Traveling with Grace: Headed into Norway
This week, Grace travels across the border into Norway. Special thanks go to JMM volunteer Harold Toppall for his transcriptions of Grace’s travel diary.
To read more of Grace’s travels, click here.
June 26, 1950
Location: En route to Trondheim, Norway
Left Ostersund regretfully about 10 am in magnificent weather. About 1 P.M. stopped at Tännforsen – a tourist attraction – to view falls, largest in Sweden. Quite a sight with rainbows blowing in all direction in the mist.
We had no trouble at all when we reached the Swedish-Norwegian border. I did not even have to go into the Customs as Mr. Andersen attended to everything & told them we had nothing to declare. There was a public dining room near here but it was so crowded there was no room for us, so we went to a private home on the other side of the road & had a delightful experience. The house was beautifully furnished & altho we did not see any of the family we looked at their photos, their very interesting furniture & trophies, beautiful hand loomed rugs & other hand made articles, laces etc. A nice little servant girl set the table for us in the dining room, took out the prettiest china and silver & set it out on a snowy damask cloth & served us a most delicious meal. We ate a new kind of bread here. We felt like invited guests. When Mr. Andersen paid her, she was so pleased with her tip that she shook his hand & curtsied to us.
Once inside Norway the scenery changes radically. Mts. are higher & the rds. go thru what we call canyons. There are many turbulent streams & lovely graceful waterfalls. We saw our first fjord & it was mirror clear reflecting the towns on its shores, the isles floating on its bosom. Also, beautiful clear lakes with the snow streaked mts. mirrored in them.
About 7 pm we arrived in Trondheim, a rather large city with ornate public buildings with many carved figures, fine wide streets, nice shops, pretty houses & and Hotel Britannia one of the finest deluxe hotels we have so far encountered. We have a handsome large room & bath.
Dinner was served in a spacious dining room around a sort of patio with fountain in center & a full orchestra played beautiful music (whenever there are Americans they play Old Folks at home and medley of folk songs American) while the food is good & plentiful (another new kind of bread here, thin as a wafer).
June 27, 1950
Place: En Route to Surnadal
They served us a very dainty, good breakfast in our room. We left the hotel about 10:30, rode around the city, saw the large commercial school, the old fortress high on a hill whence a fine view of this city on the banks of a fjord; the warehouse district around the dock very old looking; a canal running thru it, reminds me of Venice.
We went thru the Domkirken, a fine Gothic structure with very fine stained-glass windows & marble figures of saints & apostles on the altar. It was originally built 1060 as a Gothic Cathedral & dedicated to St. Olaf but it is now used for Lutheran worship which is the religion of the country. We saw an open-air flower market & another market including wagon wheels of odds & ends. There is a tree here with gracefully yellow flowers which hand down like wisteria & have a delicate sweet perfume.
We left Trondheim about noon & travelled along the edge of a fjord where the road winds in scallops around the many indentations of this very uneven coastline. In the country we see many houses with roofs several inches deep in sod & grass sprouting all over them, in some instances even very good-sized trees growing on the roofs. Passed may waterfalls & the meadows are thick with wildflowers, daisies, butter cups, dandelions & clover grow to immense sizes here.
Arrived at the little village of Surnadal at about 4 & are staying at a cute little country inn where the lady speaks English & makes us feel right at home. On one side is a garden with lovely red birches & other trees, paths bordered with tulips in full bloom, an ornamental pond in center. Directly in front is a mt. flecked with snow patches. They served supper at 7:30. A great variety of dishes stood on a long table in the dining room & the guests help themselves.
June 28, 1950
Location: Surnadal
Breakfast this morning very much like supper with the same large assortment of food. My bill for the 3 of us for 2 meals & the night’s lodging in 2 rooms was $2.50.
We enjoyed the ride to the ferry which took us across the fjord on our journey to Åndalsnes. This country gets more gorgeous every minute. Such a profusion of waterfalls some starting high up in the clouds, leaping from ledge to ledge in graceful, swirling columns of foam We go higher & higher until the air is very cold and we look down the precipice to see the dark green ribbon of a river far below. At one place we saw a man fishing for salmon & since his parked car showed a French license tag Mr. Andersen pulled up so I could talk to him. He said the fishing was not so good as there was still too much snow on the mts. We see new & strangely lovely wildflowers every day. It is no wonder Grieg wrote such beautiful music about this superlatively beautiful land.
We stopped at Oppdal at a very fine hotel for lunch. The railroad runs right in front of it. Then on thru the beautiful valley of Romsdalen. Here the waterfalls are about a dime a dozen. The majestic peaks of Trolltinden & Romsdalshorn are veiled in mist. It is raining most of the way, but the trip is none the less enjoyable & the grandeur of the scenery in intensified by the somber effects of the clouds. The lakes and fjords shimmer like steel engravings.
We arrived at Åndalsnes about 5:30 & received a warm welcome by the proprietor of the new & very pretty Grand Hotel Bellvue. There is a lady manager who told me she learned the hotel business from the ground up in the States where she spent 2 yrs. Our room are lovely & cheerful & the whole place modern. Met an Englishman from Nottingham who knew the Weinbergs & Dessauers. Supper, as usual, is good & well served.
