ByGD
We woke up early on Saturday morning in Bergen. Our entire Norway itinerary had been shaped around getting my daughter to the weekend family art workshops in the Children’s Art Museum at KODE. But first, we had to find breakfast. And in Bergen, that turned out to be harder than we expected, but in the search, we discovered another Bergen treasure, the Farmers’ Market.
ByGD
Needless to say, I’m not going anywhere for spring break this year. But last year, my then-ten-year-old daughter and I went to Norway. A chunk of our trip was dedicated to the “Norway in a Nutshell” tour. Like the Golden Circle in Iceland, it’s a roughly defined loop in the southern part of the country with a few popular tourist attractions that have been built up into “you haven’t been there if you missed this” status. I wrote about the first part of this trip within a trip earlier. Now you can read the rest of the story.
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ByGD
There is no shortage of awesome bakeries in Seattle. I have favorites scattered around town. “Well, since I’m in West Seattle, I have to stop at Bakery Nouveau.” Every time I stray north of Market I feel like hitting up Larsen’s. On the other hand, I never just happen to be in Black Diamond, but I love the Black Diamond Bakery. Some bakeries in remote places still thrive because people make excuses to drive out to them. These are the destination bakeries that you go out of your way to sample. I found one such bakery in Flåm.
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ByGD
I expected the village of Flåm to be a pit stop on our DIY Norway in a Nutshell tour. Instead, it turned out to be a vacation highlight. It’s true that the appeal is purely one of atmosphere – there’s not much going on in Flåm, and almost nothing that would count as a tourist attraction per se. Unless you believe in the concept of the destination brewery. Which I do. And Flåm has a doozy of a destination brewery in Ægir.
There are literally only about a half dozen buildings in Flåm proper, and most of them belong to Flåmsbrygga, a hotel built right on the waterfront of the fjord, just steps from the ferry terminal. Although the building exteriors are designed to evoke the great halls of Vikings (or at least their churches), the kitsch stops at the door and the hotel rooms are modern and stylish, and not even that expensive by Norwegian standards. I was tempted to stay that but an extremely tight budget (and my daughter’s infatuation with bunk beds) landed us in a cabin at the campground instead. Which was fine, because we were very happy there, and we still got to eat dinner at the hotel.
Among the cluster of Flåmsbrygga buildings is the brewery. Named Ægir after the Norse god famed for quality brewing, Ægir is one of Norway’s top craft breweries with an attached pub on the ground floor and a fancier restaurant upstairs. The décor is ski lodge meets stave church and I loved it. Although their award-winning beers are available in several Nordic countries, they do not export to the U.S., so my only chance of tasting them was at the source.
They have a huge range of beers with some seasonal rotation. The day I went there, I got a tasting flight of five beers:
Bøyla Blonde; Rallar Amber; Siv Witbier; Ægir IPA; Natt Imperial Porter
They were all good – even the beers I wouldn’t normally drink, like the porter or the blonde, were tasty. They were also obviously part of a different brewing tradition than the brew culture I live in. All of the beers were more lightly carbonated and hopped than I’m used to. This made them feel thinner, but it also allowed for more subtlety and nuance than the beer I usually down.
Being from the PNW, I’m all about the IPA, and being more familiar with IPAs, that’s what I gave the most scrutiny. The Ægir IPA was different in the ways I’ve described, but still very recognizable as an IPA. Nearly everything I drink at home uses Amarillo and Cascade hops. This beer was hopped differently, and I was surprised how much it affected the overall character of the brew. I had to ask and discovered that there were some Citra hops, which I’m familiar with, but the primary hop was an Eastern European variety. (Unfortunately, I’ve lost my notes and don’t remember which one it was.) Anyway, it was a great reminder how easy it is to get stuck in a provincial rut, and how delightful to break out of it. I had forgotten it was possible to be surprised by the flavor of IPA.
I also picked up a can of the Upstate IPA for enjoying later back at the cabin. Cold and canned, this one was familiar in flavor, although still more lightly hopped than I’m used to. And that’s fine, because even though I love them, I recognize that PNW IPAs are, objectively speaking, too heavy on the hops. That means the Ægir IPAs were actually perfectly balanced.
Food trucks have overtaken the brewpub culture where I live, so it was a delight to sit down to a real gastropub dinner. At Ægir, they offer a seasonal Viking Plank, a five-course meal served with beer pairings. The dishes are modern gastro-pub fare, but made with local, historic ingredients that would (mostly) have been familiar to the Vikings who lived in this fjord a millennium ago. The best part of this modern sensibility is that there was a vegetarian version – hallelujah!
It’s probably not worthwhile to go into too much detail about the dishes, since they change regularly (and I can’t find my notes). But to give you an idea, there was salad, vegetables, an open-faced veggie burger, cheese, and a brownie. Like a lot of stylish food, the vegetables were in such large pieces they were hard to eat. The veggie patty didn’t hold up very well as a patty, but it was delicious, and a welcome change from the Gardenburger that is literally everywhere at home. Brownies with whipped cream and strawberry on top seem to be the molten chocolate cake of Norwegian restaurants, and I’m down for it. But I’m easy. The real test was my kid. Like Mikey, she hates everything. But she chowed down on her kids’ meal of meatballs and mashed potatoes.
Okay, I don’t actually believe that any restaurant merits a special trip from the West Coast of the U.S. to Scandinavia. And unless Ægir himself brewed it, the same could be said for any beer. But if I happened to be in the neighborhood – say Bergen or Oslo, a mere 5-10 hours away, depending on traffic/train schedules – yeah, I’d make a side trip to have dinner in Flåm at the Ægir Brewery.
