Norsin’ around with the Vikings...
Reindeer furs and saunas on the sea... Caroline Hendrie’s Nordic cruise is hygge-tastic
In and out we went, from hot to cold, to hot again, sauna to snow room to steam room, to snow room to sauna. One by one we stepped forward to pull the chain on a dangling wooden bucket to be drenched with cold water.
It was sauna night on the Viking Sea cruise ship and our Norwegian teacher Maria was showing us a Nordic wellness routine – running out of the family sauna naked to roll in snow or jump in a lake – in the Swedish on-board spa. This was just one of the delightful super-Scandinavian enhancements to this two-week Viking Homelands cruise from Bergen in Norway to the Swedish capital Stockholm.
Stepping on board Viking Sea is like arriving in the lobby of a Nordic boutique hotel, with stylish, modern furniture and an emphasis on natural materials. I loved returning from shore excursions to Munch Moments at 6pm, when a pianist and string quartet play pieces by Edvard Grieg while a gallery of works by Edvard Munch – including The Scream – are projected on to a giant screen.
Since we were in Bergen, the gateway port for the Norwegian fjords, and were bound for Denmark over the next few days, I was delighted to sit down to a five-course Scandinavian menu including reindeer consommé.
A panoramic tour of Bergen took in the wooden merchants’ houses on the quayside in Bryggen, the fish market and the Nordnes peninsula.
Sailing up beautiful Eidfjord in the early morning, our included tour took us up the valley to Hardangervidda Nature Centre, where goats grazed on the roof of the gift shop. The next day we were one of three ships docked in Stavanger, the oil-rich city with a winning combination of old and new architecture. Sailing across the Skagerrak to Denmark, I had a busy afternoon. After browsing books in the Explorers Lounge, it was time for a lecture on how the angst-filled life of Munch made him the father of Expressionism, then tea time in The Winter Garden. That evening I had my initiation in the Nordic bathing ritual and slept like a log.
Aalborg in Jutland tops the polls for Europe’s happiest city, and it is not hard to see why. It has a lovely waterfront, a quaint Old Town full of taverns, a park filled with trees that sing pop songs when you press a button, an art museum designed right down to the last door hinge by the Finnish architect Alvar Aalto, and a reconstruction of a Viking farmstead.
It was the next day, when I was sitting in the sun-filled garden of the Design Museum in Copenhagen, feeling the hygge after walking through a tunnel of 110 fabulous and functional Danish chairs, that it dawned on me I would soon be out of my new comfort zone when the cruise ended.
There was nothing else for it. Hurrying back on board, I booked a Swedish massage, ordered a plate of herrings with rye bread to eat sitting on a reindeer skin by the virtual log fire.