Day 0: Leading up to the beginning

​While in Oslo, I stayed at the Østre Aker pilgrimage hostel, adjacent to its historic church. Technically, this was about 4km along the eastern route trail, but I had planned to stay there two nights so I could have a day in Oslo and then start ‘officially’ from the milestone at the pilgrim center on Friday July 3. 

During my day in Oslo I first went to Mass at the Catholic Cathedral of St. Olav. For a Thursday morning, it was a pretty decently attended daily Mass. stained glass windows of the various Norwegian saints flanked the congregants on either side: St. Olav, of course, but also St. Hallvard, St. Sunniva, St. Eystein, and some others. There was also a wrist/hand shaped reliquary, which I could only assume housed relics of St. Olav. Mass was lovely, though without a missal to follow along, I simply listened and made the responses very quietly in English or Latin. 

From there, I went to the Norsk Folkemuseum, which I had been eagerly anticipating. I knew that they did demonstrations of the very same dances I had become familiar with with my Scandi dance friends in SLC and in the HFAA. Sadly, their Hardanger fiddle player wasn’t there, but they still did a demo of the Rørospols and the Telespringar, the latter of which is one of my favorites. 

After the demo, I spoke to the dancers, and though the fiddle player wasn’t not there, one of the fiddles was on display, and they allowed me to play it! I got to fulfill my dream of playing the Norwegian fiddle in Norway! I played a telespringar tune that I love and then a Valdresspringar tune. I didn’t do the greatest job, but the dancers approved. We spoke for a while, and it was fun to nerd out over this very niche (at least to me) Norwegian folk culture. 

On the way back I stopped by the pilgrim center to get my pilgrim passport among other things and to check out the milestone and test out the route I was to be taking tomorrow morning. It was good that I did so because I actually wound up accidentally going the western route and because my phone died and I had left my power cable back at the hostel, I wound up getting wildly lost and not making it back until quite a bit later. This made me a bit worried for my start, but I made my preparations just the same, looking forward to an epic journey starting tomorrow, no matter what the difficulties.