A day on Herøy and Dønna

Koen de Vette

The municipality Herøy was the first place to visit on our third day of the excursion (2-11-2016). We were brought there by our guide, who picked us up from the ferry. The first thing that catched my eye (as happens many times when travelling in Norway) was the view we had over the relatively flat island, which provided a frontal view on the mountainous area in north-west direction. We stopped at the Herøy church, which is across the street from the museum where we would be going after going to the church visit. We got an elaborate explanation about the founding of it, some stories of the people who ran it and about the architecture of the place. It was rebuilt several times, like most of the other churches we visited. Next was the museum, and by this time most of us were pretty cold because there was no heating system installed. The building itself was built somewhere halfway the 19th century and it was big enough to accommodate at least 20 people. We first went into the kitchen and got information about the different tools people used back in the day to get by. The museum collected many of these items, which not necessarily were part of that household at the time but may have been retrieved from other households as well. The amount of items in the house was mentioned and impressive, if I recall correctly around 25.000, probably even more. We got to walk around freely and what struck me most was the incredible amount of old books, every room you walked into had one or more bookshelves completely stuffed. The biggest surprise of the day was the pizza that we made as lunch, the guide prepared most of the food before the arrival (including moose meat), all we had to do was roll out the pizza and decorate it, after which the guide put it in the stone oven. Boy, how lucky we were, it was delicious!

Anyway, after resting for a bit we went back into the van and headed towards Dønna, where we would visit the Dønnes church and some other places. Our guide suddenly stopped when we were halfway and went looking for something in or around his house, he came back with a moose antler which he gave to me. Earlier we talked about the moose meat and hunting, and when I showed interest he offered me to give the antler he still had to me. I was excited, I wanted to make something out of it, to carve something nice. So next opportunity I had I bought a knife to realize this idea. When we arrived at the church we walked around it for a while, looking at the masonry and trying to recognize different features of it that we were taught about earlier. There was a side building attached to the church, from our guide we heard that it was a mausoleum containing 22 supposedly well-preserved bodies. It was only opened once in the 70’s, which is why it is unknown if they bodies remain as intact as they were then, because of the inflow of air. When the (other) guide finished her story, we went back in the van to go to an artscape nordland site, a circular structure that could move up and down at the sides, depending on where you (and others) were standing. It was funny to run around in circles there, just for the heck of it. The last thing we went to was a stone phallus on top of a hill, however, it was covered to protect it against erosion. The guide had some funny stories about it though, which made the walk there worthwhile.