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.
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.
Flåmsbrygga
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.
Ægir Brewery
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.
The Beer
They have a huge range of beers with some seasonal rotation.
The day I went there, I got a tasting flight of five beers:
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.
The Food
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.
Would I Go Back?
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.
Until very recently, the easiest way to get around Norway was by boat. Even today, you could make a strong argument that it’s the best way to see the country. Certainly few people would argue that it’s the best way to see the area around the fjords. That’s why a fjord tour is a central part of the famous Norway in a Nutshell tour. For my own DIY Nutshell tour, I took the ferry from Flåm to Gudvangen.
A Three-Hour Tour
The hapless residents of Gilligan’s Island got stranded on what they expected to be a three-hour tour. When you’re touring the fjords, you can spend as long as you like. From the famous (and expensive) Hurtigruten that can last two weeks to regular old car ferries that drop you off in an hour, the choice is yours. And even if, like me, your fjord cruise only lasts a couple hours, about the only thing the experience will have in common with Gilligan’s is that you can bring all your luggage on board.
The Flåm Ferry
You don’t have to buy fjord tour tickets in advance, but they can sell out in the busy season. So it’s a good idea to get your tickets on the Visit Flåmwebsite before you leave home. There are a lot of options to choose from. I chose the Fjord Cruise Nærøyfjord, which is only two hours long and connects the tiny village of Flåm in Aurlandsfjord to the even smaller Gudvangen in in the Nærøyfjord. Both fjords are UNESCO World Heritage Sites. You can take the ferry in either direction and you can take a shuttle bus back through the tunnel road that takes less than half an hour. We were starting from Flåm with the intent to visit Njardarheimr before continuing on to Bergen, so we brought our luggage with us. In another place, I might have been worried about the requirement to leave suitcases on the empty car deck, but even on a boat filled with other foreign tourists, it felt safe to do so on such a rural boat.
Problem People
The boat wasn’t actually completely full, but it was crowded
enough that I was glad we were traveling in the off-season. Nearly everyone
else on the boat was part of a Chinese bus tour. I try not to judge other
people’s travel choices, and I appreciate that international travel is a
relatively new option for the Chinese middle class. But big bus tourists have a
way of taking up more space. They often seem more interested in gossiping over
packed-from-home snacks than experiencing their trip, or seem more excited to
look at the landscape in the photos they take with their selfie sticks than seeing
directly with their own eyes. And they don’t seem to think the rules apply to
them, even when the signs make sense without language.
Lest I give the impression that I’m only judgey about package
tourists, I should also mention that on this day my daughter decided to ignore
my advice to dress warmly for the boat. Literally everything you will read
about the fjord tours will come with a warning that no matter what the weather
is like, it’s cold out on the water. Not only does the wind cut right through
you, but the mountains shade the boat a lot of the time.
But of course, my contrary little child refused to layer and then spent the whole trip complaining about the cold. We tried to warm her up with hot chocolate, but we also spent much more time inside (where all the seats were taken) than we would normally have chosen to.
The Up Side
One benefit of spending too much time inside was that we stumbled
on the educational posters in a stairwell that talked about the native flora
and fauna, as well as the creative economic endeavors of locals trying to make
a living – like the brewery at Flåm and a farmer who made goat cheese –
in an extremely rural area.
When we did come out from the shade of the looming mountains
and enjoy some direct sunshine, we took a selfie party. And in our search for
spots on the boat that were protected from the wind and the crowd, we also
found a few like-minded seekers of solitude and beauty. Not to mention some
incredible views devoid of selfie-sticks. There were a few moments when you
could imagine what it would have been like in decades past to travel these waterways
in your own little boat. With a little stretching of the imagination you could
even turn the tourist chatter into the background noise of crowded longboat
filled with isolated farmers and warriors excited for the Assembly and catching
up on a year’s worth of gossip.
Docking in Gudvangen
I could easily see the appeal of a longer tour with multiple
stops around the fjords. There are so many picturesque little spots that would
be interesting to visit, but don’t have enough to do to hold you there
overnight (especially given the time it would take to get there by road). And I
imagine that the selfie frenzy would die down on a longer ride, allowing for
more of those soul-soothing quiet moments contemplating the mountains from the aquatic
perspective. But given our schedule, travel priorities, and wardrobe
malfunctions, I was really glad we chose the two-hour Nærøyfjord tour.
