Norway 2/4 pics

Zoonie
Wed 24 Jan 2018 18:34

Norway 2/4

The Roros Express

Geir’s sister Heidi called by first thing the next day to meet Rob and have a brief chat before attending a conference. Ingeborg had taken the day off to accompany the three of us to Roros, always a nice cultural outing for Norwegians and visitors alike.

We crunched over the gritted ice to the station once more to catch the train to Trondheim and change for the train to Roros. Our train was late and that reduced our changeover time from 12 minutes to 3. Mindful of the old crocks with him, Geir with his normal considerate and precise attention to detail spoke with the train crew and told us to stay on our train to a stop further than the one we needed as the Roros train also arrived there but our train had priority over it. Perfect.

Norway uses a lot of electricity especially in lighting, heating and transport, cars and trains. They are rich in oil at the moment and the glaring impression I could not fail to notice was how well and generously the government spreads its wealth. The areas we saw included a city, a large and typical town, small villages and rural homes and the standard of living is overall comfortable if not very comfortable.

Bundles of children tobogganed down gentle slopes of white and the tracks of mystery animals wandered across virgin snow. The Great Glama River to our right was buried under a layer of snow covered ice. Only little windows in the ice revealed the river flowing unabated beneath. A mist moved gently from the shores into the sugared coniferous woodland.

Smoke rose vertically from farmsteads in the intense still of this freezing and slow moving arctic high pressure system that engulfed the country just as a similar slow moving system sits over us now, only this one is from the tropics.

Ochre and ox blood painted wooden buildings contrasted cleanly with the perfect brilliance of the pure driven snow.

Every time the train approached habitation it sounded its horn and we craned our heads for a better view out of the window. There really wasn’t a moment to lose to visually explore the amazing scene before us from our lovely warm carriage. Our return journey, mid-afternoon, would be mostly in the darkness of another long Norwegian night.

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