Today we spent most of the day traveling to Bergen, so not a lot to report.
In the morning, we visited a fascinating WWII museum, mostly about the war in Svolvaer specifically, but Norway in general.
The man who established the museum had been collecting artifacts since the 1960s. Although he didn’t have a lot of large items, he had an astounding array of small items with details, photos and histories from each. Also,after he opened the museum, people from all over, including England, France,Germany and the US, as well as Norway, donated items their ancestors had taken home from the battles and occupation during the war.
We heard about how Norway was the first country to resist German invasion. Denmark and Norway were attacked on the same day - Denmark surrendered after a few hours, but a decisive coast guard colonel fired on the German ship and gave the city of Oslo time to evacuate people and resources, which allowed them to fight for several months. Ultimately they had to surrender when French and British soldiers were called home after Dunkirk.
We heard the whole story about the commando attack that led to the building of the bunkers we saw yesterday. The attack was led by a large force from the UK as well as a few Norwegian resistance fighters. At that point Britain was fighting the war alone, and Churchill was facing detractors at home. They needed a victory, and this attack was the first British victory of the war.
We also heard about Norway’ps role in undermining the German advance in Murmansk in Russia. These stories all highlighted how things happening here in Norway were deeply interconnected with events in the war that we are more familiar with.
After the museum, it was off to the airport. We got a quick view of Svolvaer from the window. By 6 pm we were at the hotel in Bergen, near the Bryggen. We had a delicious dinner at a Burmese resto in town, then went home to bed.
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