In the western part of Russia, about midway between Novgorod and Moscow, there are some heights called the Valdaj heights. There you can find the source of three big rivers: Volga, Dnepr and Daugava (also called Eastern Dvina).
Read and white are the colors of Latvia.
Daugava is over 1000km long and flows through Russia, Belarus and Latvia before ending in the Riga Bay in the Baltic Sea. There are three power plants in the river. Construction of a fourth has been stopped after massive protests.
The railroad bridge over Daugava. Riga’s old town to the right (east).
The most important Latvian town was always at the river. Previously it was Ikšķile, 50km further upstream of Riga. The city Riga was founded in 1201, as the capitol of Livland, belonging to the german order. German was the city’s only official language until 1891.
Daugava. The TV-tower in the background.
We were in Riga for Knut’s last filming days of the movie ‘Sulis’. So of course we had to ask if Riga has any good places for a bath? The access to water obviously wasn’t any problem. The question was if it really was suited for bathing. We got rather diverging answers to that question. Most people simply said: ‘No! It’s too cold!’. Some recommended nearby lakes. But the tourist office could inform us: Yes, there are bathing places at Daugava – which you can use in the summer (the month of may probably not included as “summer” in her mind). So off we went. As should be obvious, water temperature is no concern og ours if we want a bath.
Plenty of space for people and bicycles on the bridge Salu Tilts.
From the old city there is a nice promenade along the river, ever so often with warning signs of ‘No swimming’. We crossed the Daugava on the bridge Salu Tilts. This has a nice concept: Pedestrians and bicyclists have their own level underneath the bridge, separated from the cars. That gives a very relaxed space, although with view only in one direction.
After crossing another small branch of the river, we arrived at Peldvieta Lucavsalas līcis. This is a nice bathing spot with golden sand. Not too crowded at this time of year, either. We spotted one fisherman and one homeless guy as we arrived.
One of several bathing spots along the Daugava.
It was a great bath. Sunny, no wind and the water seemed very nice for a river that runs through one of the largest cities in Northern Europe.
There was some company in the water as well.
This was definitely a good time for a bath in Daugava!
Nice bath in Daugava.
After the bath is a good time for dinner. We can recommend the restaurant ‘The Good Father’, in the old city.
The old city in Riga is very nice – and on UNESCO’s World Heritage List.
In ‘The Good Father’ you will find good food and lot of fun stuff to play with. Not for the faint hearted, though, be warned!
The big internet had spoken: The search for “Lady Kathleen” showed lots of pictures of the wreckage of “Lady Cotlin”, about 2 km from the lighthouse Mangaļsalas bāka, that gives the way into the river Daugava. The wreck is actually visible in Google maps if you zoom enough!
This just had to be the same Lady? Further searches showed articles with different name varieties, dates and years (both 1951 and 1954 are mentioned) together with wild theories about who owned the ship and why she stranded.
As far as we know, this is what really happened:
The Norway registered ship Lady Kathleen stranded thursday 29/11-1951 at 20:30 after loosing steering speed while trying to connect with the pilot boat in awful weather.
Lady Kathleen at the quay. Photo: Søren Thorsøe (from ISBN 82-91258-10-4)
The only woman on board, the telegraphist Kari Herje, 23 years old, sent SOS and hoped they would be saved. Riga in 1951 was in the middle of the cold war. All western people where considered capitalists and potential spies. Would the Sovjet coast guard even try to save them? If they heard the emergency call at all?
After sending SOS a while without response, Kari put the telegraph aside and tried the radio instead. Maybe a radio station would receive her call? There were several stations that used to respond, once she even received a proposal from a radio friend.
Yes! She received an answer: “What’s going on, Kari, are you in distress at sea? Do you want to call your mom?”. Well, yes, that seemed like a good idea, so Kari got to call her mother Margit Herje while the ship was rocking on the sandbank in the Riga Bay.
That is why the local newspaper Adresseavisa in Trondheim knew about the happening before the shipping company! The dramatic events produced a lot of newspaper articles: “Trondheim woman in distress at sea!”, “23 year old lady sent SOS while the ship was sinking!”, and “The wrecking didn’t scare her. Goes out to sea again.” were some of the headlines going around the country towards the end of 1951.
