Festinord in Copenhagen

We set off for Festinord - the young adult conference for Scandinavia - on the same road we traveled to go to Sogne Fjord with Erin. Instead of exiting we stayed on the road which soon led us to the world's longest tunnel. It is over 15 miles long. There are three blue and green lighted widespots in the tunnel, otherwise it is just one long shortcut under the mountain.

 

Two things changed when we finally left Norway and got into Sweden: first the land flattened out into beautiful rolling green hills and secondly the speed limits increased to 120km/hr. The fastlane speed was more in the neighborhood of 140 - about 84mph!

About Festinord - the word means "party in the north" and that is what it was in one sense. There were dances every night but Thursday. The themes changed from day to day and you could dress to the theme or not. Over 650 people from 26 nations attended. There were sports competitions, Futbol for men and women, team dodgeball like in the movie of the same name, dance and singing groups were formed so they could prepare what turned out to be very professional performances, service projects were carried out, classes were offered by a variety of teachers. Devotionals were held each morning, about 100 bicycles were available for loan. Finally, the food was outstanding and seemed to never stop. We were busy slicing bread as early as 7am or making sandwiches for 650 at 11pm.

On Wednesday we took a cultural tour with most of the 650 young adults. We are posing with Simon, one of our men from Bergen, at the Frederiksborg Castle outside of Copenhagen.

It is old' (1736) beautiful, and free to the public. If you want to see the famous religious painting of Carl Bloch the cost is only $10.

We joined a mob of people on a day that was over 80 degrees F and very humid.

The castle from the gardens out beyond the lake.

The moat and its bloom of algae surrounded the castle.

We cooled off in our bus on the journey to downtown Copenhagen, where we were treated to a "first" for Denmark at "The Cathedral of our Lady." Our all LDS group filled the cathedral to hear the Festinord choir and one of the General Authorities of the church speak in this inspiring setting.

This classical building replaced the original, which was bombarded by the British during the Napoleonic Wars.(Early 1800's) The architect of the new building followed classic Roman and Greek traditions but the Danish sculpter Thorvaldsen put the finishing touches on the interior with sculptures of eleven of the original Apostles plus the Apostle Paul lining the walls. At the back of the Altar is a sculpture favored by Mormons of the risen Kristus, calmly inviting all to come unto him - very different from the practice of the day which portrayed a suffering and bloody Jesus on the cross.

Peter, holding the keys of authority.

The Kristus with our Festinord Choir singing in the foreground. See YouTube "This is the Christ -Festinord 2012"

Renate, also from Bergen, was in the choir.



On the following day we accompanied one of several busloads of people to the Copenhagen Denmark Temple.

We attended a session with our buddy Arju our YSA president.

Kathy, second from the left, is also one of our Bergen women. She is getting ready for the Cultural Evening performance.

We were impressed with the quality of the program put together in three days by these talented men and women.

Included in the cast was Sandra - also of Bergen. She is a talented dancer.

The cast posing after the performance.



Large group meetings and devotionals were held in the Farum Arena just around the back of our main campus.

The final event was a dinner and formal dance held at a very nice conference center about 20 minutes from campus. One of our jobs was to decorate for "the prom." It took hours to set the tables, fold napkins, and set out the little touches of class.

Almost 700 attended the dinner, dance, awards presentation and final evening together.

This year's winning football team receives the cup.

Tomas Kofod a well known Danish actor and singer performs during dinner. He sang some Broadway show tunes.

Heidi and Thomas Ringheim were the master planners. They and their committee organized over 200 volunteers to pull off a fantastic six days of positive and enjoyable activities in Denmark. We joined about twenty couples like ourselves to help out with anything from food prep to security. It was a week we will always remember. 



Don't let a little rain get in the way!

We spent some time doing inside things and shopping in the downtown area of Bergen. One of our stops was the Hanseatic Museum. The balance is stacked with dried codfish from northern Norway. Their protein was in high demand in the middle ages so traders in Bergen made good money exporting and bartering for other goods.

These are the same window spaces (can't vouch for the glass) that traders peered out of onto the same rainy streets back to the year 1705. This building survived all of the fires and weather back to that date.



Please do not touch the old ledger books. The Hanseatic League traders lived and worked in this room.

This looks like a compfy little crib - if you were short enough and didn't have too much stuff that you needed to keep with you.

I loved walking the old uneven floors and ducking in and out of the oddly cut up rooms.

A few doors down this rotted floor is being excavated as part of a rebuilding project for one of the buildings that was about to fall down.

Some days are like this - just ask a four or five year old.

Next morning, very early, we headed north for Sogne Fjord. It was still a little rainy but that is one of the major moods of Norway so you just have to go with it. We caught the ferry at Gudvangen for a two hour plus trip to Kaupanger.

Good news: very few of us on board. Bad news: cool and rainy.

Nærøy Fjord is very narrow and over 600 meters deep.

We chugged our way toward the main part of Sogne Fjord passing several little settlements. This one was at the end of the road on the western side.

This settlement had electricity but no road in or out - still, they had cars for getting around from farm to farm.

 

The trip was very peaceful.

 

Mother and daughter on deck

Nice looking berry farm

The ferry seems pretty big when you are standing on deck but the fjord walls drawf everything.

 

We left Kaupanger and drove to Hella which is one corner of a triangle of ferries. We were headed for a place called Vik i Sogn, where there is a stave church built back in 1140.

Our crossing was quick, from just to the left of the waterfall to this beautiful little villiage.

We parked the Polo right in back of the Hopperstad Stavkirke.

The black color is from the pine pitch that is painted on the entire building every few years. It is the same technology that the vikings used to keep their boats watertight. The roof design in these churches is also boat design - just turned upside down.

Original carvings and door posts except for part of the right post. It was cut off to make room for a rather important townsman who had died and ordered a coffin that was too wide for the door. Someone went home, got an axe, and adjusted the door. In those days (until the 1800's) people were burried under the floor of the church. The floor boards were like boat hatches. You just pulled them up, dug the grave and planted Olav. It is said that the smell inside the church got more unbearable as the graves got shallower. Finally, it was forbidden and everyone was burried in the churchyard. The door post was repaired of course.

this old door in coated with multiple layers of pine sap pitch.

 

It is very dark inside. The windows (see next picture) are dinky. The candles are few. The main alter is the darkest part of the sanctuary. The church is restored to the Catholic era - as close to 1140 original set up as possible.

The little circle symbols all around the room symbolized the fact that the Bishop had blessed this building. The canopy over the altar is a Catholic feature which was torn out of almost all of the other 29 remaining stave churches.

Altar with canopy

Some of the post - Reformation art was left in place to show how the walls were decorated.

The larger windows were added later in the buildnings history. The little portholes are the original windows.

You have to love the dragons.

On our way up the valley we stopped at a little restaurant for a last look at Vik and the Sogne Fjord.

The rest of the trip home was a wild ride on back roads, right next to booming waterfalls and through several unlighted one-lane tunnels.

It was still raining when we got home but our day had been memorable. Erin left early the next morning. It was so good of her to come visit us.