Oslo has a cathedral, a tiny one smaller than most town churches. Inside is a simple, open space filled with light - all the buildings here seem designed to invite the light in. There are rows of knee-knocking, economy-class pews painted white, green and gold and an altar piece themed (so it seemed to me) on light, but there's nothing of the usual detritus - along the walls no busts or bas-reliefs of wealthy benefactors insisting on being remembered by way of their clutter. And the Christ figure in the altar-piece? Blond with blue eyes, of course - think Dolf Lundgren tempered with a bit of Aled Jones. I loved it anyway because he has his arms stretched out generously and his eyes closed, which somehow intensified the sense of light in the space. Outside the cathedral, a stall protesting against deporting migrants back to oppressive countries was unsettlingly incongruous on this brushed-up tourist drag. Up front stood a large painting of another pale, Nordic Jesus extending a hand of protection to Palestinians in what seemed to me a new and weirdly colonial, table-turning twist for Jesus. The supersize-me irony is that Norway happens to be one of the most progressively humanitarian countries in the world, although it does love a bit of whaling. Sometimes this universe is quite complicated. Come to think of it, that'd be a great slogan for Rail Europe's website.
I find European churches quite boring most of the time - they mostly look the same - so I don't know what's got into me but I found this simple cathedral a wonderful place. I preferred it to Oslo's latest must-see: the brand new, squeaky clean opera house by the water's edge. It's a brilliantly designed building that is again flooded with light. You can walk up its sloping marble roof, which is pretty cool. Whether it's cool enough to spend 500 million euros on, though... well, it's a lot to pay for a big room. Even so, it's a monument to the love of music, and to that peculiarly exotic musical instrument that is the human body. And what's London's Shard a monument to? Exactly.
I said to Penny that it was weird being in a capital city so far north and she put me right: this is south, and even Trondheim's not even half-way to the top. If you lifted up the northern-most part of Norway and levered it upwards over Oslo, then let go, the tip would come down on Rome (with a crash). However far north you go, you're always south to somewhere. Until you're really not.
The sculpture in the photo above caught my attention. The birds look like the fisherman's thoughts whirling in a moment of sudden awareness during his work.
In a thunder storm - lightning cracking across the hills as I watched - the train north to Trondheim left the city at 2pm for its almost seven hours of journey. The route follows the coast at first, then on a single track winds by the fjords, making its way up through mixed broadleaf and conifer forest fringed by flowering lupins, over white-water rivers and falls, eventually reaching ear-popping heights over sheer-cliffed valleys to arrive onto highland moors that still hide patches of old snow from the sun. Rock, trees, water for hundreds of miles in the rain and the sky with its torn shreds of cloud catching on the treetops.
The cliffs are so steep that most of the trees are unreachable by machines, I suppose, making logging uneconomical, so it all just grows. Most of the birds I don't recognise. It's like a European rainforest - presumably similar to how Britain looked before we chopped it all down centuries ago (the UK is still one of the least forested countries in Europe). Where there are homes here they're made of wood or sometimes slate and are spread out through the forest, not clustered into villages, leaving what seems like a lot of space between the places people live.
The train arrived just five minutes late in Trondheim by the sea. Although the city isn't far from the arctic circle it's still home to 200,000 people. Micke, Yousif and Omar met me from the train - all are committed peace activists who want to set up Alternatives to Violence Project work in Norway. Roswitha has arrived from England too and we're looking forward to getting going tomorrow. I'll be pretty busy over the next few days so might not have time to send an update. As luck would have it, you have the option of subscribing by email (above) to get a message when I next send in a post. And I'll definitely blog the journey back, starting 28 June.
Now, the legs total stands at 15. I don't think anyone's guessed the likely eventual total yet but a couple of people are probably quite near. A blank pobbledocket awaits those as yet too shy/busy/uninterested to have a go - amazing that such a small gesture can bring so much innocent fun, isn't it, so why hold back?
It's midnight and not even dusk yet.
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