Trondhiem | Big City with a Small Town Heart

The next stop on the wanderlust school adventure was a city by the name of Trondheim, a bustling urban city with a population of about 170,000. Out of the three cities we visited it was Trondheim that was my favourite by far. If I could, I would think about living there.

We spent the first full day in Trondheim walking around and getting a tour of the city from Inger. She showed us the military fortress that had been a staple of defense for the town back in the day. We also got a tour and history lesson of how a majority of the housing came about in the 1920's and is quite dense. Just after lunch we got, yet another, tour of the Nidaros Cathedral, which was started in 1070 on top of the Norwegian Saint, St. Olav's grave. 300 years later the church was completed, but with Danish rule over Norway the church fell apart. It was reconstructed into what it is today in the early 19th century.

The church was amazing to see and walk around in because I have always read so much about the Gothic churches and I have seen pictures of them, but to see and be inside one was crazy. I could point out all the Gothic features and say thank goodness I had that art history class. There is also a sense of history that just doesn't happen with American architecture.



Along with the church we got to go see the Archbishop's palace which included the royal jewels in a cellar under a guards eye. It was a good history lesson to walk through the museum in the Archbishops palace.

After that we had the afternoon off to take a much needed nap before for going out to a restaurant called Dolly Dimples for dinner. It was a lot of delicious pizza for dinner, almost to much I would say. After dinner we walked around town for a bit and settled down at a pub near the old shipyard before we called it a night.

The next day we talked to the director of urban development and as well as a lady from the Socialist Left party. The speech given by the urban development planning director was incredible. I must give a preemptive warning though that I am quite the sucker for environmental urban planning talk, which is just what he did.


One of the main points he made in his speech was that the way Trondheim was going to help do their part in climate change was by making it a pain to drive the car, but easy to take a bus or ride a bike. Indeed there were a lot of bikes everywhere around town. It was amazing. They even have the worlds only bike lift in town. Ha

Some of the ways the director had mentioned to make it harder to drive a car was by decreasing speed limits, giving a lane to just buses effectively leaving the cars in jams, and moving city employee offices into downtown where there is not a minimum parking space requirement, but a maximum! That was music to the ears when I heard that because I know one of the problems Seattle is having is that building the of massive condos and ugly mass apartment buildings requires a lot of parking space. All the parking lots take up sidewalk space and create a giant boring urban canyons to walk through. Those of course don't exist in Trondheim because the don't seem to build any buildings over ten stories. Most are just around of five stories or so.


The city also has a student population of about 25,000 so it had a vibrant youthful feel to it. With the encouragement of bikes and a dense city layout it would be easy to live a good life at the uni in town. In short, Trondheim was awesome.