I kicked off the month of November with 10 days in Stavanger.
The city and seaport of Stavanger is located in Rogaland, one of Norway’s 11 counties. In Rogaland you’ll find a diverse mix of fjords, lakes, waterfalls, forests, open grasslands and long sandy beaches. Stavanger, after having been combined with neighboring Sandnes, is Norway’s 3rd largest city (after Oslo and Bergen) and Rogaland’s administrative center.
What began as a small fishing village has now become an international hub and Norway’s oil capital. I was able to explore the city from November 1-11, and while I embraced the opportunity to learn more about Norway’s oil industry, I discovered that there’s so much more to this fun, quirky city.
For the first few days in Stavanger, I had the following objectives: Settle into the Airbnb, orient myself to my surroundings, search for the nearest yoga studio and find local Too Good To Go opportunities. The Airbnb was located directly on the water and only about a 10-minute walk from the city center. I had my bike with me, but wanted to venture out on foot first, to get the lay of the land. A search for ‘yoga studios near me’ yielded Hot Yoga Stavanger. I hadn’t practiced hot yoga in quite some time, but I was up for the challenge. Lastly, I discovered plenty of Too Good To Go opportunities nearby, which I would use to stock the fridge in the Airbnb (check out my Bergen post to read about TGTG).
As I learned more about Stavanger, I knew that one of my goals would be to explore the city’s street art. On the evening of my second day in Stavanger, I came up with a game plan for the next day. After reading about some of the murals and the stories behind them, I knew I needed to start with the mural of Helge. Below is an excerpt from my Facebook post about the mural. Check out the post to see photos and access additional links and information.
Helge, despite being unable to read, has been continuously employed through an organization called Attende for more than 25 years. Attende specializes in finding strengths where others see weaknesses, and they gave Helge a job that nobody could do better than him – shredding documents containing sensitive information.
This stunning mural was a project for Social Inclusion Through Street Art, that aims to inspire action and change. It was completed in 2017 by internationally renowned Australian-born street artist Sam Bates, known for photorealistic murals created entirely freehand, using aerosol cans alone.
I learned that Helge is a huge Beatles fan, which only added to my excitement about the whole thing. One of the TGTG spots was not far from the mural, and I went out of my way to say hi to Helge each time I went to the store to pick up the bag of food. We need more of this!
In the words of Alexander Kielland, one of the most famous Norwegian realistic writers of the 19th century, the people of Rogaland “live their whole lives facing seaward. The sea is their companion, counsellor, friend, enemy, livelihood and graveyard”.
Most days, if I was near the city center, I passed by a statue of Kielland. Born in Stavanger, he is considered one of the so-called ‘Four Greats’ of Norwegian literature, along with Henrik Ibsen, Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson and Jonas Lie. Kielland died in 1906, and seventy-four years later, his name would be linked to the worst disaster in Norwegian waters since World War II.
Alexander L. Kielland was a Norwegian semi-submersible drilling rig that capsized in the Ekofisk oil field in March 1980. Of the 212 people aboard, 123 were killed. This tragedy was a turning point not only for the industry but also for the whole country.
To be continued...
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