales all seemingly set in a world that’s as rich as that of Tolkien or even the Marvel Cinematic Universe!

With recurring characters and intertwined stories, that lends itself perfectly to an opera or musical and, in 2011, the musical Sonny was debuted, featuring music from their first three albums.

Dine gamle dager er nÄ

Of course, Kaizers Orchestra never announced they were splitting up. This was always billed as a long break, or hiatus, so it was always a matter of when, not if, they would get back together and return to the public eye.

In October 2022, nine years after they’d last been heard of together, the band announced they’d found some old t-shirts. They said they would be donating them to the charitable clothing shop, Fretex, where they’d bought their first stage costumes in 2001. Fans naturally flocked to get their hands on them and soon discovered something special.

The shirts had a QR code printed inside them that led to a website dinegamledagererna.no which, when accessed through the QR code told them they were ‘one of the 107’. Other users who tried to access the site simply saw a music box playing an unfamiliar tune.

Some users then received a physical music box along with another QR code, leading to an Instagram account. This account teased images and stories for two weeks before revealing a fully instrumental version of the music box tone, along with the numbers ‘7 11 19:07’.

On November 7^th at exactly 19:07, the video for the song Dine Gamle Dager Er NĂ„ (Your Old Days Are Now) premiered on their YouTube channel and then, finally, two days later the band officially announced their reunion and the huge tour of Norway.

The future of Kaizers Orchestra?

Obviously, fans are now eagerly looking forward to the forthcoming tour that will take up large parts of 2023. Also, people are excited for what else might be in store. The fact that a new song was released as part of the viral marketing campaign for the new tour certainly hints that more new music might be on the way.

With information surfacing that the reunion had been planned for at least two years in advance, it seems unlikely that they’d go to all this effort just for one last tour. Either way, it’s undoubtedly an exciting time for fans of Kaizers Orchestra both at home and around the world.

Have you heard of Kaizers Orchestra before? Are you a fan of their music? Let us know in the comments below.

The post The Story of Norway’s Kaizers Orchestra appeared first on 51łÔčÏÍű.

42 years after Norway first welcomed visitors to enjoy the world’s biggest winter sports event, the country took the opportunity to invite everybody back.

Playing an important role in boosting morale in the post-war years, the 1952 Winter Games in Oslo were deemed a success.

To say the event had changed between then and the Lillehammer Games would be an understatement. With almost treble the number of athletes and sports, awarding more than double the number of medals, the Winter Olympics had certainly grown.

Perhaps the biggest difference was the growth in media. As well as more spectators, the town would have to pay host to a global media village to beam live video, in real time, all around the world.

Would a small town, and not even a resort as people would know it, be able to handle this massive influx of people? Of course!

The games were, in fact, so successful and remembered even today as the most efficient games ever and, to some at least, not just the best winter games but the best games of any Olympics.

Lillehammer: Size isn't everything

Contrary to popular belief, Lillehammer isn’t the smallest place ever to host a Winter Olympics.

That dubious honour goes to Olympic Valley in California, close to Lake Tahoe. With a regular population of around 825, swelling to around 6,500 at the height of ski season, that’s never likely to be beaten!

Other small places have hosted it too, such as Lake Placid and St Moritz. But one thing they have in common is that they’re tiny places close to huge places.

Lake Placid is close to both New York City and Montreal while St Moritz, one of the biggest names in winter sports resorts, can be reached from Italy, Austria, and Germany with ease.

Like other resorts to host such as Albertville, it lies within a huge network of alpine resorts designed to scale up and down when needed. Obviously it's nice to have everyone staying locally but if you have major global cities within an hour that can massively help with infrastructure and logistics.

Lillehammer, on the other hand, is a small place in a country of small places! The country’s entire population is dwarfed by many of the world’s major metropolitan areas. Meanwhile Oslo, the capital, is smaller than most countries’ second, third and fourth biggest cities.

Yet the Lillehammer Winter Olympics of 1994 is fondly remembered by everyone involved and everyone who watched. 

In fact, the small size is probably one of the keys to Lillehammer’s success in hosting what is fondly remembered as the perfect games.

It’s a well-known fact that as places get larger, the sense of community can diminish. Being a small place, Lillehammer was able to offer the kind of personal and friendly welcome that much larger places would struggle to provide.

Welcoming the world to Lillehammer

When the location was announced, I’m sure there were more than a few journalists, competitors and fans looking around for the nearest map of Europe!

While being well known in Norway as a place to visit for winter sports, that’s within easy reach of most of the major population areas, Lillehammer didn’t have the instant recognition of alpine resorts like St Moritz or Chamonix.

Still, the location of the 1994 Olympic Winter Games was chosen as Lillehammer and so all eyes turned to Norway to see if they could repeat their successful turn as host nation from over four decades before.

This was the first, and as yet only, Winter Olympics to take place two years after the previous one. The winter and summer games had previously been held in the same year but in the mid-80s, the International Olympic Committee voted to separate the two events into alternating even-numbered years.