June 29, 1950
Location: En Route to Loen
Arose early to a beautiful sunny sky & after a hearty breakfast we started out to enjoy the most magnificent ride yet. We go thru Valldal. Almost every inch of the way is spectacular with hundreds of waterfalls each a different type and breathtakingly lovely.
Arrived at Sylte in time for the ferry which came promptly at 12:15 loaded & left immediately. We bought a big bag of sweet cherries, just coming in, from a woman at the pier & enjoyed them during the trip which was heavenly. We got a good vantage point from which to watch scenery & right in the sun. We crossed the beautiful Geiranger fjord, saw houses perched high on the craggy mt. sides, snow at the top, a few mt. goats grazing on the sparse vegetation but the focus of attention as always are the lovely waterfalls at every turn & one never tires at admiring them singly & in groups starting high up in the snow & emptying into the fjord. The few people who live in these parts apparently have no roads & travel by boat & climb up the cliffs to their homes.
As the boat glides smoothly thru the deep green water the captain describes the scenery over the loudspeaker, translated by Mr. Andersen, & we all feel very jolly. At Geiranger is another large waterfall which seems to dominate the town like a magic guardian. We stop at the inviting little hotel of the same name for a most appetizing lunch. The waitresses hereabouts are simply adorable, so pretty, clean looking & friendly.
We are now in the province of Nordtrondelag. Scenery just as gorgeous as before. We drove up the Dalsnibba, elevation 5000 & climbing straight up from sea level. There is a private toll road going direct to the mt. top, took 4 yrs. to build 500,000 kroner. We go thru walls of snow. Some of the lakes still frozen. View from the top sublime, roads below look like zig-zag cracks in the mt. sides. Too cold + windy for me to go out to the look-out platform. The others went for a few seconds & nearly froze. Mr. Andersen took many pictures today at various scenic stops. We see a lot of tame mt. sheep, branded, & stopped to feed some.
We were supposed to spend this night at the Grotli but when we got there it looked so primitive & unattractive that we cancelled our accommodations & decided to push on to Loen. The people were very nice about it & when we had gone about 5 miles to the next house a girl stood in the road to flag us & tell us that the people from Grotli had phoned that they noticed we had taken the wrong road & wanted to warn us before we went farther out of our way. So, we reversed our course, gave the man at Grotli a tip & continued for about 30 miles to Loen, with more gorgeous mt. travelling all the way. By this time, it was raining hard but didn’t spoil the views or dampen our spirits.
However, it was almost too much beauty crowded into one day & we were glad to reach the nice Hotel Alexandra at Loen about 8 & in time for dinner. We have 2 lovely rooms, one a sunroom facing the head of the fjord, snowcapped mts. & a nice little garden below the windows where I am writing. The proprietor is a very nice fellow.
July 2, 1950
Location: En route to Balestrand
After 3 nights and 2 days rest, we start out at 9:15 for another glorious ride thru mts., fjords, & lovely valleys thru which mt. streams rush in whirling eddies & mad cascades & at every stop another exquisite waterfall. Cows & sheep amble along the road & at one point we saw a herd of goats large & small which scampered up the rocks at our approach. The horses too are a special variety. There is a lot of snow along the rd. & the color in the rocks are lovely. Also, the pine forest. We had lunch at Betlefjord, at a nice little restaurant, while waiting for the ferry. A favorite dessert in these parts, & very good too is rice stirred up in whipped cream with fruit juice in a pitcher to pour over it. And as usual the loveliest potted flowers in every windowsill & a large picture of the Norwegian royal family on a sort of altar flanked by candles.
At 3:15 we took the ferry & had a pretty trip of 35 minutes across the Sognefjord to Balestrand. At the hotel Kikue they wanted us to go upstairs & I had to turn on all the charm at my command to wrangle a room on the ground floor. This is the most beautifully situated hotel so far on the itinerary with a full view of the fjord & all its inlets, the little villages on the opposite shore spotlighted in the evening sun (oh how good the sun looks & feels after 2 solid days of rain). Here too it is cool enough for a fire in the open hearth. We have dear little porch off our room & in the garden below bloom roses, mock orange blossoms, elderberry, scarlet sage, Spanish poppies & straw flowers. I must devote a line to the pretty Norwegian horses. They are blond like the people with pretty faces & manes that stand up straight & stiff like brushes. They remind me of the horses Walt Disney drew in “Fantasia”. Also, I must mention the birds most frequently seen are black with while bordered wings & Mr. A. calls them Skota.
After dinner a lady played the piano in the parlor–all classical music- then Helene and I took a long walk around the porch overlooking the fjord, a view indescribably beautiful.
Thanks for reading “Traveling with Grace,” a series where we’re sharing (and annotating) posts from the travel diaries of Grace Amelia Hecht, native Baltimorean, b. 1897 and d. 1955. As mentioned in my introductory post transcription errors sometimes occur and I’ve made my best guesses where possible, denoted by [brackets]. – Rachel Kassman, marketing manager