Come with me on a pilgrimage to the tiny mountain village of Vågå – together with 800 other people. They have been drawn there by one passion, one hunger. To hear the music of the Hardanger fiddle. Delicate and decorative – muscular and feisty. With this podcast, I am doing penance for past sins, having previously believed the Hardanger fiddle to be near-obsolete, a museum piece. And its music unsophisticated. How wrong I was! Hearing the instrument at its mysterious and magnificent best – as...

Hitler demanded that Vidkun Quisling should be Prime Minister. The king said: No! With that, all possibility of compromise was closed off for King Haakon and his government. It was a decision that put them in extreme danger. No monarch or head of state was killed by the Nazis during the war – but on April 11th 1940, they not only tried to assassinate King Haakon, they were also convinced they had succeeded. In fact, the king and politicians evaded the bombing raids on Elverum and Nybergsund....

Today’s podcast is about the greatest drama of modern Norwegian history. What Norwegians call ‘Aprildagene’ – the fateful days of the 9th, 10th and 11th of April 1940. The greatest drama? How else to describe three days that start with King Haakon in his bed in the palace in central Oslo, and finish with the king and government hunted by the Nazis from town to village to farm. Three days that finish with them stumbling through snow as German planes strife and bomb the ground around them in an...

‘I walked one evening along a road – on one side lay the town, and the fjord lay below me…’ In this way begins Edvard Munch’s account of how he came to paint The Scream. Besides the Mona Lisa, it is probably the most recognisable image ever created. Munch painted in order to ‘explain my life to myself’. And for the same reason, he wrote constantly in notebooks about his anxieties, his unhappy love life, his disappointments and his creative ideas. His writings are often witty and – from the...

On the 28th of July this year, it will be exactly 100 years since an extraordinary event took place in the tiny mountain village of Lesjaskog. In the cultural history of modern Norway – well, there’s nothing quite like it. On a simple, blue kitchen chair, one of Europe’s greatest artists was carried to the top of a nearby mountain. A round trip of nearly 8 hours. After 20 summers in Norway, it would be his last view of the mountains for the ailing composer. It was a huge feat of endurance –...

Learning to go downhill – wow, that was an uphill struggle! Getting into skiing as an adult is all about making a right arse of yourself. But during my first long winter in Norway, I managed to reconnect with a sense of innocent wonder at the world I hadn’t known for years. I would go busking in downtown Oslo in the morning, then back up to the light and the forest. But there were also those three Dark Arts of the Forest that defeated me – a trainee in the tracks! And just think – how you...

At last! For a couple of weeks, Southern Norway has been buried in enough snow to gladden the heart of every Norwegian (and Scot) who loves to ski off into the forest – enough snow to dull the pain of past winters with very little of the fluffy stuff. The exotic character of winter in Norway is one of the main reasons I never left the country. But the recent snowfall has brought to mind groan-out-loud memories of how I, as a full-grown Scottish man who had thrived in the inner city grime of...

It is well known that the great French artists of La Belle Époque were hugely inspired by the art of Japan and the East. But what is rarely mentioned today is the period of a few years in the 1890s when Scandinavian art, Norwegian in particular, was suddenly and powerfully all the rage in Paris. And not only painting, but also literature, drama and – perhaps most of all – music. For two years in particular, 1895 and 1896, the sunburst of orientalism was clouded over by art from a very...

In this episode I take a look at midwinter superstitions that carry us from the ancient sagas to the video game Assassin’s Creed! It is the pit of winter. These are the dark days between Christmas and Epiphany that are only slightly illuminated by the fireworks of New Year. Throughout history, this period has been seen as rather insecure. If one believes in that invisible membrane between this world and the underworld, then at no time of the year is it so thin than at midwinter. The magical,...

For 10 years I was the choirmaster of my local choir, Vestbygda Blandakor. And as such, I had the pleasurable duty of preparing the annual Advent Concert. I had to ensure that when the lights in Onsøy Church were turned down and the audience relaxed in their pews, lit only by the hundred flickering flames of the candelabra, then they would snuggle closer together, feel the warmth of community again. And most of all, the emotional pull of Christmas music. I love those Advent and Christmas...

The troll is ancient. A fearsome 3-headed troll is mentioned in one of the earliest poetic texts, the Edda, from about 1220. And Norse mythology is full of jötnar: supernatural troll-like beings. There are several thousand place names in Norway that start with the word Troll, most because of some ancient legend or folk tale that may now be lost. Over 300 valleys are called Trolldal. Rockfalls and groups of huge boulders that no human could have moved – people suspected these inexplicable...

