Six countries, ten cities, a dozen national parks, lots of natural and cultural points of interest, all in about ten weeks of roaming around in fascinating and beautiful Nordic countries. I started with a three week visit to Norway, then a three week visit to Iceland, and wrapped it up with about three and a half weeks in Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and Estonia. Here's a brief photo summary; more details about each country are available through links in the text below. Enjoy!
NORWAY
We also stopped at places like Geiranger Fjord. This fjord and another one called Nærøyfjord, both UNESCO site, are two of the world’s longest and deepest fjords. "They are considered ... archetypical fjord landscapes and (are) among the most scenically outstanding anywhere. Their exceptional natural beauty is derived from their narrow and steep-sided crystalline rock walls that rise up to 1,400 m from the Norwegian Sea and extend 500 m below sea level" (from the UNESCO citation)
After the coastal cruise, I headed over to Oslo, Norway's capital city and probably my favorite city on the entire Nordic trip. On the waterfront is the amazing Opera House, which seems to emerge like an iceberg from the fjord it is next to.
More pictures and details about the Norway visit here:
https://lotsofamazingplaces.blogspot.com/2024/10/amazing-places-in-norway-2024.html
And after five fabulous days in Oslo, I headed over to...
ICELAND
...where I met up with my friend Linda. We spent our time exploring the Reykjavik area for about a week, and drove around the perimeter of Iceland (the "ring road") for about two weeks.
The capital city of Iceland is Reykjavik, located in the southwestern part of the country. The city is fun, complex, and touristy. It is dominated by Hallgrímskirkja, the largest church in Iceland, seen here at the end of Rainbow Street.
This rift valley in Þingvellir (Thingvellir) National Park, near Reykjavik, is created by the slow separation of the North American and the Eurasian tectonic plates. The plates are moving away from each other at about 2.5 cm / 1 inch per year.
In addition to some beautiful geology, the park protects the place where the first known application of democratic self governance happened. In Old Icelandic, Þing means “assembly” or “meeting”, and völlur means “field”. Add them together and you have the “assembly place” of Þingvellir.
Our adventures continued on the Ring Road at the Sólheimajökull (jökull means glacier in Icelandic). It is a beautiful glacier that, unfortunately, is melting quickly. Estimates are that it loses about 20 meters / 66 feet in thickness and 60 meters / 200 feet in length each year. In any case, about ten of us joined our guide Lucy for a hike on the glacier. We strapped on our crampons, got into our safety harnesses, donned our helmets, picked up our ice axes, and off we went for a 90 minute introduction to the glacier and to some basic ice hiking / climbing skills. It was pretty great!
Icebergs "calve" off the front edge of glaciers, and we saw icebergs like this in several lagoons around the Vatnajokull Glacier and National Park. We took a RIB (rigid inflatable boat) out into the Fjallsárlón (sárlón means lagoon) for a close up tour of the icebergs and the glacier that spawned them. Great, informative boat ride
Selfoss is one of three beautiful waterfalls along the Jökulsá á Fjöllum river in northeastern Iceland.
Scenic splendor in the Highlands, on the way to the Westfjords (in northwestern Iceland). Notice the glacially carved U-shaped valley
Iceland has LOTS of waterfalls like this, just a little waterfall in one of thousands of ravines carved by water over long periods of time. We managed to visit the famous waterfalls, but we were also very happy to find secluded surprises like this one, near Drangsnes in the Westfjords
Our Suðureyri highlight (also in the Westfjords) was getting a glimpse of the northern lights. We were lucky to have a clear night, so between 100 and 230 am we watched these amazing displays of light slowly dance across the night sky.
On our way back to Reykjavik we passed through the Snaefellsnes (Icelandic for snow mountain) peninsula, which is home to dramatic scenery at the Snaefellsjokull National Park. This park, the third of three National Parks we visited in Iceland, preserves and protects the glacier, the active volcano below it, and the land around the mountain. Another wonderful National Park
There was lots more, of course, but the short story is that Iceland is Amazing! More here if you're interested:
https://lotsofamazingplaces.blogspot.com/2024/10/amazing-places-in-iceland-2024.html
But it was time to move on. Linda had to return to the US, and I headed over to Copenhagen, to explore the little kingdom of ...