The dramatic wrecking made it’s way to Norwegian newspapers.
In the meantime, the rest of the crew reacted in a typical Norwegian fashion: They got drunk! There are at least two reasons to get drunk on a sinking ship:
1) It calms the nerves if you think you might be going to die 2) If the ship goes down, there is no point wasting all the alcohol
But yes! They were saved. The Sovjet guards sent a rescue vessel and saved the whole crew. Because of their condition, rumours soon started flying, about the ship beeing stranded because the seamen where drunk. The crew were lodged in a hotel, all on the same floor. And in the hallway: A lady on a chair, making sure no one left the place. That was OK for the first days. The crew needed to sleep things off and they got served food. But they weren’t allowed to leave the building. Norwegians were enemies in the cold war.
The third day one of the seamen got enough of this: “I’m going to town. NOW!”, “With or without that damned woman!”. Then all of a sudden they had arranged sightseeing in Riga with a bus. How thrilling! But as they passed the railroad station, Kari started to wonder. Something felt wrong. The mood. Lots of people, but no joy. A lot of luggage with kitchen utensils and everything. Where were all these people going? “They are going on vacation!”, was the answer they got. Many years later Kari understood that these people were being transported to working camps in Siberia.
Now that we knew the wreckage of Lady Kathleen still exists, we just had to take a new trip to Riga Bay, this time to the east of the river Daugava. The plan was to take the train to Vecāķi, but we missed the station and departed in Kalingale instead.
Kalingale – a charming railroad station in the middle of the pine forests.
At this point we started to feel that our vacation was a little off the beaten tourist track. Idun wanted to use the expression ‘off-pist’, but Knut insisted that since there were tracks, we were: ‘off-road’, not ‘off-pist’.
Slightly off the typical tourist traps.
After 20 minutes of walking in a high high pine forest, we finally found the ocean. And yes! There are miles and miles of beaches on this side of Daugava as well. We walked along the beach about an hour. The Baltic sea isn’t really crowded at the end of may, but we did meet a few souls. Some walking their dog, some training with or without music in their backpacks, and a few treasure hunters with sticks: Looking for shells or amber.
The north eastern part of Riga Bay
After about half an hour (about where we would have been had we departed on the right train station), we saw a big rock in the ocean. Could it be the Lady? Is she really still there, after such a long time?
The wreckage of Lady Kathleen is the only “island” for miles around.
Yes! The remains of Lady Kathleen are still visible, 72 years after she stranded. She is getting a bit worn out, but still hanging in there.
Spirits are high, we found her!
Time to start swimming! Lady Kathleen is popular among the birds, but the comorans left the ship long before we arrived. The only life we saw where lots of sand flies. The water was very dark and we couldn’t see anything below the surface. But we got to touch the wreck. This was a strong moment for Idun. With another outcome of this event, none of Kari’s five children had been born.
Family history!
Of course we swam around as well.
More wreckage is visible in the left part of the picture.
Back on shore we were colder than we had expected. There were 230m to the wreck and the water temperature was around 12 degrees Celsius. Both felt cold in the beginning of the swim, but then we got used to it, and everything felt OK until we started getting dressed again. Then we realized the fingers were rather stiff!
So we warmed ourselves with another toast to the memory of Kari.
A toast for Kari – and the Sovjet coast guard.
Since there were many varieties of the story online, Knut relieved his inner detective and started searching for the truth. Which brought him to this building in the forest at Sognsvann in Oslo:
The Norwegian national archives.
The binder was ordered online and waiting when he arrived:
Truth shall conquer!
Aside the official wreckage report, there was a lot of correspondence around who was going to pay for the crew staying in Riga and the transport home. Kari described the train to Finland as rather simple – type cattle wagons. One danish crew member “went berserk while drunk” and destroyed everything in his hotel room. The Sovjets sent a demand of 11 113 rubles for ruined inventory, which the shipping company didn’t feel responsible for. According to Kari, several of the crew members went rather crazy, pooped in the stairs and harassed the personnel. Maybe the demand wasn’t too high anyway?
Strangely enough, the official wreckage report mentions both Friday 28/11 and Friday 30/11. From other documents we are quite sure that the Lady stranded Thursday 29/11 and that the crew were saved on Friday 30/11.
