Just spotted an interesting item from Friday November 6th in the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten:

In celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Oslo-Bergen railroad line (which crosses the mountainous central spine of Norway to get from Oslo in the lowlands in SE Norway to Bergen on the Atlantic ocean on the west coast of Norway, Norwegian TV channel NRK 2 has recorded a full trip from Oslo to Bergen across the mountains.

It was a major project for a young nation - Norway only regained it's full independence in 1905, after being par of Denmark for about 400 years from the late 1300s until 1814, and being forced into a union with Sweden for 93 years, from 1814 until 1905.

The trip, which is about 500 kilometers long, and will pass through a total of 182 tunnels in 7hrs and 16 minutes, was recorded in October 2009, using 4 cameras - one showing the engineer's view, two showing the view out windows on either side of the train, and one used to record footage among the passengers.

They plan to actually broadcast the entire trip, ie starting their broadcast at 7:55 pm CET on Friday November 27th, and continuing until a little past 3 am local time, alternating between showing footage shot from the four cameras on the train, and (when the train is in tunnels) showing historic footage from the construction of the railroad line (ie from 1909).

Sounds like a dream situation for a hardcore railfan. I am actually impressed that management at NRK TV went for it. Of course, they do have three TV channels (of which NRK2 is the channel for documentary shows and suchlike), and they are funded by the tax payers, so they don't have to please people selling soap or cereal, but still.

I might need to get a recorder with a hard disk that can record a 7 hour show, just for the heck of it :-)

More history (in English) here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bergen_Line

Grin,
Stein

I haven't read either your post or the supplied linked info carefully, Stein, but you can be certain that I will. However, and my ignorance is flapping out of the window for everyone to see, :o , I did not know that Norway was set free only 104 years ago. It may all be explained in the link, but could you give us a brief precis? What was it prior to '05, and how did it all come about? Any major strife politically, did it polarize the public? Was there a big street party when it was a done deal?

I think the broadcast is a marvellous idea!! Lucky guy...

-Crandell

Selector Wrote:I haven't read either your post or the supplied linked info carefully, Stein, but you can be certain that I will. However, and my ignorance is flapping out of the window for everyone to see, :o , I did not know that Norway was set free only 104 years ago. It may all be explained in the link, but could you give us a brief precis? What was it prior to '05, and how did it all come about? Any major strife politically, did it polarize the public? Was there a big street party when it was a done deal?

Quick recap: Most of what is now Norway was united into a single country under a single king around 1030 AD. Had some pretty hefty civil wars in the 1100s, and then settled down until the black plague killed off almost half the population and most of the nobility in mid 1300s.

From the end of the 1300s (1396) until 1536, Norway was part of a common scandinavian union (the Kalmar union) with Sweden and Denmark. Then it effectively became a province of Denmark (or "Denmark-Norway" as some historians call it) from 1536 until 1814.

Denmark-Norway fought a number of wars with Sweden over the years, and various parts of what once had been Norway (and Denmark) over time became Swedish, as the Swedes were better organized, both as soldiers and diplomats.

Final nail in the coffin for Denmark-Norway was backing the wrong horse during the Napoleonic wars.

Denmark had no effective defense against Napoleon, and with the British fleet under Nelson launching a preemptive strike against the Danish-Norwegian fleet in Copenhagen, to prevent Nappy from getting the Danish-Norwegian fleet, Denmark-Norway ended up throwing in their lot with France in the Napoleonic wars.

That caused the Norwegian part of the kingdom to be isolated from Denmark by the British fleet from 1807 until 1814, having to fend for themselves, fighting Swedish invasions, Sweden having thrown their lot in with Britain and Russia.

Also, Russia got Finland (which had long been part of Sweden) from Sweden in 1807. In compensation, Britain and Russia promised Sweden that they could get Norway from Denmark-Norway.

In 1814, the Norwegians declared independence rather than becoming part of Sweden (which they had fought on and off for the previous 300 years of so). We adopted (on May 17th 1814) a new constitution based on the same basic ideas as the ones from the French revolution and the American constitution.

Swedes were not about to accept that, and after a scrappy little war, the Norwegians had to surrender in the fall of 1814.

