Dalsland and across the border

After leaving Annika and her family, we made our way into the Dalsland region.

This area is 25% water and consequently has the largest lake surface in all of Sweden.

Lake Vännern is the largest lake in Sweden, the largest in the European Union and the third largest lake in Europe, after Ladoga and Onega, both in Russia.

At its deepest point it is 106m deep, but the average is more like 27m.
It has a surface of 5650m², that is twice the surface of Luxembourg, and a water volume of 153km³.
It used to be connected to the Baltic, but was cut of by further uplifting. As a result, there are species in this body of water not normally encountered in fresh water lakes.
Even a Viking ship was found at the bottom in 2009!

13 degrees, good enough for a swim

Many bicycle and hiking path are to be found all around the lake, as well as a few smaller and larger towns and villages.

The largest one is at the southern end of the lake, Vännerborg.
2019, the Bandy World Championships for men and women were held here.
"The WHAT?", you might ask. Bandy.

Bandy is considered the predecessor of modern ice hokey.
It is a very similar sport but with the main difference that Bandy is played on an ice sheet the size of the average football pitch!
Also, it is not a full contact sport; shouldering is allowed, body checks are illegal.
The origins of the sport are debatable, but the first rules for it were organized and published in England in 1882.

The aqueduct in Haverud is one of the main tourist attractions in the area and a masterpiece of engineering.

Nils Ericson, who is responsible for a great many canal projects in Sweden in the 19th Century, created his magnum opus at Haverud, the only place in Europe where road, rail and waterway intersect.

The aqueduct is a free-hanging bridge, where the water is led in a 33,5 meter long sheet metal channel above the rapids. This channel is joined together by 33.000 rivets.
It is worth noting that not a single one had to be replace since its inauguration in 1868.

Further north, we visited the town of Amal, where the weather was still rather bad.
So after walking around for a while, not being very exalted by the advertised 18th Century town center,
my human looked online for a swimming pool or sauna nearby.

Google came up with the Exercise Center Hanebol.
Here we found a large number of running trails and mountain bike tracks in a large forest, a soccer pitch, a jungle gym and - a free public sauna, with changing rooms, showers and everything!
And the best part, there wasn´t a soul around.

So, after a good run in the forest, my human enjoyed the heat for a couple of rounds before we moved on to a rather nice location to spend the evening and night.

Really the only thing worth taking a photo of here...

A nice place for the night

We kept going north and now also west, towards the Norwegian border, for one last stop in Sweden, Lennartsfors.

This whole are is paradise for paddlers, long distance and otherwise.

So we stopped at a small campground that also rents out canoes.
Unfortunately, there were no solo canoes, only doubles. So that´s what we got and my human had quite an interesting time getting the massive thing in the water, let alone maneuver it.

Let´s make this very clear here, a double canoe is almost impossible to navigate by yourself.
Especially if there is wind!

She was told to sit on the back seat, so that´s how she started out.
The wind immediately pushed the nose around and off she went the other way to the intended direction.
And it got stronger as time went on.

Long story short, she had a lot of trouble getting back to camp and only made it after she abandoned the back seat for the front one.

Cannoeing is not going to be our new favorite sport.

So far, so good

A small bay to rest and "fuel up" before heading back

Wrong way!

And with this last insight, we left Sweden behind for now and made our way across to Norway.

First stop - Oslo!

Oslo is the capital of Norway and by far the most populous city in the country with some 700.000 inhabitants.
It was founded at the end of the Viking age in 1040 under the name Anslo.

Besides being the economic and governmental hub of the country, it is also an important center for maritime industries and trade in Europe.

The diminutive town hall

View from the top floor of the Munch Museum; the Opera House to the left

The top of the Opera House

An iceberg sculpture in the harbor

Floating saunas

Since the weather forecast looked rather pessimistic, my human decided to make it a cultural day and bought the "Oslo Pass", which gives you "free" entry to a multitude of museums and attractions, as well as the public transport system.

First up, the Edvard Munch Museum.
Munch lived from 1863 till 1944 and is regarded as one of the most influential painters of Expressionism.
His painting "The Scream" has become one of the most iconic and acclaimed images in all of Western Art.

What you might not know, there are actually four versions of the painting, two pastels and two painting (as well as a number of lithographs).

These paintings are seriously big

"The human mountain"

"The Sun"

One of Munch´s palettes

A temporary exhibition by Paula Rego, here pictures from her "Abortion" series

After a good portion of art, the focus shifted to famous ships.

And which Norwegian boat could be more steeped in history than the "Fram", a ship that has sailed to both the Arctic and Antarctic?

Roald Amundsen and Fridtjof Nansen, two of the most important explorers of their time, both sailed on the Fram on different expeditions.
She is a beauty of a three-masted schooner, 39m long and 11m wide, with a draft of 4,5m.

It would go too far to go into details here, but this ship and her crew have seen places and done things when exploration still meant unbearable hardships and near certain death!

My human was quite in awe, standing in front and even going on board this amazing piece of history!

Fancy a taste?

The "Kon-Tiki" museum was inspiring in much the same way, though its history is much younger.

Thor Hayerdahl, a modern day Norwegian explorer and ethnographer, wanted to prove that Caucasian people from South America could have reached Polynesia during pre-Columbian times by drifting with the wind directions.

His idea was overwhelmingly rejected by research.
So he built a raft, only with materials and techniques to be believed were available at the time.

He lashed 9 balsa tree-trunks of 14m length together with hemp rope.
The main mast was of mangrove wood and the cabin of plaited bamboo.
A crew of six manned the raft, with only one of them having any sailing experience at all!

And I will not tell you whether they made it or not - look it up!
It really is worth your while, it´s an incredible story!

Carmelo basking in the lime light of the most prominent explorers ever

She also checked out the Nobel Peace Price Center and last but not least, the "Viking Experience", a multimedia imersive attraction with 3-D-movies, holograms and interactive screens.

After that, time was up. Not a single museum is open after 6pm.