We have really enjoyed this process, both finding the wreck and the papers telling the history of what happened. Never too late to do research about Lady Kathleen!
Late autumn 1951, November 29th, a full storm hit the Baltic sea. The 2400-ton ship “Lady Kathleen” was on it’s way to Riga with ballast, to load up with salt. With low visibility and high waves the captain lost steering speed while meeting the pilot boat, the Lady stranded on a sandbank and broke in two parts. This was where the river Daugava goes into Riga Bay, only 250 m from land. Lady Kathleen was made in 1943, of armed concrete, due to the severe lack of iron during the second world war. She had water proof bulkheads and couldn’t sink – according to the producer.
Did you ever hear the same claim before, that a ship can’t sink? A general rule might be this: If you build a ship of materials which has higher density than water – she can sink. And concrete has much higher density than water!
Lady Kathleen. Source: digitalarkivet.no
In the chaos of the storm, panic was growing aboard. “We are sinking! Everyone to the life boats!”, one seaman yelled. “No!”, the captain shouted back: “No one goes into the life boats, they will be crushed against the ship’s side!”. “But we are sinking, we must try!”, the seaman insisted. Thus the captain gave orders to release an empty (!) life boat.
The crew lined up, ready to enter if things went well. Kari said: “Women and children first!”. She was the only woman aboard, working as a telegraphist. Suddenly she felt the captains hand on her shoulder: “The telegraphist and captain last – you have to go in and send SOS!”. So she did. In the meantime the captain was proven right, one empty life boat was smashed against the ship and the seamen just had to wait for the weather to calm down.
Female telegraphists were still uncommon in 1951.
Among the panic struck crew there was one who kept a clear head. He had been a nervous wreck for six years, having survived torpedo attacks three times during the second world war. It’s hard to understand how he survived at all! But here he was, in Riga Bay 1951 in a full storm on a broken ship. All these years after the war he had been waiting for the next torpedo. Always on guard, always with his suitcase packed, always nervous – surely it was only a matter of time before the next attack. When catastrophy was a fact and the other seamen panicked, he found peace for the first time in years. This was exactly what he had been waiting for! His suitcase was ready – he grabbed it and asked: “Where are the life boats?”.
The telegraphist and the chief engineer at Lady Kathleen.
Inspired by these dramatic events, we wanted to go north of Riga (since we were there anyway, to finish the last filming of “Sulis”) and take a bath in memory of Kari Herje – Idun’s mother, who experienced this shipwrecking. It takes about half an hour with train from Riga to Riga Bay. We went to Jurmala, which is a highly recommendable beach paradise!
“Jurmala” means “By the beach”, quite suitable. The town has a population of about 50 000 and around 33 km beach. Quite a lovely village, with lots of villas made of wood or stone. Some of the houses have towers of different sizes, almost like small castles. There are also spa hotels, which we didn’t visit this time.
There are many beautiful villas in Jurmala.
Between the town and the beach there are high forests with pines and birches. We can’t remember having seen such high birches anywhere!
Jurmala beach.
Riga Bay consists of kilometer upon kilometer of golden beaches, and once in a while, but not too often, a beach bar. In the times of the Sovjet Union, Jurmala was one of the favourite places of Leonid Bresjnev and Nikita Krustsjov (no, we didn’t find his shoe anywhere).
Riga bay: Beaches as far as the eye can see.
In Jurmala it’s obviously a good time for a bath! Swimming exercise is also possible, just keep a suitable distance from the beach.
In memory of Kari.
No homage to Kari would be complete without a sharp drink. This time not her favorite Lysholm Linie Akevitt, but the more local Riga Balsam.
Riga Balsam for the soul
The train trip home was a good time for googling – maybe the ‘O grand internet’ could magically dig up more information about Lady Kathleen? These searches gave plentiful of interesting results! To be continued…
When reading about how countries/cities/towns should make things easy for movie makers, there is much talk about all the tourists who would come to the places where a movie is shot. In that way, the location should earn money, even if the movie is sponsored for selecting that particular location. If this really happens, is debatable. Especially when e.g. the Norwegian “Prekestolen” (close to Stavanger) in “Mission Impossible” is presented as being in India!