As is usually the case, the games started before the Opening Ceremony. Ice Hockey is generally the first sport to kick off to allow enough time to play all of the matches.

On the evening of February 12^th, at LysgÄrdsbakken, the arena surrounding the ski jump, the games were officially opened with the usual celebration.

All aspects of Norwegian life and culture were in the show, including traditional and SĂĄmi folk dancing, Telemark skiing and aspects of Norse mythology. The ceremony was hosted by the actress Liv Ullmann and explorer Thor Heyerdahl.

King Harald V officially declared the games open and the Olympic Flame was actually skied down the ski jump before lighting the cauldron!

The athletes and events

A total of 1738 athletes representing 67 countries participated at the Games in 61 events across 12 disciplines of six sports – Bobsleigh, Ice Hockey, Figure Skating, Speed Skating, Alpine Skiing and Nordic Skiing.

The Games featured stronger qualifying criteria than previous years to prevent weaker teams from competing. This was mostly from warmer nations, so the African participation fell from 19 athletes in 1992 to just three in 1994.

These rules didn’t apply to Bobsleigh events so the Jamaican team made famous by the film Cool Runnings was able to take part, along with teams from the U.S. Virgin Islands and Trinidad and Tobago.

The former Soviet republics of Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Ukraine and Uzbekistan all participated as independent nations following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

This was also the first time that Russia competed independently at the Winter Olympics, and the first time since 1912 that they competed as Russia at any Olympic Games.

Bobsleigh

Switzerland, Germany and Italy swept all six medals in the two-man and four-man bobsleigh events.

In the Luge events it was Italy, Germany and Austria who took all nine of the medals in Men’s Singles, Women’s Singles and Doubles events.

Ice Hockey

Twelve nations participated in 50 exciting games of fast paced ice hockey action. Norway failed to exit the group stage, along with Austria, Italy and France. Norway beat Austria in a play off to finish 11^th, condemning Austria to the last place.

After the quarter finals, where the Czech Republic, United States, Germany and Slovakia were eliminated, the remaining four teams ready to battle out for the three medals were Canada, Finland, Sweden and Russia.

Canada beat Finland and Sweden beat Russia to set up a final between Sweden and Canada. In the playoff, Finland thrashed Russia 4-0 to take the 3^rd medal spot.

In the final, Sweden tied the game with less than two minutes to go, forcing the game into overtime. The game was still tied at the end, and, in the shootout, Sweden’s keeper saved the 7^th Canadian shot to secure gold for Sweden, relegating Canada, Olympic Ice Hockey’s record nine-times gold medal champions, to a silver medal.

Figure Skating controversy

Figure skating was mired in controversy before the games even started. Champion US figure skater Nancy Kerrigan had been attacked and after a practice session just over a month before the games were due to start.

The attackers were known associates of her main rival Tonya Harding. The US Olympic Committee tried to ban Harding from the games but they relented under threat of legal action. All of this was huge global news at the time and served to make sure all eyes were on the Hamar Olympic Amphitheatre for the Ladies’ Singles.

In the end, gold was taken by neither American athlete as Ukraine’s Oksana Baiul won the country’s first even Olympic medal as a state in its own right following the breakup of the Soviet Union.

Kerrigan placed second to take the silver medal and bronze was taken by Chen Lu of China. Tonya Harding came in a very disappointing eighth place.

In the ice dance, a change to the rules allowed professionals to compete for the first time, seeing the return of former Olympic champions who had since turned professional. The gold medal was taken by Oksana Grishuk and Evgeny Platov of Russia with returning 1984 Olympic Champions Torvill and Dean of Great Britain taking the bronze position.

Speed skating

By comparison, the Speed Skating competitions were much more tame! In the Short Track speed skating, South Korea dominated, winning six out of the 18 medals, including four gold, one silver and one bronze.

Australia were perhaps the real winners, winning their first ever Winter Olympic medal – a bronze in the Men’s 5000m 

As usual, Norway dominated the Long Track competition, taking three gold and two silver out of the 30 medals on offer. Local hero Johann Olav Kloss won all three of the speed skating gold medals and managed to set a world record in each one!

Alpine and Nordic Skiing

With a total of 30 medals up for grabs in 10 different Alpine Skiing events, Norway ended up winning the most medals overall but only one gold, two silver and two bronze. Norway managed the only podium sweep of the entire tournament with gold, silver and bronze in the Men’s Combined.

Germany won three gold medals to top the table with the US in second on two gold medals. Overall, 10 out of the 46 nations who entered the Alpine Skiing competitions won medals. Vreni Schneider of Switzerland was the biggest individual winner, managing a complete set of gold, silver and bronze in Alpine Skiing disciplines.

In Biathlon – a combination of cross-country skiing and shooting – Russia dominated with three out of six gold medals and five out of 18 overall.