DENMARK
This is Nyhavn, a scenic and old part of Copenhagen. It has been a trading center even before Denmark was one of the dominant world powers, back in the 16th and 17th centuries.
Of course, while I was in Copenhagen, I had to stop to get this shot! A very big reputation for quite a small (4 feet) statue. The Little Mermaid has been painted over, decapitated, disarmed (literally), blown up, and otherwise assaulted and insulted, but each time she was painstakingly reassembled, restored, or rebuilt, and today she still graces her waterside perch
Except for my visit to Iceland, I traveled mostly by train. Here, I went from Copenhagen through Odense to Esbjerg, one of the gateway cities to the Wadden Sea. The Wadden Sea is famous for its extensive tidal mud flats. It is an important area for migrating birds. Two neighboring countries (Netherlands and Germany) share a UNESCO designation for protecting this valuable ecosystem:
https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1314/
Kronborg is a small city just north of Copenhagen. It is the home to Kronborg, aka Elsinor, a castle built by King Frederick II in the late 1500s, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the setting for "Hamlet, Prince of Denmark" by William Shakespeare
More about Denmark:
https://lotsofamazingplaces.blogspot.com/2024/10/amazing-places-in-denmark-2024.html
But after that short week in Denmark, I crossed the Öresund Strait to start my visit to...
SWEDEN
I started with a couple of days in Malmö, the third largest city in Sweden and pretty much east of Copenhagen. Among many other interesting things, there was this famous building called The Turning Torso; an award-winning residential skyscraper in Sweden; 54 stories of mostly condos, designed by Santiago Calatrava
In the middle of the city, Malmö has the Malmö Castle / Museum: This castle has been repurposed and adapted to house an aquarium, a museum of natural history, and an art museum. A few original parts of the castle, built in 1530s, have been preserved
Gothenburg, the second largest city in Sweden, is home to several multinational companies, including Volvo. I spent a few very enjoyable hours here, at the World of Volvo Exhibition Center and World Headquarters. There are a LOT of Volvos in Sweden. Opened in 2024; a fun place to visit!
Then on to Stockholm, the capital (and largest) city of Sweden where I spent about five great days. I stayed in the center of Gamla Stan, the oldest part of the city. The colored houses are in Stortorget, Stockholm's oldest square and the center around which Gamla Stan grew. Also the site of an important set of public executions that changed the course of Swedish history.
More at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stortorget
This is the Nobel Prize Museum, where the committee meetings happen and where prize winners are announced
Sweden has two huge archipelagos, one on the west coast around Gothenburg and the other on the east coast, a group of about thirty thousand islands protecting Stockholm. Gällnö is one of those islands in the Stockholm Archipelago, and one of about 150 islands that is inhabited year round. I traveled by ferry through part of the archipelago to meet up with friends Matt and Nadine to hike on this one!
https://lotsofamazingplaces.blogspot.com/2024/10/amazing-places-in-sweden-2024.html
Then it was time to move on, so I boarded an overnight ferry in Stockholm and sailed east to...
FINLAND
Helsinki, Finland's capital, is another city with a waterfront and an archipelago of islands protecting it. Facing the waterfront is this massive Lutheran Cathedral, a place where nationally important services are held. It is also a wonderful venue for concerts (I attended one while I was here; the acoustics were fabulous!). Finns generally, and urban Finns especially, are not particularly "religious," so not many people attend services regularly, but they are available every week for those who want them.
