The 1952 North Cape Cruise 10 July 1952
Trondheim
Founded in Viking times, this fine old city, which nearly a thousand years ago was Norway's capital, is rich in the lore of the country's historic past. In the market place rises a statue of Olaf Tryggvesson, the meteoric Norse king who made Trondheim a real capital a century before William the Conqueror landed in England.
In Trondheim stands the blue-grey cathedral where another Olaf, patron saint of Norway, was buried, and where kings of the modern nation are crowned. The wooden Royal Palace, the venerable Frue Kirke, weathered to a soft grey, all bear striking witness to ancient Viking traditions.
Harald the Fairhaired, the first King of Norway, chose this fertile district as the seat of his government. In the year 997 King Olaf Trygvesson, whom Thomas Carlyle called the “wildly beautifullest man, in body, and soul, that one has ever heard of in the north”, built his residence on the peninsula formed by the Nid River.
It is chronicled that from his court, in the year 1000, Leif Erikson sailed away for his homeland, Iceland, but, losing his way, discovered America centuries before Columbus was born.