Cross-country skiing was led by Norway with three out of 10 gold medals and eight out of 30 overall. Italy, Russia, Kazakhstan and Finland won the rest of the medals out of the 35 nations to enter cross-country skiers.

Nordic combined was dominated by Norway, with gold and bronze medals in the individual and silver in the team. Japan picked up gold in the team and silver in the individual while Switzerland picked up the final bronze medal for team.

On the ski jump, Norway and Germany picked up three medals each but Germany topped the table with three gold, and one bronze to Norway’s single gold and two silver.

Closing ceremony

10 years after the 1984 games in Sarajevo, the eyes of the Olympic World turned once again to the city. The closing ceremony was dedicated to the Yugoslavian Civil War and the Siege of Sarajevo that were reaching their heights at this time.

After this tribute, the flag was handed over to the mayor of Nagano in Japan, which would host the 1998 games and their mascots, the Snowlets, were revealed for the first time. Thus, officially, the Lillehammer games drew to a close and all eyes turned to Japan.

The final medal table

Of the 67 countries to enter, almost one third – 22 countries in total – won medals.

Norway won the most medals with 26 and Russia won 23 but Russia topped the table by winning one more gold, giving them 11 to Norway’s 10.

Australia propped up the table with a single medal – bronze in the Men’s 5000m Short Track Speed Skating – the first Winter Olympic medal for the country.

Just ahead of them were Great Britain who also managed a bronze medal in speed skating, Men’s 500m, as well as the bronze won by Torvill and Dean in Figure Skating.

Legacy of the Lillehammer Winter Games

The legacy of the 1994 Olympic Winter Games can be felt in Lillehammer to this day. Moreso than any other similar town, there’s a sporting buzz that can be felt year-round.

Cycling is very prevalent and common, and in winter you will see people heading to the slopes for skiing and sledding every day.

Lillehammer is also home to an Olympic museum, that showcases both the history of the event as a whole as well as Norway’s role as hosts in 1952 and 1994 and, of course, their role as medal winners in every games!

Most people you talk to around the town remember hosting the games and a great many of them worked or volunteered to help make them a success.

There’s a great pride in the town about what was achieved and it’s amazing to see that, almost three decades after the games left town, there’s still a visible connection that endures.

What are your memories of the 1994 Olympic Winter Games in Lillehammer? Let us know in the comments below.

The post Lillehammer 1994: Remembering the Winter Olympics appeared first on 51łÔčÏÍű.

After two successful seasons, fans around the world, including myself, are eagerly awaiting a release date for the third. Sadly, it's been confirmed it will be the last, so we’re expecting big things as the tale draws towards its conclusion.

Ragnarok received mostly positive reviews, with 70% on Rotten Tomatoes. Audiences give it an 87% rating on the site, and the series also rates 7.5 out of 10 on IMDB. Clearly, they’re doing something right!

If you’re not already on board, this is the perfect time to take a look at where we’re at in the story. Hopefully this can convince you that it’s way past time that you dived into Ragnarok.

I’ve had to include a few minor spoilers here, but there’s nothing that will ruin your enjoyment of the series.

There’s something odd about the setting

The setting for the TV series Ragnarok is a fictional small town called Edda. This is named after the Eddas, the main sources of Norse Mythology compiled in the 13^th century by the Icelandic historian Snorri Sturluson.

When the producers were scouting locations for Ragnarok they didn’t have to look very far. The town of Odda is almost designed to be a perfect Norse Mythology location – and the name is only one letter away too!

Lying at the end of the lesser known SĂžrfjord and sandwiched between two national parks, the town looks like the whole of Norway distilled into one area.

Even better, however, is Trolltunga – a rock formation that juts out impressively from the landscape and appears to hover 700 metres above the lake, like a troll’s tongue.

Ragnarok uses Odda’s strengths well in telling its story. The town has everything you need in a supernatural teen drama: a school, a ‘hangout’ (in this case the Odda Grill), a supermarket, and a factory for the adults to work at.

It also has the Trolltunga where characters can strip naked and feast on a warm heart ripped directly from a frolicking reindeer!

The Norse Gods

Along with the usual problems that teens face, like finding partners and coping with parents, some of the teens have even more pressing problems. In fact, as the show goes along we discover that several of the teens are actually gods from Norse Mythology!

Magne, the main character, is the reincarnation of Thor, the famous God of Thunder. He’s slow to fully realise his powers, and at one point even begs to have them taken away. This is all part of how you come to terms with being a supernatural being.

Laurits, Magne’s brother, doesn’t seem to be all that special in the first season. He’s a bit of a joker, playing tricks on people and generally being the sort of ‘weird kid’ – popular but only to a point.

As time goes on, we find out that Laurits is basically Loki and he and Magne are only half-brothers.

Iman, who works at the elderly care home as well as being a student, is actually the goddess Freyja. Known for being very charming, Freyja was said to be able to convince anyone to do anything.

