Search for the Viking ship

Date:
11.08.2020 to 12.08.2020

Day: 009 – 010

Country:
Norway

Location:
Parking lot at the tourist center

Kilometers per day:
57 km

Total kilometers:

1496 km

Travel time:
1 hour.

Soil condition:
Asphalt

Sunrise:
05:19 a.m.

Sunset:
21:22

Temperature day max:
28°

Temperature day min:
20°

Departure:
16:00

Arrival time:
6:30 pm

(Photos of the diary entry can be found at the end of the text).

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After a quiet night, we set off to visit the Jellhaugen burial mound and the sensational find of a Viking ship, which was only discovered in 2018 using ground penetrating radar. “It has to be here,” I say 15 minutes later, parking the Terra next to a large mound of earth. “I’m really excited to see what awaits us here,” says Tanja impatiently. “Let’s go up there,” I say, pointing to the hill, the northernmost large burial mound in Scandinavia. “Are you even allowed up there?” Tanja is unsure. “Sure, there’s a little path and there’s a sign at the top,” I reply and set off. At the top, we can see the main E6 road and, on the other side, the hilly countryside covered in grass and forest. “And King Jell is supposed to be buried among us?” asks Tanja. “That’s what tradition says,” I reply, taking the information from the information board. Because I have found the age of the Vikings interesting since my earliest youth, I feel particularly attached to places like this. I look down the hill that dominates the entire surrounding area and imagine how, around 1,500 years ago, the people of the region created this gigantic pile of earth with simple tools, how they piled sod upon sod to bury their leader and great king beneath it. According to today’s estimates, it takes one worker 100 years to pile up the 20,000 cubic meters needed for this 85-meter-long, 70-meter-wide and 9-meter-high grave. “How did people feel when they lost their leader? Were they afraid for their future? Were they insecure? Was there a strong successor who made the right decisions for his people? Did the funeral rite bring normality back into their lives?” Many unanswered questions run through my mind. “I would love to travel back in time to find out what it was really like here back then,” I muse. “But only if you could quickly return to the here and now?” Tanja wants to know. “Sure, staying in that era would not be an option. I love living in the 21st century, exploring our planet with the love of my life and enjoying the comforts of progress.” “I’m really happy about that,” laughs Tanja.

“Where is the vaunted Viking ship now?” I ask. “Maybe down there,” Tanja ponders, pointing to a white, hall-like roof. At the foot of the hill, another sign informs us that the visit has not been possible for a few days due to current excavation work. We learn that the remains of other burial sites and several longhouses were only discovered next to the large burial mound in October 2018. One of the graves is said to contain a Viking ship about 20 meters long. We suspect that it is currently being uncovered in this tent. “That means there will also be new things to discover in the future,” I say. “Enough for another trip to Norway,” replies Tanja.

As there is nothing more to discover here, we set off to visit the waterfall with the most water in Europe, the Sarpfossen, which has been the symbol of the town of Sarpsborg for 1,000 years. “If you consider that we ended up in this region purely by chance, this coincidence has brought us many highlights,” says Tanja. We cross a bridge over the Glomma, which at 601 kilometers is the longest river in Scandinavia. “There’s a parking lot sign!” calls Tanja at the end of the bridge. I brake, put on the blinker and pull into a small, idyllic parking lot right on the banks of the mighty river. “Do you think we can stay there overnight?” asks Tanja. “Definitely. We’ll stand on the side of the fence there. We won’t disturb anyone there,” I’m sure I’ve found a fantastic place to spend the night in the middle of the city. We grab our cameras and the three of us set off to visit the waterfall and the largest hydroelectric power station in Europe, which is just a few hundred meters from here. This time we cross the bridge on foot, which was built in 1854 and was described at the time as a giant structure over the Norwegian Niagara. “It doesn’t look as powerful as it does in the pictures,” Tanja wonders. “I think it’s because of the power station’s many industrial buildings. They have completely taken control of the river and the waterfall, which is now 23 meters high,” I explain. “Why is the waterfall 23 meters high today?” “One of the information boards says that the mountain sill was only formed 4,000 years ago, that there was a moraine here through which the first rapids pressed and over time the waterfall has eaten into the landscape with a gradient of the current 23 meters. Today, a volume of 577 m³/s of water gushes down here, whereas the Reinfall near Schaffhausen only has 373 cubic meters per second,” I say loudly to drown out the thunderous roar of the waterfall.

To be able to take a reasonably good picture, I hold my camera over the high barrier fence and think about what it must have looked like here 1000 years ago, at the time when the Norwegian King Olav Haraldsson sailed his ships towards the sea and could not pass the then still untamed waterfall. It was at this point that the king founded a new capital city called Borg. People harnessed the enormous water power early on and built a flour mill in the 14th century and sawmills on both sides of the river at the end of the 16th century. Later, the paper and cellulose industry was installed here and one of Norway’s largest industrial plants was created, one reason for the many ugly buildings in the area of the waterfall.

We walk back to our mobile home and while Tanja takes Ajaci for her last walk, I type our experiences into the laptop and take care of the navigation and sights in the city of Oslo…