My podcast today is about the huge secret city Adolf Hitler and his master architect Albert Speer planned to build on the Trondheim Fjord. A secret city?! Well, obviously it wasn’t a secret for the inner circle of Nazis around Hitler. But the plans to build New Trondheim were kept a closely guarded secret from Norwegians – from the people in whose land it was planned to become the largest conurbation. And why did the Nazis keep plans for the new city on the Trondheim Fjord secret from...

Want to get inspired? Get your faith back in humanity? In podcast number 10 you can hear short sketches of 10 Norwegians whose stories I find inspiring. They are a real mixed bunch – but are all trailblazers! There’s courage, vision and optimism on show here. The five women are Eva Joly (fighter against corruption), Harriet Backer (painter), Katti Anker Møller (activist for women’s rights), Anne-Sofie Østvedt (Resistance leader during the Second World War) and May-Britt Moser (neuroscientist,...

My passport is for a country called Norge. Or Noreg. Or Norga. All three names are used, right there on the front cover. This week’s podcast is about an aspect of Norway’s cultural landscape that I find the most intriguing of all: the Norwegian language(s). Intriguing, because for the last few centuries the Norwegian language has been struggling with a split personality. Not even the name of the country is spared this cultural schizophrenia! Perhaps Norwegians call their country NorGE,...

For two decades there was a genuine, if cautious, thaw in Norway’s relations with Russia. All this shuddered to a halt, of course, with the invasion of Ukraine. Norway’s most alarming wake-up call came on September 26 this year. The explosions at the Nord Stream pipelines finally changed everything. Norway seemed like a sleepwalker that had careered straight into a concrete wall. After that sabotage, the Home Guard was posted to energy installations, and Coast Guard vessels have been...

Mystery and magic are at the core of the podcast this week. We return to the Oseberg Viking Ship, Norway’s most magnificent historical treasure. But there are also many questions connected with it, including these three: Which great Viking leader was honoured with this most magnificent of ship burials? Why was this ship of death anchored to a huge boulder? Why was there a long wooden wand on board, identical to wands that were used in the Viking Age for sorcery? In this podcast, I travel back...

90% of all electricity in Norway comes from rain and snow. That makes Norway Europe's biggest producer of hydropower, and number six in the world. Norway also has half of Europe’s reservoir storage capacity. All of which is important for people far beyond the country’s borders. For many years, Norway has had more energy than it could use, and policy has been to sell the surplus to its neighbours. When the system works as it was designed – it’s BEAUTIFUL! And why shouldn’t it work properly –...

NATO’s Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg, has been on our screens throughout the Ukraine crisis, ashen-faced and compelling, but never sabre-rattling. This week’s podcast looks at the place of the Stoltenberg family in Norway and on the international stage. But first we have to consider Norway’s recent history as a peace broker. The country has often worked in the shadows, trying to create ‘a framework and an atmosphere conducive to negotiation’ – as one veteran put it, from 1993 and the...

Edvard Grieg’s life and music – in his own words. ‘The Idea of Norway. It’s the one thing that keeps me going strong, whether I’m travelling abroad or at home: The Idea of Norway.’ In this week’s podcast, Edvard Grieg – in his own words – tells of his life, his works, and of his love of Norway. He was a great letter-writer, filling his correspondence with all the hopes and desires he had for his emerging nation – with all the heartbreak of child loss, with the pains of self-doubt that...

A sculptor – who rose to the highest art position in Norway. A composer – who was regarded as the equal of Puccini and Strauss. An author – who was awarded the Nobel Prize. Three artists with one thing in common. They all chose the wrong side during the Second World War. This week’s podcast is about cancel culture – as practiced after the war by Norwegian society. These three artists were treated very differently. One of them was imprisoned – but his works left in place. One of them was safe...

‘Surely Norway has been made as a playground for the people of other countries, but especially for Englishmen.’ (Joseph Phythian, 1877) This week’s podcast tells how the tourism industry in Norway was given a kick-start by hordes of Englishmen fleeing the packaged tours and sweaty piazzas of Italy and Greece.  From the middle of the 19th century, the newly-wealthy middle class of Britain invaded Norway. With them came their poetry collections, bottled porter, and jars of pickles. And they set...

The Oseberg Viking Ship is a miracle.  It is a jaw-dropping exception to the rule that wooden things dug up from the ground after a 1000 years are going to be in a bad state. Most Viking ships that have been excavated turn up a few scraps of timber and enough rusty nails to fill a bucket. And that’s it! The survival of the Oseberg Ship and its artefacts is quite simply miraculous. Its survival – so far. For the fight is on to try and stop the ship dissolving into a pile of powder.  This is...