Few might have thought that the movie “Everyone hates Johan”, shot in Titran on the island Frøya, would bring any tourists. But we can confirm it now has happened! Knut was an extra in the movie and was one day on Frøya recording a while ago. When the movie finally came to the movie theaters, he didn’t see himself until his name was in the credits. That’s what can happen when you are an extra!
No matter, we liked the movie very much and suspect it is closer to the truth of how it is to live on Titran than the natives would care to admit. So we just had to take a bath in Johan’s foot steps.
What we had planned, was a bath in the sound right below Johan’s house, where his parents lost their lives. This is right west of Titran and is called Svalbalen beach (originally Svalbar, from “Sval”, meaning chilly). What we hadn’t considered, was the tide. We arrived Titran friday evening and went straight to the beach, but quickly realized that at low tide it looks quite different than in the movie. So we went back the next day on high tide instead and then it looked just right.
A bath in honor of Johan’s parents
The houses of Johan and his childhood sweetheart Solvor, whom he happened to blow up a little, are close to the beach, just as the movie depicts it.
Johan’s house to the right, Solvor’s in the middle.
At the beach there is now a house for bird watching. Very nice and very new, but maybe a little too far from the beach for misusing it to change before bathing.
You can watch birds outside the house as well, but many days the indoor option might be preferrable.
Without knowing for sure, we suspect that this house has a direct correlation to the movie, since it was brand new. Maybe financed by money someone got for renting out their house for filming? Actually it was so new that we were the first to sign in the guest book! Which was a first for us.
One thing we hadn’t thought about, is that there are other central elements in the movie to see around! E.g. these bars where Johan showed his strength.
No chance for Knut to beat Johan in this game…
Also Sletringen lighthouse was in the movie, but that’s another story. Our conclusion is that a bath in “Johan’s bay” is just right.
On the western tip of the Island Frøya you will find the fishing village Titran. The name has an unknown meaning, but it is an old fishing village, mentioned by the Nidaros’ Archbishop Aslak Bolt in 1433, when he gathered “The Titrom fishermen” for a meeting. They agreed to pay all the fees that the Christian court ordered. That means, at Titran, there were both people and money at the time, and the fishermen were even willing to give some extra fish out of pure goodwill. Before 1430, all the Norwegian fishing villages were free to settle.
Titran is absolutely gorgeous!
The grand old days were in the 16th century: Of Frøya’s 49 households, 15 were on Titran and 15 on Sula. During the fisheries, there could be hundreds of fishermen out here in the ocean gap, with a safe port and a short way out to sea. Today, the number of inhabitants is less than 100 people.
Titran seen from the north.
On the south side of Titran we find the peninsula Stabben, where the Germans built a coastal fortress, Stabben, during the WWII. The work started in 1941 and was part of the Atlantic embankment. Serbian and Russian prisoners of war dug out more than 20 bunkers and hundreds of meters of underground passages.
View from Stabben towards Sletringen lighthouse.
The fortress was opened to the public in 1990, so Stabben fortress you just have to come and visit!
Well prepared in the bunkers inside Stabben fortress.
The fortress was equipped with 3 Krupp canons (150 mm K 16), with a range of 22 km. The purpose was to hit allied ships. The construction of Stabben fortress turned out to be a mistake. Very few ships passed by Frøya. The shipping lane goes inside the neighbouring island Hitra, sheltered from wind and waves!
Canon position on Stabben.
During the WWII, shots were fired from the Stabben canons only once – at their own: German minesweepers who had misunderstood the signals from the fortress.
Stabben fortress.
The Germans left Stabben in 1944, and the families could move back to their houses. The Germans had occupied all the houses on the Stabben peninsula for 3 years.
At Titran you will find beautiful bathing places everywhere, it hardly makes sense to recommend one in front of the others. We were accommodated in the Titran old school – it has been converted into apartments – so then it was natural to cross over to Stabben from there. An absolutely beautiful bath in a quiet, marvelous evening.
Frøya – this incredibly beautiful collection of islets and reefs, bays and fjords, has the same name as the fertility goddess in the Norse mythology: Frøya. You just have to wonder: Why it is so desolate out here? Did she not listen? Was she not flattered enough to make the islands fertile? Then it turns out that the name comes from the Norse word frøy = lord, the foremost, that is, the foremost island.