Docking in Gudvangen and walking off the ferry was such a
mundane and homely end to the journey that it added a new dimension. Instead of
imagining legendary pasts, it felt a lot like getting off the Vashon ferry back
home. That was a nice reminder that these legendary fjords are the everyday
homes of a few lucky people, who may or may not remember on a daily basis why
all those strangers with selfie-sticks are so worked up about the view.
{My ferry ticket was provided courtesy of Visit Flåm. The ticket was theirs, but as always, the opinions are mine.}
Like a smaller version of the Sydney Opera House, the building housing the Norwegian National Opera and Ballet is a tourist attraction in itself. The dramatically sloped roof is publicly accessible and serves as a popular spot for Instagram photos. I never got around to taking selfies on the roof, though. Because the best way to enjoy an opera house is to see a performance. So on my first night in Oslo, I went to see Baroque Movement at the ballet.
A Busy Calendar
They offer tours the opera house every day, but there are performances taking place inside it almost as often. When I first checked the calendar, there were two performances in the Oslo Opera House during the three nights we were going to be in town. There was a ballet on our first night, and the opera Der Rosenkavalier on the last night. Dance is a universal language, while a 3-hour German opera with Norwegian subtitles (although an intriguing prospect for me) seemed like a big ask for my 10-year-old.
“Resonance” Joerg Wiesner image c/o Norwegian National Ballet
Tickets can be surprisingly affordable. About a month before we left, there were tickets as cheap as $12 for the ballet. When I looked closer to the performance date, those seats were gone and the cost was closer to $50 – so plan ahead if you want to go.
Baroque Movement
The ballet we saw was a mixed rep program called Barokk Bevegelse (Baroque Movement in English). It was a somewhat ironic name, since the ballet was very contemporary – only the music was baroque, and even that was … modified. The person sitting next to me explained that Baroque Movement was part of a three-event series partnering a group called Barokksolistene with the National Ballet to focus on baroque music and I should really check out Alehouse Sessions.
Barokksolistene
Barokksolistene translates to “Baroque Soloists.” With the tagline, “It’s just really old pop music,” their focus is making music that people think of as stuffy and academic accessible and engaging to regular folks. If I could only catch one show in Norway, could there have been a better performance for me to see?
Immersive ballet
Celebrity violinist Bjarte Eiki and the other musicians, together with “barokkbarn” (children in Baroque costumes) met the audience in the lobby and played us into the theater like pied pipers.
Barokkbarn prepared to lead the audience to their seats.
Since the music began in the lobby, there was no “moment” when the performance started. Musicians wandered the auditorium as people took their seats, gathered casually in front of the stage, and took their places. Slowly, the floor they stood on sank, and the orchestra disappeared from view, settling in the pit. But they didn’t stay there. Born showman Eike often appeared on stage throughout the performance, even changing clothes to match the dancers.
I’m not going to describe the building or the auditorium in detail – there is plenty of information about the architecture elsewhere online. But I will say that it is beautiful. And it is a fraction the size of McCaw Hall, so even without the blurring of the fourth wall, performances in that space would feel intimate.
Resonance
The first piece was a world premiere by American choreographer Garret Smith called “Resonance.” The music comprised a collection of Baroque’s most frenetic composers.
“Resonance” Joerg Wiesner image c/o Norwegian National Ballet
Movement-wise, this dance was the most Contemporary Eric of the four, but the mood was humorous and irreverent. The costumes evoked the Baroque period filtered through a lens of Prince. It was the perfect start to the program, clearly setting the tone – this evening of Baroque music was going to be anything but stuffy. The dancers used violins as props (kind of stressing me out; I was like “be careful!” every time the violins showed up) reminding us that the violinist was the Baroque era’s lead guitar rock star.
Bout of the Imperfect
Pearl
Another new work, this one by Melissa Hough. Her name seemed familiar, but I don’t think I’ve seen her work before. She is an American trained in the Russian ballet tradition who dances with the company in Oslo.
“Bout of the Imperfect Pearl” photo by Erik Berg c/o Norwegian National Ballet
There was a very feminist feeling to this piece. The lead was dressing and undressed while everyone else danced in nude bodysuits. It wasn’t quite a narrative, but it felt like commentary. The dance was very prop heavy, with the various articles of clothing that imprison the lead also informing a lot of the movement.
“Bout of the Imperfect Pearl” photo by Erik Berg c/o Norwegian National Ballet
The music involved modified Vivaldi and a countertenor, whose effect I liked better than the first time I heard a counter tenor. The slower pace of the music and jet lag conspired against me during this beautiful piece, but the ominous, moody vibe woke my baby goth right up.
