And my love of travelling had brought me many funny stories also, with this one being right from the mouth of my tour guide, who was actually from Sweden and not Norwegian at all.
Back in the days when monks were famed for their love of calligraphy and isolationism, and not being portrayed as the innocent stealing perverts of modern cinema and literature, there was a group of English monks who wanted to spread the word to the Vikings.
Now these monks were very law abiding and did not want to offend or break their sacred vows, so regardless of where they travelled they were determined to keep to the traditions as laid down from generations passed.
This worked perfectly up until they decided to travel northwards and attempt to convert the Norwegian folk near Oslo.
In their boats they came in early March, and seeing the idyllic countryside and abundance of fresh fish and prawns they settled on an stretch of wooden hillside cut off from the rest of the town by a stretch of water.
Things went well for a few months, and they considered themselves very lucky indeed to have found such a nice location and began to build a permanent place of worship. However very soon they all steadily got more and more tired during the days and lost the energy to do much except sit and pray.
Was is the food, was is the something in the water, was it being so far from home they began to lose their faith?
No, it was just that they did not know their geography very well as Oslo is famed for being the land of the midnight sun.
Why is this a problem?
Because the laws set down states that a monk must rise and begin work with the sun and can only rest and sleep when it sets. So in a land where during the summer it never sets this caused a problem.
Equally so when it came to winter time they found that the days were only a few hours during the middle of the day when they were allowed to rise and do anything before prayer and rest again.
In the end one of them sent message to the pope to ask for a special dispensation for them due to the exceptionally erratic cycle of the sun. The messenger went off and they waiting ... and they waited .... and they waited.
One can only imagine the humongous celebration and relief they must have felt when the answer finally came back "yes". It had only taken seven years to get the reply !!!
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