After another night of no darkness, now that we are north of the Arctic Circle, we arrive in Leknes in the Lofoten Islands. Today is Father’s Day, so I wish Barney a happy day and send messages to my brother Dan and brother-in-law JJ. Barney also sent a greeting to our almost-adopted daughter Hanna.
We are up and out early, for our morning excursion to the Viking Museum. We drive through the small town on Leknes, and the farms which come quickly as we go to Borg. Our guide, Craig, is a very tall Englishman (whose voice reminds me of an English actor whose name I cannot yet recall) with a wonderful dry sense of humor, and is a great storyteller. The Viking Museum is based around the largest longhouse discovered ever in Europe, which dates from about 500AD/CE, and was used until about 900AD/CE by a chieftain. It is an amazing 272 feet long, 31 feet wide, and 30 feet high, divided into various rooms: a great hall, Irving quarters, a storage area, and a byre or stable for animals. The actual excavation of the longhouse is about 30 meters away and is protected. The building is entirely a reconstruction, and fully outfitted with mid0floor fireplaces for cooking, the great seat for the chieftain and the lady of the house, tables for feasting, benches where people did spinning, made tools and leather and fur goods, made and stored weapons, and areas where people slept. We sit on the benches and tables on the long side of the great hall, with glasses of mead for each, in the cone-shaped glass without a base held in a twisted cast iron holder. We also try the famous stock fish, the dried cod that was the main export for this area; once moistened a bit it is no bad, and normally it would have been stacked in water to reconstitute it. Folks dressed in period costume do various demonstrations and provide history, an we watch once woman tending two huge iron pots of diced carrots and potatoes and cabbage, cooking over the giant fire in the middle of the floor, a smoky smell all around us. We explore the other areas of the building where crafts are being demonstrated by folks in period costumes. We then go into the Viking Museum, which showcases many of the objects found in the excavation, including exquisite, tiny gold plaques about 1/2” square showing male and female figures embracing. These were found by the large post which indicated the position of the chieftain’s seat, and were buried at the bottom of the post during construction. Other beads, jewelry, glass pieces and potsherds were displayed along with weapons, needs, wearing items, and more. we learned that women in this area were more or less equal to men; Viking women could own land, inherit equally to a man, be responsible for her actions, and had property right sin her dowry and bride-price, and could divorce. While her husband was away at war, fishing or hunting, she was in charge of the whole estate. Outside the small museum were remains of medieval dwellings nearby, near an enclosure with a wild board sow and her piglets, which were a good size, as well as horses and cows. e walked up past the other building stone remains to the top of the hill to look out to the amazing view. Back to the bus, we drove up a bit higher, to the site of a church built in the 1960s (some prior churches were flattened in storms), which another beautiful view, and an interesting graveyard with gravestones of swooping curves instead of the traditional rounded or square shapes. It was a really illuminating excursion.
Back to the ship, we grabbed two open-face sandwiches for a quick lunch, and readied for a boat and bus tri in the afternoon. On the boat, we sailed along the shoreline and heard an in-depth briefing on the local fishing industries, which at one time allowed fishermen to make $12,000 in a day, with controlled prices and huge harvests. Here is where much of the cod traded in Bergen for more than a thousand years came from, and the drying racks where the cod air-dried for about 4 months were everywhere to be seen. The bounty of the sea created an immense industry, and at one time there were more than 5,000 active fishermen in this area. We landed in a fishing village whihc is now a vacation spot, that once was only 200 people, when it had more than 2,000 during the heyday of cod fishing. After a short walk in town, where most of the houses were on stilts, some partially over the water, we went back to the shore parking area for a bus ride back to the ship.
Since it was Father’s Day, we had dinner in the Restaurant, where Barney had seared duck breast and I had bacon-wrapped monkfish, both of which were delicious. We spent some time in the Explorer’s Lounge reading our books with quiet music in the background, then of to bed for another early morning the next day.
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