Absolutely a bather’s paradise – Frøya municipality.
And when it comes to fertility – Frøya’s fertility lies in the sea! Here you will find the clearest water and a business that has been founded on fish since the Stone Age.
A clearer water than this you can’t find!
Frøya municipality has a land area of 230 km2 and consists of thousands of larger and smaller islands, islets and reefs. The highly committed inhabitants (something above 5,000 of them) go hard if they feel unfairly treated – just try to build wind turbines here!
Sometimes the wind turbine wins, sometimes the eagle?
Frøya is a birds’ paradise. Here you just have to put on your shoes – there is goose shit everywhere. And you have to expect strong protests wherever you go – the geese alert you whenever you do disturb them.
2 goose families were minimally stressed when we past them.
The business here today is still about fish – and in particular farmed fish. On Frøya there is a high number of ‘Salmon Lords’. The population has in the 2000’s increased more than the average in the Trøndelag region. The smaller villages, though, show a declining population, and the number of inhabitants on the small islands is declining.
Salmon Lord is needed here!
In our search for bathing places on Frøya, it (unfortunately!) did not help to search the municipality’s website. Big sigh: Please, all you municipalities out there – set up a list of the best bathing places you have! It can be a bit tedious for us – on Frøya, for example – to have a bath in all the bays and fjords and lakes to find the best bathing spot. But suddenly while driving, we found this gem, not far from Nordskag, at Utfrøya:
Valen pearl, with such a nice sign you just have to stop?
At Valen (by the lake Aunvatnet), there is a very nice bathing place, with benches and tables, floating jetty and a diving tower. Fabulous! A little worn out, though.
Knut prepares our GoPro at Valen bathing place.
Where is the community spirit of voluntary work? Not much is needed to bring this fine bathing place back to its former glory. First of all, maybe clean up the surroundings a bit, so it looks more like a bathing place and less like a rubbish place.… Or does someone think there is something called a bathing season and that it has not started yet?
After the young ones have left the nest, we haven’t watched the traditional children’s parade on the Norwegian national day of May 17th, but taken a hike instead. A couple of years we went on top of Storheia, Trondheims highest mountain. This is a nice little trip, with only a short walk down to town afterwards (easily combined with a bath at Sjøbadet). But after the city was joined with the neighbouring Klæbu in 2020, Trondheims highest top is now Kråkfjellet and much less accessible.
So we took a shorter option, went by bike to Bekken gård and walked up to Estenstadhytta. The cabin wasn’t open for serving, but we knew that and had everything we needed with us!
May 17th 2022 at Estenstadhytta.
Of course we also wanted a bath and on the way down we went by Estenstaddammen. Trondheim was blessed with phantastic weather, so we don’t believe anyone was shocked that we cooled ourselves down a little.
Correct bathing outfit for the national bath.
In Norway there has been much debate lately about our national costumes not being suited for people not comfortable with standard stereotypes like male/female. So we tested a switch.
Select any letter you are comfortable with: LBGTPQHWNEUSGD…
No doubt that a bath is the right thing to do on May 17th!
Suddenly it was May 17th 2021 and we were still on Iceland. We travelled to Iceland a week before Easter (March 19th ), and the plan was to stay for 3 weeks: First a week in quarantine (away office), then a week of Easter vacation travelling around, and finally a week in Reykjavík on ‘away office’ when we were here anyway (and ordered to work at ‘home office’). Now we had been in Iceland for 7 weeks – and we did not have a Norwegian flag for the Norwegian constitution day: May 17th!
Coffee, ice cream and spurningar (quiz) at Flateyri May the 17th 2021.
Here our habit of quiz really payed off. During these weeks we had struggled through a number of questions like this:
‘Hvaða þjóðfáni er blár með hvítum krossi og rauðum krossi innan í þeim hvíta?’ (Correct answer at the bottom of the article)
c) Smiðja is a place where you make things (smith).
And there – in Ísafjörður – on May the 17th (!) we suddenly saw a sign we had never seen before: Fánasmiðjan. A flag factory!
As is written in the ‘Heimskringla’: ‘Betre byrdi du ber ‘kje i bakken enn mannavit mykje.’ (heimskringla.no) ‘Better burden you don’t carry uphill than a lot of wisdom.’