ByGD
I have no excuse for it. But after five trips to Iceland and as many readings of Egil’s Saga, I finally realized that most of the action in the story takes place in Norway. Fortunately, a trip to Norway was already in the cards, and of course, the itinerary would include as much Viking stuff as I could fit in. The Oseberg ship was a no-brainer; as was the Viking exhibit at the National Museum. But I’d already seen Viking ships and static exhibitions. I really wanted to get to a living museum where I could see how all those artifacts worked in a Viking village.
Unfortunately, many of Norway’s Viking-themed living museums are only open in summer. The biggest one, and probably the best, is open year-round, but it would have taken nearly half our time to make the round trip above the Arctic Circle to reach it and get back to Oslo. The Midgard Viking Center was promising, but in April had limited hours and was a bit hard to reach by public transportation. Then I discovered the Viking Village Njardarheimr, or Njardheim. Not only was it open daily in April, it was on the Norway in a Nutshell route.
Njardheim is not exactly a living museum; the people behind it are not academics. But it’s a bit more than a Viking-themed Ren Fair, because it does aim to educate as much as it aims to entertain. Located in the village of Gudvangen, Njardheim is a reproduction Viking village, built with materials and techniques as close to authentic as modern craftsmen can achieve. Its “residents” wear period clothing and practice the crafts and skills of the age. Visitors are given a tour of the village, a chance to try out a few activities, and have the opportunity to purchase “Viking” meals from the onsite facilities.
Njardheim grew out of a summer Viking festival that has been held in Gudvangen for nearly 20 years. Gudvangen has a population of 100 people today, but in the Viking Age, Gudvangen was an important trading center. When the permanent village was built in 2016, some people were not thrilled that permits were granted to build what could be considered a for-profit LARPing venture in a UNESCO World Heritage area. But since I was traveling with a kid and curious to see Viking technology and culture in action, it seemed like a pretty good fit.
In summer the Viking Village is open from 10-6, but in early April, it was only open from 10:30-1:30. I had considered the Gudvangen Fjordtell but ended up staying in Flåm instead. We loved Flåm, so I don’t regret that choice. But the Fjordtell looked pretty cute when we peeked inside. I think in the summer when the village is open later and there’s more sunshine to enjoy quiet evenings outside, it would be a good choice.
We took the day’s first sailing of the Nærøyfjord cruise from Flåm and arrived in Gudvangen shortly after the village opened. After stashing our luggage and using the restroom in the nearby restaurant, we arrived at Njardheim just after one of the hourly tours started. Online reviews had ranged from “you only need about an hour here” to “families with kids will want to stay all day.” We had about 2 ½ hours to spend before we needed to catch a bus out of Gudvangen to Bergen, finishing our Nutshell route.
We joined the tour in progress, which only had one other family on it. Our guide was Marie, a woman completely in character with a full backstory and markedly contemporary views of Viking society. I appreciated that she gave the Vikings credit for their egalitarianism and gender equality relative to the rest of Europe at the time, while still being quite clear that modern women and people not born to privilege would not be thrilled by a return to Viking standards.
The tour was naturally presented at a very introductory level, so I had heard most of it many times before (horned helmets weren’t used; most Vikings were farmers who carried axes because swords were expensive, etc.). But, like any good museum docent, the guide was knowledgeable beyond the spiel and able to answer deeper questions. And, as I has hoped, we did get a chance to see how some things worked. In particular, my daughter and I were fascinated to see how card weaving worked and what kind of material it produced.
My daughter also got a kick out of being able to try on a helmet and brandish a weapon. I was super grateful to Marie for inviting her to do so. Since the only other kid on the tour was a boy, and a loud, pushy one at that, I think most guides would have ignored my quiet female child when it came time to hand out swords. Although her barbaric yawp could not be heard above Marie’s roar when they posed for pictures, a strong impression was made. That night she put on all the woolen items she could find and spent an hour threatening the coat rack in our Bergen hotel room.
When the tour was over, we were free to wander the village as long as we wanted. This was where we really felt the off-season nature of our visit. Although they steadfastly maintain the fiction of actually living the Viking life, not even half a dozen “Vikings” were to be found in the village that day. In the summer we might have met storytellers and weavers, people dying fabric, working leather or metal, and making food the really old-fashioned way. We would definitely have wanted the whole day.
As it was, we met a couple of sheep and the Chieftain, an older gentleman who happily confessed when the boy on our tour accused him of also being Santa Claus. A younger man gave the kids a quick archery lesson before Marie challenged them to axe throwing. Even though it was a sunny day, the mountains kept the whole village in shadow and the wind off the water was cold. We warmed up by the most wonderful outdoor fire I’ve ever experienced and had to hustle to make our bus. We didn’t get to look closely at the gift shop, but my impression was very favorable. I wish they an online shop for the handmade items, especially the jewelry, that I only got a quick look at in person.
We also didn’t see any sign of the Viking dining options mentioned from the website. We picked up some ready-made sandwiches and a bag of chips at the restaurant where we stored our luggage, and dragged our suitcases out of town to the bus stop on the highway with a few minutes to spare.
Njardheim is not a destination for serious scholars of Viking history. But it is a great stop on the Norway in a Nutshell route, especially if you have kids, are interested in handicrafts, or lack the patience for static museum exhibits. If you are not already a Viking nerd, a couple hours in the Viking Village will be enough to dispel popular mythology and give you a pretty good sense of what is known about the era. Njardheim occupies a strange place in between the cheesiness of summer fairs and them parks and legitimate academic study. But I think that in between place is a good place for curious visitors to start exploring Norway’s Viking history.
