Lillehammer
Where both groups reunite — the 1994 Winter Olympic town, Norway's great open-air folk museum, and the parish church at Øyer.
The Ungdommene (the Youngsters) reach Lillehammer first on Day 5 and stay with Trygve's parents — Baard Olav Jensen and Grethe Kleveland. The Gråhårsklubben (the Oldsters) join them a day later at the Home Hotel Hammer on Storgata.
Day 5 may include time with Sigrid Baardsdatter Kleveland and her husband Christoffer — and their children Jarl and Eir. Day 6 brings the visit to Torstein Jensen, Ray's first cousin, who lives in Lillehammer and is in his late eighties. Fifteen minutes north of the city, Øyer Church holds the grave of Berit A.N. Jensen — Torstein's grandmother and Ray's, on the Norwegian side.
Day 8 (Aug 2) — Marthe and Trygve, who travel with the Ungdommene from Day 3, continue on from Oslo Gardermoen to Croatia.
Why this place
Lillehammer is the reunion. The Ungdommene (the Youngsters) fly back from Bergen to Oslo on Day 5 and drive north. The Gråhårsklubben (the Oldsters) come south from Trondheim a day later. The two tracks of the trip converge here, and the last days belong to the whole group together.
What happens here
The Gråhårsklubben (the Oldsters) stay at the Home Hotel Hammer on Storgata 108B, in the center.
Day 5 — July 30. The Ungdommene (the Youngsters) reach Lillehammer first, a day ahead of the northern group. Walk Storgata, the long shopping street. Up into the 1994 Olympic Park and the ski jump that hosted the games.
Day 6 — July 31. The reunion: the Gråhårsklubben (the Oldsters) arrive south from Trondheim, and the trip is whole again. Also on Day 6: Øyer Church, fifteen minutes north of the city along the Gudbrandsdalslågen river.
Day 7 — August 1. The day belongs to Maihaugen, the open-air folk museum that has assembled over two hundred historic buildings from across the Gudbrandsdalen valley — farmsteads, stave churches, town houses — into one of the great living museums in Northern Europe.
Day 8 — August 2. The drive south to Oslo Gardermoen and the flights home.
Background
Lillehammer hosted the 1994 Winter Olympics — the games that produced the famous “Cool Runnings” Jamaican bobsled story and that Norwegians still remember as the high point of their country’s modern self-presentation to the world. The Olympic ski jump and the Lysgårdsbakkene arena are still in use.
Maihaugen began in 1887 as a private collection by the dentist Anders Sandvig, who had moved to Lillehammer in 1885 and started saving wooden buildings from across the Gudbrandsdalen valley as the region modernized. The open-air museum opened to the public in 1904 and now holds over two hundred historic structures — the 12th-century Garmo Stave Church, a 19th-century farm village, a 20th-century town quarter, and the Norwegian Olympic Museum. The Norwegian Wikipedia entry on Maihaugen calls it the country’s largest open-air museum; outside Norway, the title is generally given to Skansen in Stockholm.
Øyer itself is a small parish about 15 km north of Lillehammer along the Gudbrandsdalslågen river. The church dates to 1725 and the parish registers — like most Norwegian parish registers — reach back four centuries.
In Lillehammer
Eat · Buy · Do
A short list of places to taste, things to bring home, and things to see.
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Journals from Lillehammer
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