But they had fought hard enough for the Swedes to accept that Norway would be a separate country with its own parliament, constitution and government, but under a joint king, and with the Swedes handling foreign policy and defense policy for the united kingdom of Sweden and Norway.

Norway and Sweden were united for 93 years - from 1814 until 1905. In the second half of the 1800s the Norwegian started campaigning for more home rule and a bigger say in government, and eventually independence.

A major milepost on the road to full independence was the impeachment trials in parliament in 1884, where it was established that the prime minister and his council ruled at the sufferance of the Norwegian parliament, not at the pleasure of the Swedish king.

At the end of the 1800s the Norwegians built up a modern navy, fortifications and modernized the Norwegian army, and a lot of Norwegians joined up in the militia, which organized shooting ranges in most communities.

So when Norway unilaterally declared independence from Sweden in the summer of 1905, the Swedes had the choice between an amicable divorce, or a pretty bloody war to try to hold onto a group of people which did not want to be part of Sweden.

Fortunately, after a rather tense summer and autumn, a peaceful divorce was arranged, and Norway became independent, electing (after a pleibicite) a Danish prince as the new king of Norway.

Yes, they celebrated independence in 1905. But what we are celebrating as our national day is not the date of independence from Sweden in 1905, but the date our constitution was adopted (in 1814).

Probably a lot more than most non-Norwegians would ever want to know about Norwegian history ;-)

Smile,
Stein

Not at all...I appreciate your effort, and I have to admit, truthfully, that I knew none of it! Sheesh.....where have I been?

Thanks, Stein.

-Crandell

Fascinating! Thank you for posting.

Tom

Quote:Fortunately, after a rather tense summer and autumn, a peaceful divorce was arranged, and Norway became independent, electing (after a pleibicite) a Danish prince as the new king of Norway.

Why a Danish prince and not a Norwegian? :?

MountainMan Wrote:

Quote:Fortunately, after a rather tense summer and autumn, a peaceful divorce was arranged, and Norway became independent, electing (after a pleibicite) a Danish prince as the new king of Norway.

Why a Danish prince and not a Norwegian? :?

Norwegian royal family died out in the late 1300s. If they wanted to pick a prince from a royal family, they had to import someone.

Norway had been part of Denmark for 400 years before the 93 years in union with Sweden, and Norwegians had been reasonably happy with being part of Denmark. It was the forced union with Sweden they protested in 1814, not being part of Denmark. They chose a Danish prince as king of Norway in 1814, when they declared independence. When the Swedes took over in 1814, the Danish prince had to abdicate as part of the forced union agreement.

In 1905, they wanted someone associated with Denmark and England, in the hope that this would provide a little protected if the Swedes decided to get ambitious again. So they chose prince Carl of Denmark, who was married to Maud, one of the daughters of Queen Victoria of England. He, probably wisely, insisted on a pleibicite on whether Norwegians wanted wanted a monarchy with him as king, or whether they wanted a republic. The result was overwhelmingly in favor of a monarchy with Carl as king.

He arrived in Norway in 1905, with his wife Maud, and his young son Alexander (then aged 3). In a very popular move, he changed his name from Carl to Haakon and added "VII" (the seventh), since Norway as an independent kingdom up to 1380 had previously had six kings by the name of Haakon. His son Alexander was renamed Olav, and later became king Olav the fifth, who ruled from 1957 until 2001. The current king is Harald the fifth

King Haakon was a good king, who understood his role perfectly - to be a uniting symbol for people of all political persuations. And he proved to be an inspired choice when the Germans launched their surprise invasion of Norway without a previous declaration of war on April 9th 1940.

He helped put some spine into those members of the government who was wondering whether to surrender, and he (along with the government, parliament and the army high command) made his escape from Oslo to continue the fight before the Germans made their way into Oslo, while the Germans made several attempts at killing them by bombing the towns they moved to.

One of the best know photos from the war in Norway in 1940 shows the king, calmly standing under a birch tree with his son, crown prince Olav, looking defiantly up at German bomber plans as they flattened the small coastal town of Aalesund around him.



