Touring Trondheim in Sleet and Whipping Winds

We emerged from Vesteralen gangplank into sleet and whipping winds. Winter was coming. During our 10 minute walk to the Clarion Hotel, we felt the solid tick-tack of ice pellets on our hoods, yet just a few minute's earlier the city’s wharf had been bathed in sunlight. Now everywhere the sky was black.

This was the coldest weather we had seen since Little Bighorn in Montana on our journey – and that was just before Easter 2022, 18 months earlier. Crossing the equator twice over the past year had delivered us nothing but summers and springs, but now all of that changed. Trondheim was giving us a proper dose of Norwegian weather, or what Cyndy liked to call "to-the-bone cold." Even the locals said this was unusually cold for early October.

Trondheim is a working city, at least by the looks of the trains and ships, cargo containers and trucks everywhere at its large docks. It is Norway’s third largest city, 220,000 people and growing. Eighteen wheelers rolled in, cranes swung through the sleet, trains shipped in and out along the new highways and forklifts streamed in clusters among the cargo containers that would soon take their contents onto ferries or trains or stores. Everywhere sleek electric buses ran the local transit system. All of it unfolded below the low gloom of the gray – blue clouds.

But there is history too. We settled into our hotel and then explored a bit before dark set in. The next day we would take an audio tour of the city and gather up a few morsels of its long history (to find the audio tour App, search Voice of Norway in the Apple or Google stores - very well done).

The city's founding goes back to 997 when it was nothing more than a trading post that served as the capital of Norway during the Viking Age. The Nidaros Cathedral and the Archbishop's Palace is what got our attention on the tour, built 1000 years ago, it was the most important Gothic monument in Norway. In fact it remains the northernmost medieval cathedral in the world. It was also the end of Northern Europe's most important Christian pilgrimage in those days -- the Pilgrim's Route or Pilegrimsleden from Oslo to Saint Oluf's tomb, also know as Olav's Way. (Olav was a Scandinavian king and saint buried in the Cathedral.) In 1991, Norway's current King, Harald V, and Queen Sonja were consecrated in the cathedral, and in the past many Scandinavian Kings were crowned. The Cathedral is now a museum well worth the visit inside with its massive vaulted ceilings that reminded me a bit of Notre Dame in Paris.

We had begun our tour at the city's main square through a cold rain where we learned about the Nazi take over of Norway in 1940. The city fell without a fight, but throughout the war built a robust resistance movement that made life exceedingly difficult for the Germans. Despite this, the Nazi's had big plans for Trondheim, and contemplated a scheme to build a new city with 300,000 inhabitants called Nordstern ("Northern Star") that would become a massive submarine base for the Third Reich. Luckily that never happened and there's little evidence of the work that began there.

From the main square we visited the royal gardens, and sauntered past the Nidelva River getting details about the town's history as a port and finally explored the Cathedral and Abbey where, after a neck-craning interior visit, we helped ourselves to some hot chocolate in the cafe to shake out the shivers from our "to-the-bone" promenade.

Trondheim Recommendations

Here are some recommendations as you plan your own travels to Trondheim. And follow this link for more Norwegian recommendations.