Fánasmiðjan in Ísafjörður.
So all there was to do was open the door, go one floor up and browse the huge selection of flags from around the world. Once you have obtained a Norwegian flag, time is perfect for a bath. We went down to the city beach and had a bath with the super sailing ship ‘A1’ in the background. Hipp Hipp Hooray!
Bathing the 17th of May in Ísafjörður.
After a bath in Ísafjörður bay, a trip to Tjöruhúsið is a good idea. There you get the very very very best fish buffet in all of Iceland. Try it! The fish is served newly made at certain times, so here you have to be on time, book a table in advance and not eat too much of the phantastic fish soup you get as a starter!
The fish buffet in Tjöruhúsið
Correct answer to the Icelandic question: the Icelandic flag
South of the peninsula Reykjarnes there are not many good harbors. There are no fjords here, and the coast is heavily exposed by the ocean. There are some skerries, though, and you can see the waves over the reefs. Occasionally there are calm waters and something resembling lagoons.
Strandakirkja lagoon in winter time.
By Strandakirkja there is such a small lagoon where we have bathed several times – once together with seals!
Knut and 3 seals (100m behind the thumb) are having a bath.
Strandakirkja has been a church site for a long time, the first church here is said to have been built by order of king Olav Tryggvasson, before the year 1000. The place is mentioned in the church register made by the bishop at Skálholt, Pál Jónsson, around the year 1200.
Strandakirkja exterior.
There are many stories connected to Strandakirkja. For instance, there was a young farmer who found himself in terrible weather on the way back after buying timber in Norway. In desperation, he decided to donate the timber to the construction of a church – if he survived. Suddenly he saw a luminous angel, who showed him the way to the port. A memorial – a woman holding a shiny cross, was erected outside the church in 1950. The statue was made by sculptor Gunnfríður Jónsdóttir.
Strandakirkja interior.
Strandakirkja is therefore considered to be all seamens church and is one of the richest churches in Iceland, because it still receives donations from sailors.
Different types of superstition living side by side: elves and christianity.
At Strandakirkja lagoon time is always right for a bath!
… by the game of – spurningarleikurinn (quiz)! In any cafè, pub or restaurant near you.
Spurningar = questions.
Learning a language can be very tedious. To ease the training – do quiz games! We have successfully played ‘New Amigos’ and ‘Trivial Pursuit’ (TP) in various more or less unknown languages. It is important to do it with a smile. Sometimes you understand the question, and then the problem is only to find the answer. Other times it turns out to be impossible to understand the question – even with a dictionary. In that case, it often helps to check the answer, then you may understand the question afterwards. Sometimes you do not understand neither questions nor answers, not even with a dictionary! That’s when humor is needed. Geography and science issues are normally the easiest to understand. Entertainment can be completely impossible to answer (TV shows from the 80’s in a country where you haven’t lived …). No more to say about that, really.
Idun is watching ESC, Flatey 2021. The Spurningaleikurinn book has been replaced with mobile streaming for a while.
When it came to Icelandic, we struggled terribly before we realized that TP in Icelandic was unavailable, it is sold out from the publisher (2021). We therefore ended up buying a second hand quiz book for children (!). And yes, that was hard enough for us. But fun! An alternative is of course comic books in Icelandic, Donald Duck for instance. We have bought the whole Valhalla series in Icelandic, and there’s still a lot remaining.
The apples of Iðun are stolen. Strange thing; that Idun is allergic to apples.
Then to the quiz – why not warm up with these 3 (From ‘Spurningaleikurinn’ ISBN 9979-1-0001-X):
Question 1.Question 2.Question 3.
Before asking all these questions, a swimming exercise is a good idea. You can do it in Ásvallalaug, Hafnarfjörður. This is a new and great facility, with an indoor 50 m basin, a phenomenal children’s pool and everything else you could possibly need, including a finnish sauna. In Ásvallalaug most things take place indoors, but they have dug a couple of hot pots into the ground outside. You’re welcome!
Heita potta, Ásvallalaug. Foto: sundlaugar.is
To exercise and relax in Ásvallalaug; both are just right. We at least enjoyed it there.