In the series, Iman initially uses this to get material possessions for free but eventually comes round to helping Magne.

Along with these, we meet Tyr, the God of War, in the guise of Harry the local mechanic. There’s also Wotan – eagle-eyed viewers will recognise this name – a one-eyed elderly man who eventually becomes Odin, the wise all-father.

Helping everyone come to terms with all of this is Wenche – the supermarket assistant –who is the one to unlock Magne’s powers and set all of the action in motion. This is the role of the seeress, Volven, who speaks of how the world will end if men, gods and monsters don’t change their ways.

Music to your ears

Any Netflix drama series needs a great soundtrack and Ragnarok is no exception. From the first episode to the last, music plays a huge part in setting the mood of the show. There’s a whole range of genres, from electronic bands driving the plot along, to mournful singers providing a backing for when our heroes are struggling.

Music itself plays a part in the plot of the series. Specifically, some characters use music to tap into their supernatural selves, most notably during the slightly cringey ‘school dance’ scene.

Fjor takes over the DJ booth and puts on some ‘music in the old language’ which inspires him along with Saxa and Laurits, to put on a dazzling display of dancing that enchants and captivates everyone around.

This scene is intercut with one of the school principal Ran, another of the giants, in her office getting down to some acts that you certainly wouldn’t expect of a teacher!

LGBT rights

One thing we know about Norse mythology is that nothing is quite clear cut when it comes to sexuality and gender identity. Loki is mostly perceived as a male but, amongst other things, gives birth to Sleipnir, Odin’s eight-legged horse.

So, when you map the stories into a modern context, it’s no surprise that LGBT issues come to the fore. In Ragnarok, this principally arises in the form of Laurits – the show’s Loki equivalent.

Laurits in the show is either gay or possibly bisexual. He’s very interested in both Fjor, one of the giants from the Jutel family, and also Jens, the main employee at the Edda Grill.

Through the series, the characters are trying to learn about Norse mythology both for school and also as they come to terms with who they actually are. This prompts Laurits to ask his teacher, if Loki gave birth, would that make him the first transgender person?

Laurits himself, while presenting as male, is not afraid to play around with gender image. He grows his hair long and at one point bleaches it blonde. He also wears nail polish and make-up as he seeks to express his identity.

Seeing representation like this, and how it is accepted by the people around the town, is great for the LGBT community.

It’s a perfect time to get up to speed

As I mentioned earlier, the third and final season is currently in the works . This means that now is the perfect time to get up to speed with the series in readiness for what is sure to be a grand finale.

At this stage you have plenty of time to get yourself acquainted with the characters before the final battles of Ragnarok start to appear on screen.

We don’t have a release date yet but we’re hoping, of course, that Netflix will take however long it needs to tell the story in the right way and give our heroes the ending they deserve!

You know what you’re getting into

Following on from that, of course, is the fact that, at only two seasons so far, Ragnarok is a pretty short series overall. One of the strengths of knowing when a series is ending is that you know exactly how much time you will need to devote to it.

While we don’t know how long season threewill be, if it holds true to the first two series, which have six episodes each, then that will bring the total to 18 episodes.

At around 45 minutes per episode that’s a little over 13 hours of watching pleasure. For most people who prefer to binge-watch their Norwegian TV, that’s less than a week!

I know that when I watched the first two seasons it took me less than a week, and I’m planning to finish the final season over two or maybe three nights when it finally drops.

Highlighting climate change

Norway is one of the countries at the forefront of the fight against climate change. Along with other countries with long coastlines and vast natural beauty, they have a lot to lose from rising sea levels and increasing temperatures.

And of course, Norway’s relationship with the climate is an odd one. While it’s forging ahead in some ways–98% of the country’s domestic electricity use is from renewable sources–it's also one of the world’s biggest extractors and sellers of fossil fuels.

is not unique to Norway, but it does mean the country is well placed to star in stories about climate change.

In Ragnarok, the climate is clearly positioned as the thing that everyone should care about, but nobody does. The Jutul family, with their huge factory, have been poisoning the water and contributing to the melting of the glacier that sits above the town. It falls to Isolde initially to try to raise the alarm.

The show does a great job of pointing out that, yeah, it’s fine to worry about climate change but what is the alternative? If the factory closes down, no one in the town will have a job.

This is one of the central issues facing climate change activists for years. Yes, we need to do something but until there are viable alternatives it will be impossible to change anything.

Above all, it’s realistic

One of the main things that critics have agreed on around Ragnarok is that its portrayal of small town Norwegian life is one of the most realistic available.

In stark contrast to most series, which aim to show either a perfect utopia or an unlivable hellscape, Ragnarok actually shows the world more closely to how it really is.

The school experience—though I must admit I’ve not spent any time in a Norwegian school—seems authentic.

Rather than the deep entrenched cliques and masses of bullying, there’s groups of friends but with a lot of overlap between them. It’s certainly a lot closer to how things were at my school in England, and everyone I’ve spoken to agrees.

