By Debbie Hughes
On July 8th 2025 we (myself and husband, Peter) set out on our trip to the Norwegian Land Rover Club Rally at Rognan, north of the Arctic Circle in Norway. The distance was too far for one of our historic 1950s Series I Land Rovers so we travelled in a modern Land Rover Discovery. The Land Rover Rally was the main pretext for our trip but Scandinavia, of course, has a wealth of places of historical interest and this is the story of those we visited.
On our way to the ferry port at Harwich we stopped in Colchester – tucked away down side streets we found the C12 remains of St Botolph’s Priory, an imposing Victorian water tower and the remains of a Roman Gateway into the city.
In Oslo the Viking Ship Museum was closed while they construct a new building to house it but we visited the Folk Museum with reconstructed buildings including C17-C18 farm buildings and a wooden stave church dating to 1200s. Not many original stave churches survive due the the fire risk of wooden construction.
The Kon-Tiki Museum in Oslo houses the actual Kon-Tiki balsa wood raft sailed across the Pacific Ocean by Thor Heyerdal and also the Ra II built from papyrus / reeds which Thor Heyerdal sailed from Morocco to Barbados so disproving the long held belief that Columbus was the first to sail across the Atlantic from Europe to the Americas.
Next door to the Kon-Tiki is Fram – the Polar Exploration Museum – the Fram being the ship used by Roald Amundsen on his Antartic Expedition of 1910-1912. The Fram’s hull, modified after earlier expeditions, was massively thick to enable it to withstand the pressure of the polar ice.
Oslo Fortress (Akershus Festning) is also home to the Resistance Museum which tells the story of Norwegian Resistance and the hardship suffered by Norwegians in World War II.
Heading north from Oslo we, of course, stopped at the Arctic Circle Visitor Centre – snowy scenery in an unseasonal temperature of 26°.
On the Lofoten Islands the historical highlight was the Viking Museum on the site of a reconstructed chieftain’s longhouse. The chieftain is thought to be Olav Tvennumbrunni who, rather than submit to unified rule of Norway under Harald Fairhair, went to start a new life in Iceland in the 870s. As well as many artifacts the museum also has a working replica of the Gokstad ship discovered in a Viking grave near Oslo and we were able to have a short trip on her – probably the highlight of the trip for me!
In Stockholm we went to the Vasa Museum where the amazingly intact, preserved 17th century warship, the Vasa, is housed. In 1625 the Swedish King, Gustav II Adolf, commissioned the Vasa which was to be the most powerful warship in the Baltic. Despite earlier concerns about its seaworthiness, the Vasa set off for its maiden voyage on 10th August 1628. Still within sight of the shipyard a gust of wind caused it to heel over, water flooded into the open gun ports and it sank. It sat, preserved in the mud at the bottom of the harbour, until it was finally lifted in 1961and, after years of preservation work, it was finally on display in a purpose built museum in June 1990. 98% of its structure survives so it is an amazingly intact piece of C17 history.
In Gothenburg there was motoring history at the World of Volvo.
We crossed the Oresund from Sweden to Denmark by ferry and arrived in Helsingor where Kronborg Castle is the original Elsinore in Hamlet and provides opportunity to dress up and play at Kings and Queens!
Still in Helsingor the Church of St Mary and Monastery of Our Lady were built in the late C15 – lack of stone and availability of clay meant that brick was used in these parts of northern Europe in these early buildings, making them seem deceptively modern.
Another ferry took us back to Germany and the Hanseatic League town of Lubeck founded in 1143 as the first port on the Baltic Sea and lots more examples of modern looking mediaeval brick.
And so back through Germany, Belgium, Netherlands and France to Calais and home. 4,611 miles in total and we had a fantastic trip, saw lots of fascinating and historic places but there were plenty we couldn’t fit in and scope for another trip, though maybe not quite so far north next time.
Debbie Hughes September 2025