I spent four years living in North Yorkshire, England. Therefore, I’m kind of vaccinated against gray, dreary, drizzly days. Good thing, too. The clouds came back after a clear evening the night before.
“Lofoten” is the name of the set of islands outside of the Narvik fjord, where “Leknes” is the port where we docked. Yet we drove for 30 minutes to Borg to visit the Viking Museum.
Seems during the 1980s a local farmer was using a new plow that went 2+ inches deeper than his previous plow, and brought up broken pottery, ceramics and glass. It was the glass that excited the local archeologists, as the locals did not know how to make glass during the times that the glass was tested to be from. That meant imported goods and thus wealth. At the time such drinking glasses were worth about 300 sheep, and they found over a dozen such glass!
Here they found the largest viking site in Norway, with the remain of a longhouse over 80 meters long. Over the years the museum built a replica just a few meters from the dig site.
Originally, about 1/3 the building was used as a barn for housing animals, with another third for the kitchen and public room and the final bits for the family.
The guide brought us into the living quarters and they fed us a lamb stew/soup with bread and water. They offered us mead, but I left my wallet in my cabin. The soup was tasty. Afterwards we could explore the rest of the house. I enjoyed the wood carvings, and notice how they “vikingized” the emergency exit signs.
Afterwards I spent time in the actual museum looking at the artifacts and watching the films. It was an interesting couple of hours.