Chapter 1: Another Adventure
After Copenhagen, Norwegian Fjords Beckon
07.19.2023 - 07.19.2023 79 °F
View Fjords on paulej4's travel map.
Chapter 1: Departure
Wednesday, July 19, 2023
“When is your next adventure?”
Countless times, B4 and I have fielded this question. It makes us happy to be asked. We infer that some find our once-a-day blog entries from far away and sometimes interesting places of interest, amusing or even enlightening.
Today, we have an answer to the question of when. It is now. As to where: we are off to the fjords of Norway; literally translated as “The Way to the North.”
Once one of Europe’s poorest nations, Norway is today one of its richest. It is the homeland of adventurer Thor Heyerdahl (pictured lower left)—he who in 1947 sailed his balsa wood raft Kon-Tiki 5,000 miles from South America to the Tuamotu Islands and later, aboard a papyrus craft, from Africa to Barbados demonstrating that the ancients could have, in fact, made extremely long sea voyages.
Norway boasts of Henrik Ibsen, author of Peer Gynt and Hedda Gabler pictured second from left. Also composer Edvard Grieg, pictured third from left, who wrote the iconic “Morning Mood” (listen at this link--https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rh8gMvzPw0) and “In the Hall of the Mountain King” (listen at this link--https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLp_Hh6DKWc) Oh; and the trolls of Theodor Kittelsen. Ancient “terrorist” Vikings visciously attacked and sometimes conquered from their homes in Norway. So did modern day terrorist Anders Breivik who in 2011 killed 77 young people at Utøya outside Oslo.
Having been to the capital city of Oslo in 2011 with Cianán and again later in route to Svalbard’s polar bears in 2020, the majestic fjords themselves have eluded me. For B4, this is her second foray to this part of the planet. The first was a Macy's buying trip back in the 70's when she pioneered their Lifestyle Furniture business; one of her many roles there before she found her way to Diamonds. She spent a week in Copenhagen studying retail concepts and visualizing how she would recreate it all for Macy's. B4 has been creating and fixing her entire career; she loves a 'turn-around'. She hasn't done a bad job on me either in the our nine years together.
At first glance, Norwegians and Americans are more alike than one might think. It is reported that “almost every Norwegian has relatives in the United States. Norwegians grow up on American movies, TV and music. When Tina Turner died in May, her death led the Norwegian evening news as thousands recalled her 1999 outdoor concert there.”
Many Norwegians are Americans. This description from the Library of Congress provides foundation for that. "Immigration surged after the U.S. Civil War and followed many of the same patterns as the Swedish immigration that preceded it. By the end of the 1860s there were more than 40,000 Norwegians in the U.S. More than one-ninth of Norway's total population, 176,000 people, came in the 1880s. These immigrants, mostly rural families, made their way to the newly-opened lands of the Midwest, settling in Minnesota and Wisconsin, then moving west to Iowa, the Dakotas and sometimes the Pacific Coast. By the end of century, urban Norwegians had begun to arrive in substantial numbers as well, and formed lasting communities in the cities of the Great Lakes and East Coast."
CNBC says Norway is “the seventh happiest country on earth” (after Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Israel, Netherlands and Sweden, and “the second-best country on earth” for women (after Iceland). Note that each of the other countries listed, except for Israel, are close neighbors. FYI: the United States is ranked 15th happiest and 43rd best for women.
Norwegians, however, diverge from Americans in many ways. In taxation, for example, if a Norwegian’s net worth is $135,000 or more, they are subject to a one percent (or more) annual wealth tax—that’s wealth, not income. But there is value in that. In exchange for those taxes, Norwegians receive both free health care and a free education.
Even so, reacting to taxes, rich Norwegians last year “boarded their superyachts” and left the fjords behind. The newspaper Dagens Næringsliv reported that 30 of the country’s multimillionaires and billionaires fled the country. Most, it wrote, moved to Switzerland. “Billionaire Mr. Kjell Inge Røkke, recently moved to Lugano, costing Norway the equivalent of almost $16 million in lost tax revenue annually. Since 2008, Dagens Næringsliv estimated that Mr. Røkke has been forced to cough up the equivalent of $135 million.” Free health care and free education mean proportionally less to billionaires--unless they obtained some of their billions as a benefit from those healthy and well educated consumers who acted as both their employees and their customers.
But, as some Norwegian billionaires flee, B4 and I arrive.
Sailing for seven nights aboard the Silver Dawn departing from Copenhagen, Denmark, we arrive a couple of days early to enjoy a stopover. The time in Copenhagen also gives us breathing room so as to not miss the boat in the event of an airline delay or cancelation. Our airline reservations were paid for and arranged through the cruise line, Silversea. They thought we should arrive on the day of sailing; I thought that too risky.
Silversea arranged an interesting routing. From Kansas City, we fly to Chicago O’Hare and, from there, connect via Air Canada to Montréal where we connect once again for our seven-hour, 3,625-mile flight (and overall sixteen hour journey) to Copenhagen. That's a dreaded "triple" with three opportunities for our one checked bag to go astray. We are devoted users of Apple AirTags which give us a real time look at where our bag is but no control over what happens to it. On the adjacent Chicago O'Hare Airport map, the gorilla icon is my carry-on bag and the elephant icon is our checked bag, both static, as we pass the time in the United Club.
Once in Montréal, we are offered the hospitality of the Air Canada Maple Leaf business class lounge. Getting from our inbound flight to the lounge put us through a more-confusing-than-usual maze, inadequately signed and minimally staffed. The lounge, however, does not disappoint. Because our overnight flight to Copenhagen is short—at least in terms of a-good-night's-sleep time—eating dinner in Montréal would allow for one to don a sleep mask and earplugs for the trans-Atlantic jump to Denmark.
But departing at 6:00pm Montréal time (5:00 Kansas City time), it is too early for bed. But it is midnight in our destination city of Copenhagen. The transatlantic dilemma everyone faces presents itself and invites a decision. So, wise travelers we are, we (at least I) will immediately set our watches ahead to Denmark time in order to think: “Sleep.” Our Air Canada flight is on a widebody 298-passenger Boeing 787-9. We are in the 30-seat business class section where we get a lie-flat seat. The Air Canada website indicates that only 13 of those seats are sold.
It won't be the cozy king-sized bed we are used to at home but it sure beats economy--or even premium economy--if one seeks comfortable sleep.
The weather forecast for Copenhagen tomorrow calls for a high of 65 °F a low of 54 °F with partly cloudy skies. That's a far far cry from the extreme heat which grips the U.S. and continental Europe. For this part of northern Europe, we are, in July, digging out our neck scarves.
So, after this overnight flight, Næste stop: København Danmark (Next stop: Copenhagen, Denmark)
