Summary: Svorkmo to Skaun. 19.2 km, 723m gain. Overcast & warm with breezes.
9 am start walking. I wore shorts for the first time today. My white legs seemed to act like glowing beacons for the horseflies. Towards the last of the walk, I put my hiking pants back on. I won’t know until tomorrow if the little monsters got me. It seems to take an overnight before the hard, red and super itchy bumps show up.
We had a km to walk back to the trail from our accommodation. On our way, I thought I saw a baby bear, but it was probably just a cat…though it was bigger than a cat. It saw us from quite far away and bolted back in the woods, which is why I’m not convinced it was a cat. Maybe some other wild animal?
We passed the 61 km to Nidaros sign this morning.
“Three smelting cabins were located here in the period from 1657 to 1844 and the finished ore was transported to Trondheim by local farmers. The farm Svorkmo was turned into a workshop and together with the farm north of Skjølberg, the two farms became the center of mining operations at Løkken. The forests around the entire area were used for coal burning and firewood. The settling wood was used to fire up the rock so that the ore could be mined. The coal was used in the smelting huts.
In order to be allowed to start the mining business, the factory owners had to build a church. Løkken copperworks church was built on Sckankebakken, which is close to where the pilgrim route came down to the river. In 1816, a large flood came surprisingly to the congregation and the cemetery collapsed in the middle of the Pentecostal service on June 3. The following year, a new church was built, it was built on Smedhaugen. It was located about a kilometer north of the old one and was in use until 1866.
The work was also required to hold a school for the work’s children, and here at Svorkmo a separate school was built for the children, one of the first permanent schools in the country. But when the work was closed in 1844, the school was also closed and the children were sent to community school.
Today there is little left of the facility.”
Pilegrimsleden.no
The trail today was lovely. We were so fortunate with the dry weather lately as we walked through about 4km of marshland that would have been very wet and buggy if not for the dry weather.
We saw a lot of different mushrooms.
The warmth has also brought the berries to fruit. Both Cloudberry (multe) and blueberries (blåbær).
Our accommodation is with Airbnb tonight, so again, we headed off the trail. We took a path that was very steep (with chains to grab a hold of) to get here. We will take the road back to the trail in the morning rather than double back on that trail.
I had my last supper made by Chin-Yu tonight (big, out-loud cry inserted here). I’ve been so incredibly fortunate to benefit from Chin-Yu’s excellent cooking skills and generous willingness to make vegetarian meals. What a treat this month of food has been. In general, the meals Chin-Yu cooked at our accommodations were tastier and more enjoyable than some food we had served to us. However, we also enjoyed some very delicious and fresh foods at some of the hotels and farms we stayed at too. And almost always, especially from the individual home and farm hosts, we had kind and thoughtful service.
There are two days of walking left. It feels surreal. We are nearly there. I’m so proud of our one-step-at-a-time accomplishment, and I am feeling so grateful for my walking partner too. While there were a few times I think we got under each other’s skin, which is to be expected for how closely we lived all month, she is an exceptional woman with tremendous knowledge, a great memory, absolutely mad organising skills (meaning excellent), and a holistic, well-grounded worldview. She has modeled kindness, humour, authenticity, a healthy attitude, and direct and clear communication about her needs, which I’m grateful for. We walked together, alone and a variety of both.
It will take some time to process this trip more deeply, and I will add a few more posts following the 29th. The journey continues.
On the 31st, Chin-Yu and I will meet and attend the Moddi concert in Nidarosdomen. I think that will be special. He is currently walking the same trail that we are doing, and is composing a song about justice that was commissioned by Olavsfest that he will sing in the cathedral for the concert.
The artist “realizes that the hike will be both strenuous and scary. The 34-year-old thinks that long thoughts have become unpleasant for us.” He has said, “All the distractions we surround ourselves with in everyday life are something we use actively to get away. 2020 was the year I went to a psychologist for the first time. I paid someone to help me think these big thoughts. And now I throw myself into a walk where the big thoughts are the carrot itself. That is precisely why I want to go on pilgrimage, to confront the discomfort of it all.”
Moddi’s “Like in 1968”
Thank you for this day.
I think I will need to wait until Sunday, Aug. 1 to post the last two days of the adventure. Stay tuned!
Stories from the Walk Home 