One of the main strengths of filming in an actual small town and using its facilities is that you can easily show a real version of the world, even when lightning bolts are flying and giants are killing reindeer!

A great blend of the old and the new

More than anything else, Ragnarok, for me at least, does a great job of blending the old and the new. Bringing the Norse mythology forward into the modern world and mapping it onto modern day issues such as climate change and LGBT rights makes sense.

Nothing is ever going to feel perfect. Some of the mythology needs to be changed to fit around the lives of teenagers and their families in the modern world.

But the makers of Ragnarok have certainly made a decent attempt at answering the age old question “What if the Gods were just like us?”

Have you seen Ragnarok already? Have we inspired you to check it out? Let us know in the comments below.

The post 9 Great Reasons to Watch Ragnarok on Netflix appeared first on 51łÔčÏÍű.

If you’re up to date in the world of video games, or you binge everything the streaming services have to offer, you’ll no doubt have heard of the Norse concept of Valhalla. Most people imagine this as some kind of ‘Viking heaven’, and honestly, that’s a reasonable start.

But Valhalla is so much more than simply a Viking heaven. Valhalla is a hall of the slain, this is true, but it’s not simply a passive, eternal afterlife kinda deal.

So, join me as we take a deep dive into faith in the Viking Age and look at what really goes on in glorious Valhalla.

So, What is Valhalla there for?

At its simplest, Valhalla is where warriors killed in battle go after death. All mythologies have afterlife components and Norse mythology is no exception.

The people who reside in Valhalla are known collectively as the Einherjar. This is the plural of Einheri, literally ‘army of one’, so they’re the most fearsome and brutal of warriors.

Even though they may be dead, and passed on from the living realm, that’s not the end of their days. Instead of sitting around on clouds, playing lutes, the Einherjar actually have important work to do. They have to prepare for the events of Ragnarök.

Ragnarök, another well-known but poorly understood Norse concept, is similar to armageddon or the end of days. Usually taken to mean ‘the final destiny of the Gods’, a series of events, are foretold, including natural disasters and the world being submerged in water.

In particular, all those slain come back to life and there’s a huge battle between the Gods of Asgard on one side and the Jötnar, or giants, on the other side.

Many of the familiar gods, such as Odin, Thor, Heimdall and Loki lose their lives. After Ragnarök the world is refreshed and renewed. The surviving gods meet and the world is repopulated by two survivors.

How do you get to Valhalla?

There’s some disagreement between scholars on exactly how you get to Valhalla. The prime factor is generally believed to be ‘die a glorious death’.

You can’t simply fall on your own sword during a battle, or hang around waiting for someone to do you in. Instead, you must bring glory to the battle on your way to meet your grizzly end!

But even that may not be enough. Only half of those killed on the battle fields go to Valhalla. The rest we’ll deal with later but for now we get to meet the Valkyries.

Valkyrie translates roughly as ‘chooser of the slain’. Some people believe this means that, after the battle they pick the ones they want to go to Valhalla. Others, however, think it’s much more twisted than that!

In fact, most people now believe that, far from simply picking from the dead, the Valkyries actively chose those who would die in the battle and sealed their fates to ensure that the very best warriors took their place in Valhalla, ready to fight alongside Odin in the battle of Ragnarök.

What goes on in Valhalla?

Well, as you can imagine it’s a pretty tough life preparing to fight the final battle at the end of the world.

With all those warrior souls around you can guarantee there’s a lot of fighting. The fighting, in fact, is pretty endless and takes a lot of the day. This gives warriors the best training to defeat the Jotnar.

Of course, all of this fighting is still likely to hurt, even if you’re undead. Fortunately, in Valhalla, all your wounds are healed every night and you can begin the day fighting fresh.

If you’re thinking they must get hungry then you’re right. They get utterly ravenous. And thankfully it doesn’t take a herd of wild animals to keep them fed. Instead, the huge boar Saehrimnir is big enough to feed all of the men and luckily it too regenerates at night.

Washing all that delicious boar meat down, they’ll need millions of bees to make enough honey for their mead, right? Well, no! In fact, they simply need the goat, HeiĂ°rĂșn, whose udders are able to produce an infinite supply of the finest mead known to man.

It’s little wonder that warriors are literally fighting to get into Valhalla. With infinite food and drink, and a constant supply of endless war, what’s not to love?

What does Valhalla look like?

As you might expect for a glorious afterlife hall, Valhalla is said to be quite stunning to behold. The ceiling is made of golden shields, with rafters made from spears. No one is quite sure how big it is, but suffice to say it’s enormous. Thor has his own hall inside Valhalla, Bilskirnir, and that has 540 rooms!

There are areas for fighting, areas for living and, of course, areas for feasting. Huge tables seat hundreds of warriors, all enjoying as much food and mead as they desire. Coats of mail mail are strewn over the benches.