“Bout of the Imperfect Pearl” photo by Erik Berg c/o Norwegian National Ballet
How did I get where…
Cina Espejord is another Oslo-based dancer. His world premiere “How did I get where…” was all about group dynamic. Especially with the water noises added to Bach’s music, their interactions reminded me of water molecules. Everyone was dressed in khakis and dingy tees, even Eike, who joined the dancers on stage.
“How did I get where” photo by Erik Berg c/o Norwegian National Ballet
A projection of an old family photo implied that the relationships were more human than chemical, though. That photo appeared so gradually I almost didn’t notice it, then members in the photo start to disappear from it until only the child is left, finally whole thing is gone.
“How did I get where” photo by Erik Berg c/o Norwegian National Ballet
A long middle passage with slowly plucked strings went on too long, but that super-connected style of dance where relationships and placement of dancers trumps specific movements is one of my favorite things to watch in dance.
Vespertine
The program ran a spectrum from most contemporary to most balletic (I thought you always put the toe shoes first?) ending with Vespertine.
“Vespertine” photo by Joerg Wiesner c/o Norwegian National Ballet
Liam Scarlett’s “Vespertine” was created for the Norwegian National Ballet in 2013. Scarlett was inspired by the music of Arcangelo Corelli to create an abstract, sensual work against a backdrop of hanging chandeliers.
“Vespertine” photo by Joerg Wiesner c/o Norwegian National Ballet
To me, it was the most beautiful of the four pieces. It was also the one that looked most familiar stylistically (coincidence? or unexamined bias?). Either way, it was exquisite.
Compare and Contrast
The best thing about seeing art away from home is finding
out what you’re missing. How do they do things differently here? What’s universal?
Compared to my home company, Pacific Northwest Ballet, the Norwegian National
Ballet chose dances with different tropes. There was less shoulder-rolling and
head-grabbing, more props. They told more of the story with costuming, from
fussing with their clothes as part of the choreography to actually wearing
props.
“Vespertine” photo by Joerg Wiesner c/o Norwegian National Ballet
The NNB dancers seemed to spend more time in the contemporary
space than the PNB dancers do. It might have just been the particular program,
but on that night, the dancers had the looser physicality of contemporary
dancers instead of the tense verticality and sharpness that PNB dancers
maintain even in less balletic pieces. There was more natural movement (no jazz
hands ballet running here) but very little pointe work. In fact, toe shoes only
appeared in “Vespertine,” and even then going on pointe was for pivots, not a
place to hang out.
For all that PNB is improving its body diversity, the
variety of body types was a pronounced contrast here, and the casting is
unexpected for an eye accustomed to the Balanchine tradition. The waifish dancer
took the lead in the more modern “Pearl” while a more solidly built dancer
spent the most time on pointe.
Conclusion
Even though I love attending the ballet at home, I have
rarely attended arts performances of any kind when traveling. I never pack nice
clothes, and my plans are usually flexible enough to be uncertain of actually
being in a certain town on a certain day. But getting to see the ballet in Oslo
was one of the highlights of my trip to Norway. And actually enjoying art in a
theater is much better than just taking pictures of the theater for Instagram. In
the future, I might start building my travel plans around the local ballet
calendar.
“How did I get where” photo by Erik Berg c/o Norwegian National Ballet
Program Details
Choreography
Liam Scarlett, Cina Espejord, Melissa Hough, Garret Smith
Music
Bjarte Eike, Jon Balke, John Dowland, Arcangelo Corelli, Francesco Geminiani, Johann Sebastian Bach, Antonio Vivaldi…
Sound design
Jon Balke
Lighting design Vespertine
Michael Hulls
Lighting Design Espejord, Hough, Smith
Paul Vidar Sævarang
Costume design Vespertine
Liam Scarlett
Costume design Espejord
Sunniva Østerbø
Costume design Hough
Xavier Ronze
Costume design Smith
Monica Guerra
Music director
Bjarte Eike
Artists
The Norwegian National Ballet,
Barokksolistene
{I attended Baroque Movement
courtesy of the Norwegian National Ballet.}
In my backpacking days, itinerary planning meant buying plane tickets, booking a bed for the first night, and purchasing the relevant rail pass. When I became responsible for planning family vacations, the burden of ensuring a good time was had by all (and therefore a love of travel instilled in the next generation) sent me the other way. I didn’t just reserve lodging and transportation for the entire trip, I agonized over room and seat selections. Now I’m headed to Norway with a child who is old enough to have opinions on where we go. What’s the itinerary look like for that?
