July 8

    On Sundays everything (including many churches) is closed except for a few museums. Now headed north towards Oslo, we stopped in Sandefjord to see the whaling fountain and museum. Apart from a huge ferry just leaving for Denmark, the streets, parking lots, and sea were empty. Whaling used to be the economic engine of this town; now it’s ferries and tourists, but not so much of either on Sundays.

                      

    We had seen an advertisement for a Viking Market in Borre National Park.  We couldn’t find it on the GPS or any map, but we did find a little town called Borre, so because we were headed in that general direction anyway, we decided to see what we could find.

    We came upon hundreds of people walking from hundreds of cars towards something of obvious interest. So we drove to the next traffic circle and came back (we’ve grown to appreciate traffic circles just for this reason). While attempting to park, we found we were very close to a crowded campground, so we decided to stay there for the night. Then we joined everyone else walking to the Viking Market.

    This proved to be a Renaissance Faire kind of thing with the emphasis on selling goods, located in a park that included Viking burial mounds and a museum on a hill. There were hundreds of tents--no Coleman tents here: all of them “the real thing”--crowded together under the trees along the fjord. They were selling anything that could possibly be considered Viking: leather goods, jewelry, clothing, yarn, toys, weapons, pottery.

                 

All the vendors and many of the visitors were in costume. People were cooking over fires, and there were a few fun demonstrations going on--all very festive and fun. It took us quite a while to take it all in. And not a single horned helmet or purple football jersey anywhere. We were glad to be close by in the campground when the whole thing closed down at 6 pm.