In a city with a lot of cool buildings, the coolest building was Oode, Helsinki's Central Library. There's hardly a straight line or a corner in the place; all kinds of curves meant to evoke clouds, waves, floating sensations. The planners wanted Oodi to be the city's family room. I'd say they succeeded. There were lots of people using it late on a Thursday afternoon
In the archipelago just south of the city is a set of five islands that house a fortress called Suomenlinna. When Finland was a Swedish possession in the 1700s, they built this fortress to defend themselves against Russian aggression. Didn't do much good; the Russians took control of Finland in the late 1700s without much of a fight and used the fortress as their own naval base for about 100 years. It is now a very nice park and a World Heritage Site.
To me, no visit to a country is complete if I don't visit at least one national park. This was it: Sipponkorpi National Park, about 20 miles / 30 km northeast of Helsinki. A beautiful place with birch and aspens starting to turn their golden colors. Plenty of moss and lichen too! Here's a sweet view of Fiskträsk Lake, one of the destinations of our hike in the park
There's more about Helsinki here:
https://lotsofamazingplaces.blogspot.com/2024/10/amazing-places-in-finland.html
I only had four days in this fascinating country. I could easily have spent another week exploring it. But since I was so close by, I decided to jump on another ferry and spend a couple of days in...
ESTONIA
Tallinn is the capital city of Estonia, the northernmost Baltic state, and a little country that is very thrilled with its relatively recent freedom from Russian domination and control. Here is a view of Old Town Tallinn, another UNESCO site. This part of Tallinn is among the best preserved and maintained medieval walled cities anywhere in the world.
Those of you who know me well will know that I really enjoy choral singing, especially of music written by young modern composers. Likely no other composer has influenced modern choral music more than Arvo Part, a deeply spiritual and gifted musician from Estonia. His music offended the occupying Soviet regime enough that he decided to flee Estonia and lived mainly in Germany until it was safe to return to his beloved home. During that time, however, his simple, pure, and haunting music became well known in the musical world (even now, his music is sung more by choral groups than any other composer, living or dead). The Arvo Part Center is in Laulusmaa, about 30 miles / 45 km west of Tallinn. As you can imagine, I had to go there. The center itself feels like a retreat; it is surrounded by a forest of large pines and is very close to the coast in the far north western part of Estonia.
Back in Tallinn, I visited Lauluväljak (tr: Song field), the place where the Estonian Song Festival (called Laulupidu) is held every five years. Estonia has a long and rich history of large group choral singing, starting in 1869, when 845 singers from 51 choirs got together to sing hymns, traditional folk music and patriotic songs. In the last Laulupidu in 2019, more than 30,000 singers from over 1000 choral groups spent a weekend singing to an audience of over 100,000 spectators. Many of the spectators sing along with the performers. This is also the place where Estonians gathered together in 1989 and sang protest songs against the Soviet regime. Over a hundred thousand people joined voices to sing Estonian folk songs and old national anthems. This started a tradition that spread to Latvia and Lithuania as well, and led to a declaration of independence from Soviet domination through "the Singing Revolution."
More about Estonia:
https://lotsofamazingplaces.blogspot.com/2024/10/amazing-places-in-estonia-2024.html
All in all, a pretty spectacular trip with so many interesting places to visit. Lots to love and recommend about any and all of these amazing nordic countries!
Navigation:
Nordic Overview:
https://lotsofamazingplaces.blogspot.com/2024/10/amazing-places-in-nordics.html
Iceland:
https://lotsofamazingplaces.blogspot.com/2024/10/amazing-places-in-iceland-2024.html
Norway:
https://lotsofamazingplaces.blogspot.com/2024/10/amazing-places-in-norway-2024.html
Sweden:
https://lotsofamazingplaces.blogspot.com/2024/10/amazing-places-in-sweden-2024.html
Denmark:
https://lotsofamazingplaces.blogspot.com/2024/10/amazing-places-in-denmark-2024.html
Finland:
https://lotsofamazingplaces.blogspot.com/2024/10/amazing-places-in-finland.html
Estonia:
https://lotsofamazingplaces.blogspot.com/2024/10/amazing-places-in-estonia-2024.html
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