Stavanger

Ken's family left Stavanger sometime around 1900 and ended up in Texas. Thousands of immigrants to the U.S. came from Norway; only Ireland sent more people from Europe.

Ken thought it would be fun to arrive by sea as his granddad had left. So we took the 20-hour ferry from Newcastle in England and arrived to this perspective of Stavanger's harbor.

Stavanger feels almost like a small town with only about 105,000 people. Yet, as a center of Norway's petroleum industry, it is wealthy and cosmopolitan. How strange it seemed to hear Chinese, Turks and North Africans speaking Norwegian!

In the center of the city is a small lake. There are so few social tensions that someone had left a rowboat simply moored to the shore without locks or gates.

The Domkirke (Cathedral) shown below was first established in 1125 A.D. and renovated in 1270 A.D. It is the only Norwegian church built in the Middle Ages that has retained its original Gothic style.