Our wartime poet Nordahl Grieg wrote a poem about the king as the symbol of resistance. He called his poem "The King", and it starts like this:

"Thus the king will remain in our memory:
by a pale birch tree
against the dark background of bare spring forest,
he stands alone with his son.
German bombers are overhead"

Eventually the government, the king and as much of our navy, air force and army as we could get out were evacuated to England to continue the fight from exile, while in Norway, the labor unions, the teachers, the priests and many other brave men and woman joined the resistance movement that grew up under the noses of the German occupants.

Nordahl Grieg escaped to England, where he joined the Free Norwegian Forces. He died on December 2nd 1943, in a Lancaster bomber that was shot down over Berlin.

The Germans finally was beated by the combined effort of all the allied countries, with the heaviest burdens of course having been carried by the United States, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union, and surrendered on May 8th 1945,

A day known in Norway as "liberation day". Crown prince Olav returned to Norway a few days afterwards, and the king returned to the county to meet a a gigantic celebration on June 7th 1945, 40 years after Norway declared it's independence from Sweden.

Two generations later, there is no signs of most Norwegians being ready to ditch monarchy and turn the country into a republic. We made a good choice of our royal family in 1905, and the next crown prince also looks like he some day will make a good king.

Excellent history - thanks.

Yes, most interesting, thanks!

WoW!! You have just increased my knowledge of Norway by 1000 %!! I have always admired the Norwegians for their brave fight against the Nazis in WW2. They proved to be smarter, and much better skiers, than the German troops!

Very interesting, Stein. My wife is Swedish and Norwegian on her father's side and her mother was from New Foundland. Her Grandfather on her father's side was Swedish while her grandmother was Norwegian. I had heard that this was unusual since Swedes and Norwegians didn't get along very well, but this is the first time I've heard of any details about the history of the two countries. It was also interesting to me that her uncle Otto was in the Norwegian Merchant Marine and was in New York Harbor when the Germans invaded Norway while his wife, Mary was in Norway and as far as we know was fighting with the resistance. Mary never wanted to talk much about her experiences during the war. Uncle Otto and his crew turned the ship over to the Americans to sale under the U.S. flag resupplying England and later the rest of Western Europe as it was liberated from the Germans

Russ Bellinis Wrote:Very interesting, Stein. My wife is Swedish and Norwegian on her father's side and her mother was from New Foundland. Her Grandfather on her father's side was Swedish while her grandmother was Norwegian. I had heard that this was unusual since Swedes and Norwegians didn't get along very well, but this is the first time I've heard of any details about the history of the two countries.

Oh, Norwegians and Swedes are like Canadians and Americans. They get along just fine, even though both sides thinks the other side speaks a little funny and has a few odd customs and quirks, and even though they have a shared history including the occational cross-border invasion (in either direction) over the centuries.

In earlier times, there were things some people at the time probably felt quite resentful about. Like the American Loyalists (people who stayed loyal to England in the American war of independence/rebellion) that were hounded out from New England, and had to resettle in the maritime provinces of Canada after the American war of independence, or the Norwegians who became Swedes after the Norwegian province of Bohuslen became Swedish sometime in the 1600s or so.

But mostly people have gotten along. They speak, after all, essentially the same language, and have essentially the same culture and customs.

Russ Bellinis Wrote:It was also interesting to me that her uncle Otto was in the Norwegian Merchant Marine and was in New York Harbor when the Germans invaded Norway while his wife, Mary was in Norway and as far as we know was fighting with the resistance. Mary never wanted to talk much about her experiences during the war. Uncle Otto and his crew turned the ship over to the Americans to sale under the U.S. flag resupplying England and later the rest of Western Europe as it was liberated from the Germans

Hmm - possible that the ship was turned over , but not likely. The Norwegian government in exile fairly quickly set up a government run shipping organisation (NORTRASHIP) to organize Norwegian merchant navy shipping outside occupied Europe into a government run shipping line (the HQ of the various shipping lines being in occupied Norway).

The ships were used to run supplies to England and Russia and a lot of other places.

The Norwegian merchant navy was fairly big in those days - at the start of WW2 Norway had the fourth biggest merchant navy in the world, and about 18% of the world's total tank ship tonnage was Norwegian.

