UADarthmaul's Travels: Norway 3: Trondheim's synagogue and inside the Nidaros Cathedral

My first full day had rainy weather outside for the most part. I discovered that Trondheim had a synagogue. I did not even know that Jewish people were in Norway. I decided that it was worth checking out. To enter the museum/synagogue, I had to first enter a small room with a locked door on the other end and a ticket booth to buy admission. It felt like entering a prison. The fellow buzzed me into a small courtyard. Once inside, there was a small entry room before entering the building. The woman had me remove my backpack and place it in the entry room, stating that it would be safe, as they had surveillance cameras. I asked why they felt the need for so much security. She explained that they had been receiving threats since the early 2000s or so.

First, the woman brought me into the basement and I took a look around.

Once back on the main level, I looked in a room that gave the background stories of some of the Jews who had been taken from Trondheim after Norway was invaded by Nazi Germany. The only other room in the main level, for me to look in, as a small theater with a thirty minute movie they had created. I decided to sit and watch. It was a series of interviews with survivors, that either escaped or were taen and later freed, and then returned to Norway.

Some of the people who escaped, did so by skiing into Sweden, which stayed out of the war. A surprisingly large amount of the film focused on how difficult it was for them to come home to see their homes changed, with possessions gone. They found it nearly impossible to recover their items, unless a friend had been able to safekeep them. While that is unfortunate, I felt that possessions were neither here nor there in relation to the whole life and death part of the situation.

It also spent some time with the survivors, where they detailed how people treated them when they returned. Apparently, there were openly hostile nazi sympathizers, who made life difficult for them. Ridiculous.

After the movie, the woman took me up to the second floor, where I got to walk around the temple portion. She also showed me their Torahs. She explained that people only come to the temple once a month. I asked if the Jews considered themselves Jews culturally, rather than spiritually. She confirmed that this was the case, and said that the other synagogue, in Oslo, was the more religious oriented temple.

As I was leaving, she explained that the same plaques on the ground that I had found in Germany, were also in Trondheim. She provided a map with all of the locations.

The next day, I decided to go to the Nidaros Church, for the daily English tour. I passed the Torvet marketplace and found this neat miniature concert stage.

I bought an entry ticket and walked around for a bit, before they called over the loudspeakers to gather for the English tour. The church was based around a king named Olaf, who was not well liked. He had turned religious before dying. People were claiming to have miracles in relation to his burial, and some religious fellow came to investigate and purported to discover some magical properties to his corpse, such as hair that was still growing, along with his nails. They decided to build a church around him, which started off small, but continued to grow in size for over two hundred years. At some point, another religious sect took over the church and possessions were moved, and eventually moved back.