Maritime Heritage Trip

Well, it's been a while, but I'm back.  I'll do this in two posts, one for each week I've neglected.

The weekend of August 26-28, the coordinators of CoMEM came to visit.  We met them over pizza on Friday afternoon.  There were representatives from Barcelona, Delft, and London (Southampton couldn't make it) plus some staff from NTNU.  On Saturday our coordinator here, Oivind, took all of us north of Trondheimsfjorden to the region where he grew up.  We visited a maritime cultural history museum, a castle, and a farm & fishing village.

At the maritime museum they had replicas of all sorts of things Norwegian fisherman would use back in the old days, but they coolest thing was the ship yard.  Okay, it was more like a barn, but inside they were making Clinker Boats (Viking style ships) in the same way the old Norse used to do it!  Big hammers and big iron nails held the whole thing together.  First is me with traditional Norwegian hat & gloves, second is the ship barn:

Then we were off to the Austrått Castle.  It was actually just like a big stone house with a nice enclosed courtyard, but it was the biggest thing for kilometers.  In fact, you could easily mistake it for a large church from a distance.  In the courtyard, though, all the pillars were painted to look like figures out of biblical stories, including the major patriarchs standing over the entrance.  First is the Castle, second is me in The Court of the Patriarchs (!!!) :

Now on to the farm!  Oivind's father actually lived there for 7 years, and he grew up a short walk away, so he chatted with people there about all the folks in the pictures on the walls.  That was probably the most interesting part.  We had lunch there then walked down to the waterfront and saw the fishing harbor.  It used to be one of the only ports with an international export license, so it was REALLY busy.  Now it's pretty calm.  Here's me with a tiny pycnopodia (sunstar) I found, then Shirin watching the waves at the end of the breakwater.

So that was our trip!  We rode the bus home then went back to classes for another week!