Any needs they have are taken care of by the Valkyries, to ensure nothing gets in the way of their battle preparations.

A wolf hangs in the doorway to the hall and there are eagles flying overhead. Outside the hall stands a golden tree called Glasir that is said to be among the most beautiful things in all of the world.

Here you’ll find the mead-producing goat, HeiĂ°rĂșn and the hart, EikĂŸyrnir, whose antlers drip liquid into the spring from which all waters in the world flow. They both live on the roof of Valhalla and graze from the branches of the tree, LĂŠraĂ°r.

Where does everyone else go?

If the most skilled and mighty warriors end up in Valhalla, what about everyone else? Surely, if there’s an afterlife for the best, then there must be something for the rest? And what of simple farmers?

Well, in fact, Valhalla is one of several possible outcomes following a Norse funeral.

The other half of the fallen go to live with the goddess Freyja in FĂłlkvangr – often translated as ‘people field’ or ‘army field’. This is a beautiful meadow in which we find the hall SessrĂșmnir.

While Freyja is often associated with love and fertility, she is also connected to war. She is said to preside over the eternal battle, HjaĂ°ningavĂ­g, where each day after battle the slain are resurrected to fight anew.

The next most common destination for the fallen was Hel or Helheim. Not to be confused with Hell in the modern Christian context – though the words are related – Helheim was a realm presided over by the goddess Hel, separated by a fast-flowing river that couldn’t be crossed.

People who ended up in Hel were those who died not in battle, such as the elderly and infirm. But even the God Baldr, who was killed after being tricked by Loki, ended up in Helheim.

As well as these main three, there are some attestations to Ran, where sailors who die at sea end up. Finally, there’s Helgafjel, which is a peaceful mountain where people are reunited with their loved ones.

It’s difficult to truly know how these locations all related. They could all be parts of the same realm or they could be different. All of Norse mythology was written down after Christianisation, so some of it will have been influenced by that, to make it seem similar and less contradictory.

What does Valhalla tell us about Norse people?

An afterlife myth where the most fearsome and mighty warriors are chosen to live on in rich splendour tells us a lot about how the Norse people viewed the world. It’s a relatively recent innovation that living a gracious, lawful, and sympathetic life is the key to eternal happiness.

In Norse mythology, in common with many other early mythologies, war and victory are celebrated. This shows us that the early Norse people believed that war, battle, and conquering new lands and people, was a large part of the meaning of life.

As a seafaring people from the cold climes of Northern Europe, Scandinavians have always had to be hardy people. So too, in gathering resources from other lands, it’s often the case that only the strongest will survive. Throughout early history, fighting was one of the only ways to gain resources and keep them safe from others.

This is where the veneration of war really stems from. If violence is the only way to secure the tribe’s future, then it must be willed by the Gods.

When you throw in an end of the world where there’s a huge battle, it easily follows that the Gods will reward those who are the most skilled at being strong, fearless warriors.

Valhalla in modern culture

We see mention of Valhalla in a great many places. From the Walhalla Temple near Regensberg in Germany, constructed in the 19th Century for Ludwig I of Bavaria, to the Valhalla Museum in the Isles of Scilly, off the coast of Cornwall in England. This was created to house the figureheads off shipwrecks found in the local seas.

Richard Wagner mentions Valhalla in Der Ring des Nibelungen and it also crops up in book series, a Magazine entitled Walhalla, a comic book that spawned and animated film and even a thrill ride at the Blackpool Pleasure Beach theme park in the UK.

British musician Elton John wrote a song called Valhalla, which he released on his first album, Empty Sky. Meanwhile, heavy metal pioneers Led Zeppelin produced Immigrant Song, which gives us the immortal line “To fight the horde, sing and cry: Valhalla, I am coming”.

In the movies, Valhalla is a known concept in Mad Max: Fury Road, with Tom Hardy, with the War Boys believing a heroic death in service of Immortan Joe will lead them to Valhalla.

In video games, most recently, the phenomenal games franchise Assassin’s Creed, released a new version in November 2020 subtitled Valhalla, where the aim is to build successful Viking colonies in the British Isles, plundering and conquering as you go.

Finally, perhaps the truest mention of Valhalla comes from the American author, Hunter S. Thompson, who wrote of Big Sur in California: “Big Sur is very like Valhalla—a place that a lot of people have heard of, and that very few can tell you anything about.”

How much did you know about the real Valhalla before today? Let us know in the comments below.

The post Welcome to Valhalla: The Norse Afterlife Explained appeared first on 51łÔčÏÍű.

The Lofoten islands in Northern Norway are known today as a popular tourist destination. Their natural beauty attracts hikers, photographers, and even surfers to the north. But Lofoten also has a rich history.

Evidence of human activity is said to date back at least 11,000 years. People have been calling the islands home almost as long as anywhere else in Northern Europe. Join me as I take a look at why that is.