At the end of the war, we had lost about 700 ships (200 in Norwegian waters, forced into German service and sunk by the allies, and about 500 in exile, sunk by the axis powers). About 1 in 10 of our merchant navy sailors (3800 out of about 30 000) died during WW2, and far more came away from the war with their nerves shot to pieces after spending night after night wondering if the next torpedo had your name on it.

But we are straying pretty far away from the subject of trains here - enough of the general Norwegian history ?

Stein

Uff Da!

Somewhere in Norway I have distant cousins but I'm not certain where. My late great Aunt, my late grandfathers sister, was the Norwegian vice-consul in Duluth, Minnesota and was the King of Norway's tour guide when he visited Duluth many years ago.

My grandfather started working for Railway Express in Duluth when he was 12, he started out working in the stables tending the horses and moved up the ladder until he became the REA agent in Rochester, MN. in the late 1930's, a position he held until he retired in the early 1960's just a few years before REA went under.

Greg Melby
(3/4 Norwegian, 1/4 Danish........da 1/4 Danish makes me yust smart enuff to not eat lutefisk hock: )

Trolleyfan Wrote:Uff Da!

Somewhere in Norway I have distant cousins but I'm not certain where. My late great Aunt, my late grandfathers sister, was the Norwegian vice-consul in Duluth, Minnesota and was the King of Norway's tour guide when he visited Duluth many years ago.

My grandfather started working for Railway Express in Duluth when he was 12, he started out working in the stables tending the horses and moved up the ladder until he became the REA agent in Rochester, MN. in the late 1930's, a position he held until he retired in the early 1960's just a few years before REA went under.

Greg Melby
(3/4 Norwegian, 1/4 Danish........da 1/4 Danish makes me yust smart enuff to not eat lutefisk hock: )

LOL - another Melby from Minnesota, eh? My wife was also a Melby from Minnesota when we got married. And I know what you mean about lutefisk. Thank God that my father-in-law is not a lutefisk fanatic. I know a lot of Minnesotans take pride in eating lutefisk and lefse, but frankly, I am not too fond of lutefisk either - seems like such a waste of a perfectly good fish to turn it into a gelatinous mess that only can be eaten if chased down with strong spicy liquor.

Anyways - Melby is a not too uncommon name in Norway - right now there are 1445 people in Norway having Melby as their family name, according to Statistics Norway: http://www.ssb.no/english/subjects/00/navn_en/

According to the 1900 Norwegian census online (http://www.digitalarkivet.no/cgi-win/Web...r&spraak=e), there were 412 Melby's in Norway in 1900 - distributed like this:

SE Norway
Østfold 15
Akershus 82
Oslo 102
Buskerud 1
Vestfold 26

Eastern Norway
Hedmark 62
Oppland 34

Southern Norway:
Telemark 22
Aust-Agder 7
Vest-Agder 1

Western Norway:
Rogaland 0
Hordaland 3
Sogn og Fjordane 0
Møre og Romsdal 10

Trondelag area:
Sør-Trøndelag 27
Nord-Trøndelag 8

Northern Norway:
Nordland 9
Troms 1
Finnmark 2

So the major clusters were in SE Norway and in Mid-Central Norway (Trondelag). Of course, quite a few probably had emigrated by 1900 - the big waves of emigration started around 1880 or so.

Ob Railroading: my family here in Norway also has a history on the railroad. My great grandfather was named Petter Hansen Rypern (1858-1947).

Well, he actually was baptized Petter Hansen (or even Peter Hanssen - spelling varied in those days). Ie Peter, son of Hans. He later took the family name Rypern from a farm he lived on - pretty common at the end of the 1800s, when the entire country was making the transition from patronymics - "son of/daughter of" - to family names that continued to the next generation.

Anyways - Petter Hansen Rypern was the first Rypern to work on the railroad over here, as far as we know.

The first railroad in Norway was built in 1854, by the company of the well known English railroad pioneer George Stephenson, to transport people, goods and logs from Eidsvold on Lake Mjosa to the city and harbor of Oslo, our capital.

The next three railroads were constructed during the period of the US Civil war (ie between 1861 and 1865):

1) The Kongsvinger line - a branch line from Lillestrom on lake Oyern (midway between Oslo and Eidsvold) up along the river Glomma to Kongsvinger on the border with Sweden.

