The morning after departing Denmark and cruising past Sweden found us waking up to the remnants of an overnight mist being burnt away by bright, warm sunshine in the Norwegian port and capital of Oslo. Very pretty but it did make for some blown out photographs with the light catching in all the vapour in the air. Oh well. I’m sure you don’t care anywhere near as much as I do about that.
I’ve mentioned before that we like spotting other cruise ships from the cruise ships we travel on so it was nice to spot Viking Venus visiting Oslo on this day too.
Before we’d visited Oslo for the first time we’d had two cruises booked that would be visiting Norway’s capital city, both with the same cruise line, so we checked out the excursions that Princess Cruises offered and identified two that interested us, both full day options. With us having a little more time in port for the second of the visits – this visit on Island Princess – we’d booked an Oslo highlights tour for the first cruise, but for this one we’d be travelling about forty kilometres north of the city so the extra time would allow for a bit of travelling to and from the destination.
That cruise excursion destination was Jevnaker, a municipality, itself part of the greater, traditional Hadeland region. The name Hadeland derives from the old Norse for “the land of the warriors” but we wouldn’t be engaging in any activities that related to war on this day’s tour. We’d instead be discovering that Hadeland could more accurately be described as the land of the artists.
The first element of this cruise tour was a visit to Hadeland Glassverk. This had been described as a glass blowing demonstration in the excursion blurb and it’s a subject that appeals to my wife who’s got a fascination for glassware (as our many filled shelves will attest to), and was the entire reason for booking this trip.
But let’s get this bit out of the way ahead of time: in this respect, this part of the tour was a massive disappointment. Now, that’s no reflection on what we were about to see in Hadeland, which was absolutely fine, very impressive even, but what we’d anticipated and what we actually saw were two very different things.
Anyway, we arrived at Hadeland Glassverk under glorious blue skies and nice, warm conditions, and the first stop was a wander to get a coffee and cake, included as part of the tour. We wouldn’t normally bother with this sort of thing, especially not so soon after breakfast, but when you’re touring with lots of older Americans it’s something they seem to love, and it gave them all a chance to use the toilets nice and early into this day’s activities.
It didn’t take long to get the snack and drink down us and gather outside with our guide.
Hadeland Glassverk is a collection of buildings working with glass, selling them in outlet stores, and showcasing them for sales. Production of items such as jars and bottles for chemists and medical purposes as well as household items began in 1765, but in the middle of the nineteenth century the focus was changed for more decorative pieces, initially copying popular European designs before finding its own forms to sell. With production continuing to this day, this allows Hadeland Glassverk to claim to be the oldest industrial business in Norway in continuous operation.
We were given a short amount of time to wander around the buildings in the fresh Norwegian air and we had a lovely day to enjoy the old buildings of red brick and white boards against the blue sky. All the colours of Norway’s flag.
What we’d actually come to see, however, was the glass blowing demonstration, and here’s where the tour deviated sharply from what we’d been expecting.
We were led into the main factory space where glass blowing was taking place and we were led to rows of raised seating looking across to different workspace areas where glass blowers were blowing and shaping glass. It was interesting to see the process but that’s all that occurred. There was no demonstration of the art; there was no explanation of how colours were added or anything to explain the different methods of producing glassware; no mention of how glass blowing had changed over the centuries. We were tolerated viewers in a factory, and that’s it.
It was as if we’d booked an excursion promising a look at how roads are built, then given some fold out seats next to roadworks beside a motorway and told “Enjoy, and when you’re bored feel free to wander off on your own.”
Okay, we weren’t bored, as such; the glass blowing, even as industrial and uninformative as it was, was still interesting enough to look at for a while. Eventually, though, we did get up and have a nose about. There were examples of Hadeland Glassverk glassware throughout the rest of the warehouse space and we initially had a thought that if we found something small, artistic, unique, and not stupidly expensive then we’d pick up a souvenir. That wasn’t the case, though. Everything was produced to set designs, larger than we liked, and with that size came a price tag we weren’t prepared to spend. There was no doubt, though, that there were some very nice pieces of work here and it was lovely to see them in household display settings.
We used what remained of our time at Hadeland Glassverk with a little more of a stroll outside, taking advantage of the great weather. Hadeland is located at the southern tip of Randsfjorden, Norway’s fourth largest lake, which meant that even though we were inland on this excursion we still got to see water, and water is what makes us happiest.
We liked this visit to Hadeland once you factor out the expectation versus reality aspect of it. A fault that can be shared between Princess Cruises and ourselves in equal measures for not explaining more accurately and not researching fully respectively. In our defence, we hadn’t known the name of the location we were visiting which did make research more troublesome. In that respect, I hope that this explanation about what to expect on a glass blowing tour when visiting Oslo on a cruise ship helps someone out in the future.
In the second part of this cruise excursion we’ll have a completely different experience when a “public modern art sculpture park” visit turns out to be vastly more impressive than we’d expected and an absolute gem of a place in Norway.