Until the 1960s, Norway’s biggest industry was cod. In many ways, the history of Norway is the history of cod fishing. And nowhere in Norway is more important to cod fishing than the Lofoten Islands.

Lofoten in the Viking Age

There’s evidence that humans lived on Lofoten before the Viking Age. Archaeological digs from the late stone age, some 5,500 years ago, show clear signs. There’s also some evidence dating back earlier than that. But the main evidence, that we can build a picture from, is from the Viking Age itself.

The town of VĂ„gan is the first known town formed in all of Northern Norway. It was located on the southern cost of East Lofoten and is close to the modern village of KabelvĂ„g, not far from ł§±čŽÇ±ô±čĂŠ°ù.

Many of the archaeological finds we have, from the Iron Age and Viking Age, can be found farther west near Borg on VestvÄgÞy.

During the Viking Age, chieftains ruled through a mixture of alliances and strength. Strategic marriages and soft power – giving gifts and throwing feasts – were as important as fighting battles and killing enemies. If you think about it, it’s better to leave people alive as long as you can get them to do your bidding for you!

One chieftain we know of from Borg was the fearsome Olåfr. As well as being known was Uni-brow, he was also said to be a hamrammr; a skin-changer or werewolf. That alone was probably enough to maintain his reputation of strength and allowed him to rule over the fertile lands in the east of VestvÄgÞy.

In his grave we find, among other things, gold-leafed glassware from abroad. This would have been very rare, and marks OlĂĄfr out as a well-connected and powerful man.

King Olav and Lofoten

Also famous in the history of the area was Thorir the Stag (Þórir Hjort) from AustvĂ„gĂžy. He was known mainly as an opponent of King Olav Tryggvason, who united Norway and started the Christianisation of the country.

Olav was a ruthless conqueror of lands and many chiefs converted without bloodshed, unwilling to challenge the King in battle.

Thorir, however, was a staunch opponent of the king and decided to stand up to what he saw as tyranny. A bloody battle ensued with massive losses on both sides. Eventually the King was victorious, but it was a significant point in their history.

In most accounts, the King killed Thorir personally by throwing a spear at him. Some say that when his body fell to the ground a stag leapt out and ran into the forest.

VĂ„gan would soon become the power centre for the region and the local assembly (Thing or Þing) was held there. King Olav and his successors would soon start to make a large amount of money from the area thanks to Lofoten’s most useful resource: Cod.

There’s something in the air

If you arrive in Lofoten in early summer, you’ll start to smell the unmistakeable aroma of fish in the air. It’s not simply the smell of fishing villages but something stronger. The reason for this is tþrrfisk, or stockfish.

Having a huge quantity of cod, and sitting almost at the top of the world, is not all that useful. You can sell locally and probably sell to the whole company without your fish going bad. There are ways of preserving the meat, of course, salting, smoking and icing for example, but they can be expensive.

Lofoten, however, has several advantages when it comes to cod. In this case, it’s the strong maritime winds blowing off the Norwegian Sea.

Residents found that by hanging the fish in the wind, the meat would dry and then could be stored and transported almost indefinitely, at no extra cost! Once soaked in water, the meat is rehydrated and becomes almost as good as new.

This is an incredible method of preserving food that is unique to Lofoten. Many other places have tried but the air is either too wet or too dry and the temperature is either too hot or too cold.

Sales of Norwegian stockfish—the name given to dried cod—around the world were huge and the vast majority came from Lofoten. Trade in Lofoten stockfish carries on to this day and you can find supplies in most countries around the world.

Location, location, location

Lofoten is not simply great for fishing because it’s on the coast. There’s a natural advantage. Through most of Northern Norway, the waters are very cold. This is great for breeding string healthy fish but it’s not so great for spawning. The cold waters are too harsh for young fish to survive, so the fish need to swim south to breed.

Lofoten, however, is surrounded by relatively mild water. The influence of the Gulf Stream, North Atlantic Current and Norwegian Current combines to make the climate and waters in the area much warmer than they would normally be.

The area is, in fact, home to the biggest anomaly in temperature related to latitude anywhere in the world.

All of this means that Lofoten provides the perfect spawning conditions for Arctic cod. Every winter, cod swarm the seas in their thousands, providing rich pickings for fishermen.

Lofoten is so perfect for cod fishing, in fact, that fishermen would come from all over the world to help get as much of the fish landed as possible to ensure global supplies were maintained.

This led to the construction of the rorbu – simple cabins constructed to house the visiting fishermen. These were started in the year 1120 when King Øistein ordered them to be built. These were two-room cabins, often on stilts, right near the water.

The name rorbu roughly translates as ‘small house for people who row’ and they can still be seen in Lofoten today. Nowadays they’re not so much cabins to house travelling fishermen but simple – and sometime luxurious – accommodation for the Island’s tourists.