2) The Elverum/Hamar line - linking the town of Hamar, about half way up on Lake Mjosa, with the town of Elverum in the eastern Valley - rich logging district. Allowed the transport of logs from the big forests in the eastern valleys across to lake Mjosa, and then down the lake to the railroad to Oslo at the southern end of Lake Mjosa, and

3) A railroad from the town of Storen south of Trondheim up to the city and harbor of Trondheim, making it easier to ship ore from the mines of Roros down to Storen by horse and sled, and then out to Trondheim by train, plus transporting people and goods up the valley from Trondheim to Storen.

And then it took off - pretty much every town and valley came up with their own plans for a local railroad. Railroad building happened all over the place during the next decades.

The railroad came to my great grandfather's home town in 1866, when the Randsfjord line was built. Again, the driving force was getting lumber out from the hinterland to the coastal town - in this case the town of Drammen. And like most other such line, it was narrow (1067 mm) gauge at the time.

My great grandfather started working steady in maintenance of way group on the railroad in 1882, at age 25. Working on the railroad was great work in those days - steady employment, somewhat decent pay. He stayed on the RR all his life.

In 1903, he took his family and went down to the southern coast, to be the boss of a construction crew that was building the Setesdal valley line north of Kristiansand. He stayed down there, and stayed on as a section boss and later a station master for many years, eventually retiring at the age of 61, in 1919.

Here is a picture of him, his wife Jacobine and some of their children, in 1907/08 or so:



Of Petter's children, several (including my paternal grandfather Sigurd, see below) started working on the railroad in Norway.



My dad was born in the agent's upstairs apartment in a small rural railroad station. My dad never started working on the railroad, but three of his brothers did. My brother and several cousins of ours work on the railroad. My brother met his wife when she also was working on the railroad.

And if we go back to the guy the whole thing started with - Petter's younger brother Martin also started on the railroad, but stayed in the area they originally came from. Among his descendants there are also quite a few railroad people.

The railroad had a pretty major impact on life in Norway when it came. It suddenly became possible to transport stuff (like lumber and farm products) out from the narrow valleys and deep forests to the cities along the coast. It became possible to use the inland waterfalls to power industries, and ship raw materials in and finished products (like e.g. nitrate fertilizer) out.

And it created steady and challenging employment for thousands of young men (mostly men, but also a few women).

We didn't have oil money back then - they only started flowing in the 1970s. But the railroad was so important that the young nation went as far as at all possible to lay tracks up pretty much every mountain valley and across high mountains.

In that context, joining the west coast around Bergen to the eastern part of the country was a big deal, when the Bergen line was built (which is what this thread started with). It was worth an entire national budget for a full year to built that single railroad line.

Something to think about, if you ever get a chance to take the train from Oslo to Bergen, maybe taking the side trip from the mountain station of Myrdal down the insanely steep Flaam RR line down to Flaam on the Sogne fjord. It really is a magnificent work of engineering, done with pretty primitive tools by hard working men.

But I got carried away again - as is probably very easy to see, history is a hobby (and a passion) of mine.

Edit:
This is what the railroad net looked like in 1883:


Muted gray lines are all RR lines (including those built post 1883). Dark blue is the original line Oslo - Eidsvold.

The line my great grandfather worked on, the Rands fjord line, is to the NW of the Oslo fjord, between D (Drammen) on the Oslo Fjord (or technically - the Drammens fjord arm of the Oslo fjord) and V (Vestfossen) on lake Randsfjord.

Bergensbanen (the one whose 100th anniversary will be celebrated with a 7 hrs 16 minutes marathon documentary on TV) runs from Bergen on the West Coast to Drammen and Oslo.


Grin,
Stein

WOW!! I'm really lovin' and enjoyin' this thread!! My ancestors are from Germany, Denmark, and Russia. I can't give you a timeline or location, as the borders between States changed according to the whims and dictates of various rulers. All I know for certain, is my father was born in Schlesvig-Holstein. His brother, Carl, spent most of his life in that area, except for the time he spent in the Army during the Second World War.