Last Day

This afternoon has seen us retreat to our hotel room for a bit of relief from the heat. Fortunately it is a really lovely hotel room. In fact I’d like to take this hotel room home with me. It follows all my laws of straightness and has a few more I hadn’t even thought of :-))))

This morning Igor took us on an adventure inside the Bergen Big Adventure. We caught the tram which goes to the airport and got off it in the middle of nowhere. Well not quite nowhere but nowhere I’d ever heard of. We found our selves surrounded by high rise flats near to a huge factory and office complex. Igor assures me this is the correct stop to take us to a 12th century Norwegian Stave Church in the middle of some woods.

Igor is the world’s best planner. I don’t ever remember when we haven’t arrived easily at the place we wanted to go. But this morning I thought he’d lost it. Well lost us!! After a few worrying minutes and a frantic attempt with Google maps an actual person came along.

It turned out that Igor’s reputation is intact. We were pointed in the right direction and sure enough after walking through the residential area and past the factory/office building and a couple of large car parks a small path led off into the woods. A few minutes later there it was. Fantoft Stave Church in all its glory.

The church was originally built around the year 1150 at Fortun in Sogn, a village near the inner or eastern end of Sognefjord. In 1879, the new Fortun Church (Fortun kyrkje) was constructed as a replacement for the medieval stave church. Fantoft Stave Church was threatened with demolition, as were hundreds of other stave churches in Norway. Fantoft Stave Church was bought by consul Fredrik Georg Gade and saved by moving it in pieces to Fana near Bergen in 1883. Outside the church stands a stone cross from Tjora in Sola-Wikipedia

Adventure over we returned to Bergen Harbour and wandered around taking photographs until the heat finally got to us and sent us back here to the hotel. We’ll be venturing out again soon for our last look at Bergen before setting off for home tomorrow morning.

Main Image-From Bergen Harbour

Extras-images of Fantoft Stave Church and The Bryggen

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