Lofoten in Norse Mythology

Known as Ketils Saga HƓngs, the Saga of Ketill Trout forms part of the Icelandic legendary sagas. These are the stories of old Scandinavia, before Iceland existed, that give us most of our knowledge of early Norse folklore, history and customs.

From Hrafnista came a man called Ketill, son of Hallbjörn Half-troll. His father, as the name suggests, was a strong, mighty and fearless man who was respected by all. Ketill, however, was the opposite of his father. He was quiet and he lacked the spirit of adventure usually bestowed on heroes in mythology!

When times grew hard, and Ketill was a teenager, he grew sick of having no food and decided to do something about it. Borrowing his family’s boat he snuck off in the night and rowed North.

He found great fishing lands and filled his boat with abundant fish. As he beached his boat for the night, he found a pit filled with the flesh and bones of humans and other animals. Ketill had accidentally stumbled on an island of cannibal trolls!

He was unable to make his escape without facing Surtr the Black and Kaldrann the Cold Moustache. Ketill managed to fend them off long enough to escape and he returned home victorious, with a ship full of fish and a great tale to tell.

That wasn’t Ketill’s only adventure, however. A few years later the famine returned and so this time Ketill rowed even further, all the way up to Lofoten, where he filled his ship with the bountiful cod. On the island of Skrova in East Lofoten he encountered two troll women who warn him that the TröllaĂŸing – meeting of trolls – is taking place that night.

Ketill witnessed the most fearsome and gigantic of trolls gathering on the island. He was magic and sorcery that no human had ever seen before. Fearing for his life he hid himself under a thick blanket of branches and leaves and kept himself awake to avoid giving himself up to the trolls.

Once again, Ketill returned home a hero and that was his last adventure to Lofoten.

The Italian cod

If you think Lofoten is remote then RĂžst, some 10km away from the rest of Lofoten and 100km away from the mainland sets new standards of remoteness!

Like Lofoten, the area of Rþst – consisting of 350 islands and skerries in total including the main island, Rþstlandet – is hugely centred around fishing and, in winter, the population increases by 3 or 4 times.

We don’t always have the exact story about how trade routes open up. Many of them date to before the times when humans were routinely keeping track of their history. But in the case of the Norway-Italy stockfish trade we have all of the details.

In 1432 the Venetian sea-captain Pietro Querini was shipwrecked and was rescued by the islanders of RĂžstlandet. Out of 68 crew, only 11 survived, being found a month after they were originally shipwrecked. They stayed in the area for three months before returning to Venice.

After returning home Querini provided a great description of the medieval life of the people there. He described how they lived by catching and drying cod and how the people were pious and harmonious.

Querini took some of the delicious and versatile Stockfish also popularised it in the Venice area. It is still served there today and is known as Baccalà all vincentina. And that’s how a random 15^th century shipwreck gave rise to a global trade route in Stockfish and a signature dish that survives to this day!

Lofoten in wartime

There are so many fascinating stories about Lofoten’s role in World War II, of which many outside Norway know nothing. To set that right, we’re going to be publishing an article all about Lofoten and World War II in the weeks to come, so watch out for that.

In the meantime, you can check out my other article on Operation Claymore. If you’re in ł§±čŽÇ±ô±čĂŠ°ù, it’s well worth stopping by the Lofoten War Memorial Museum to learn more.

See history for yourself

The Lofoten Islands are one of Norway’s prime tourist attractions. Hopefully this article has given you a greater appreciation of why that is. It can be a bit of a trek, but if you visit, you’ll find a number of museums that can give you more of a taste of Lofoten’s unique character and heritage.

Firstly, there’s the , which includes a reconstruction of the largest Viking Longhouse ever discovered. Just 40m from the archaeological dig site, and measuring over 80m long, the house gives a real feel for the life of our Viking ancestors and how they lived.

encompasses the Lofoten Museum, Lofoten Aquarium and Espolin Gallery. These three all show much about the life and history of the archipelago. The museum is housed in a 19^th century manor house and you can see the contrast between this and the rorbu seasonal accommodation and glimpse the small wooden fishing boats.

In the aquarium, you’ll see a great selection of the local fish that can be found in the waters off the coast. There’s plenty of cod to be seen too, of course, and you can learn about their life cycles and the part they play in Lofoten and Norway’s history.

The Espolin Gallery showcases the work of Kaare Espolin Johnson who was inspired by the natural beauty of Lofoten. As well as seeing many examples of his art you can also watch a video in which the artist himself, who only passed away in 1994, talks about the area and his work.

Finally, you can visit the Sund Fisherymuseum and their remarkable collection of historical fishing memorabilia. There’s also the Blacksmith of Sund, who is a working blacksmith and carries on traditions that have been in place since the iron age.

Lofoten’s history tells us a lot about Norway’s history overall. The fisheries that were centred in the area continue to this day and, until the discovery of oil in the 1960s they were the basis of Norway’s entire economy.

Have you visited Lofoten? Or have we inspired you to look into it? Let us know in the comments below.

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