Norwegian Wood 2006

The two busses that went from Dale to Songdal via Forde took the better part of the day on July 8. Ian Karl, brother of my friends the Karl sisters in Oakland, picked me up in Songdal. He is a partner in a sea kayak and whitewater guiding operation on the Sognfjord in the summers, and timber framing in Wisconsin in the winters. He was on a mission to pick up a flock of kayaks at a drop off point up the fjord and bring them back to the home base, so we were many hours in the van on some steep and windey mountain roads. There were some amazing views, including one of the biggest rainbows I ever saw. At the pick up spot, there was an old, water-powered saw mill, which was interesting to explore.
Ian lives up the road from Norway´s oldest stave church, Urnes Stave Church. On July 9, I walked and hitched (everyone knows each other in this town, so it was perfectly safe, Mom) down to the end of the road. Before going up the hill to the church, I made a side excurion and took the ferry across the fjord to Solvorn to see an exhibit at the Galleri Walaker. A friend of a friend, Mari Ormberg, has just finished her Masters degree in traditional woodworking at the folk arts school in Rauland (Southern Norway), and was having an exhibition at this gallery. She is using traditional carving techniques to make abstract, contemporary relief works that hang on the walls like paintings. Nice stuff, and nice to see someone using traditional methods in a new way.
The ferry returned me to Urnes, where I went up the hill to the church. Urnes stave church was built in the 1100´s, and is quite small and simple. Stave churches are built much like the grindbygg constructions I saw a few days before. The whole building is suspended on the main pillers of upright wood logs, the staves. There is some very intricate carving on the portals of the church. The story it tells is from old Norsk mythology, so they were mixing this with Christianity when Christianity first started to stick in Norway.