July 15 – Stavanger, Norway- Afternoon. I've split today into two entries because I had so many flower pictures. Stavanger (sorry for the 'e' in the first part of this entry, I don't really know if it was a product of my mild dyslexia or if I'm just getting sloppy.) This afternoon we're going to visit Stavanger proper. Oh, I forgot to mention, this area has the longest growing season anywhere in Norway.
The city uses the completion date of the cathedral as its founding date, 1125. The cathedral is the oldest in Norway. It's the fourth largest city in the country. The city's center is largely compolsed of wooden buildings from the 17 &1800s and it has retained a 'small town' feel right in the middle of a large city. For an place that old it has a very high percentage of detached housing, rather unusual for that old a place.
The late 1900s saw a huge spurt in growth here resulting from the North Sea oil exploration and production. It's known nationally as the Oil Capital of Norway. The local university offers doctorates in Petroleum Technology and Offshore Technology. Glad to know that at least a small percentage of the overeducated have a reasonable view of natural resources. NATO has a Joint Warfare Center here.
The unemployment rate is very low 2% and the city is an expensive place to live. It's frequently on lists of that sort and has made it to #1 occasionally on some of them. Most common lists in the USA only show the largest cities so it never makes ours because it's not included in the population from which they are selected.
There have been settlements here for 10,000 years and by the time the country was consolidated, 872, it was well on the way to becoming a religious, economic and military center. By 1100 it had made it to that status and become an important market town.
It has experienced many economic ups and downs as the economy was based on shipping, shipbuilding and canning (mostly sardines and herring). However when the North Sea oil deposits were discovered that changed and they've been a constant boom ever since.
Our first stop after walking through some small vendors set up in the plaza was Saint Svithuns' Cathedral, the oldest in Norway. Finished in 1125 it's an Anglo-Norman style church very square but not wide like the church in Southampton. Norman aesthetics followed the rule that a church should make you look up so their general aspect is narrow and tall. It was updated in the 1200s with the addition of a new choir in the Gothic style and the roof was vaulted. This is the only cathedral in Norway that has remained unchanged since the 1300s.
It may be severe looking on the outside but on the inside it's a bit of a different story. The walls are mostly unadorned grey stone just like the outside but the objects attached to the walls and the furniture of the church are anything but plain.
The pulpit is one of the most ornately carved and painted that I have ever seen. It appears to be German baroque, although we're in Norway. It's covered in panels that illustrate Biblical stories, mostly about the birth and infancy of Jesus and the story of Adam and Eve but it does range from Creation to Resurrection. The riot of figures atop the pulpit appears to be somewhat more allegorical, lots of angels although I think I could identify Jesus at the very top and possibly David holding the head of Goliath. Some of the angels seemed to holding the implements of the crucifixion, a ladder, spear, hammer, etc. I can't be sure that was the intention.
The pulpit shares the spotlight with several carved epitaphs that may have been done by the same artist as the pulpit. They are also ornate, painted and full of Biblical imagery. In these works it's easier to identify. The finest of these is probably Hierman Epitaph. (I have since found out that the pulpit and all the epitaphs were done by Andrew Smith between 1662 and 1676. You can see the progression in his work. The Godtzen Epitaph done in 1662 is very nice but fairly simple in design. The 1664 Hierman Epitaph is probably the best of all of them. The Tausen Epitaph, his latest in the cathedral, is the smallest and very unlike the others. Very little wood remains visible. It is almost entirely painted and the main color is white. Except for the picture of the honoree in the center, it is completely white and gold. All of the others are predominately natural wood. The Tausen is also the most poignant. The painting in the center is of the funeral of his tenth and youngest child with the family gathered around. The church has some very nice stained glass but the carving stole the show.
From the church we wound our way through the narrow old city streets to try to find a very tall tower we could see from the ship as we approached the pier. It's at the center of a larte group of trees. Problem is that the narrow streets don't give you much of a glimpse of what's to the sides or ahead. We finally found it and it's not as tall as I thought. It's quite short in fact but is set atop a sizeable and steep hill. The base of the tower is just below the tops of the trees I could see from the ship. It's called the Valberg Tower and this stone version was erected in 1853 to replace a wooden one from 1658 that was destroyed by fire.
From the tower we walked down to the waterside. Across the street from where we arrived is a large drill bit of the type used up here to drill the undersea wells. It's about 9-10 feet long and has cutters at the tip and in two increasingly larger diameter cylinders above that. It uses the interlocking gear cutters that Howard Hughes invented at the tip. I don't know if they still use that type or not.
Around the quay I got my first decent picture of QM2. Usually we're docked too close to a building or other obstacles for a good shot but here we are docked downtown and I'm on the other side from the dock and have an unobstructed view.
We walked back to the side of town where the QM2 is docked and went up the stairs on the seawall to the old residential part of the city. Narrow, brick paved streets and white wooden buildings are the rule. Lots of flowers and, just up the street from the head of the stairs, is the Norsk Hermetikmuseum, a museum to the fish canning industry in Norway. Even the display board at the front of the museum is in the shape of an opened sardine tin. We decided to take a look.
It's an interesting place. It actually was a canning factory. They have the equipment they used to make the cans, lids, keys and to assemble them. They processed the fish from the nets to the can. The equipment for beheading, gutting, salting, smoking and packing them is all set up and illustrated so you understand what happens where. They have thousands of little latex sardines, both whole and prepared at every step to you see how the fish were handled and processed.
First the fish are 'threaded' onto steel skewers by the head. The skewers are hung in wooden frames and the frames slide into supports in the smokers. There are 12 brick lined smokers at the rear of the factory. Each has a steel Dutch-style door and is about the size of a house door. It hasn't been in use for many years but the area still smells smoky. When the smoking was done the frames were transferred to a rolling rack and taken to the beheading machine. Here the racks were laid on a moveable table. The fish, secured by the head, hang down from the rack. The rack moves forward to an angled band saw type blade that severs the heads which allows the fish to drop onto trays below. The trays of fish are then carried to the sorting and filling tables where they are put into the cans which then go to the lidding machine. A key is attached and the wrapper is put on and there you have it.
The displays have examples of herring and sardine wrappers over the years. Some are quite attractive. They also had displays of advertising campaigns and sardine novelties. A nice little place. The last sardines were canned in Norway in 2008. They still catch them but they are canned in Eastern Europe.
It was time to head back to the ship so we headed down the seawall and around the security fence to the gangway.
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