The bloody history of whaling

After the visit at the zoological museum in Oslo I took a train to Sandefjord further west and installed me at the hotel Atlantic.

The hotel showed up to be a virtual museum of whaling as well. Sandefjord is well known as an important town during the whaling age in Norway.

Harpoons and whaling equipment at the hotel Atlantic

The whaling passway between the foajé and the dining room   

Whaling is still there

From 1850 and onwards a big number of whaling ships from Sandefjord were sealing and hunting whales in the Arctic Ocean and along the coast.

The city experienced a tremendously prosperous economical period the next 100 years and in the early 1950's the whale trade reached its climax with a big fleet of factory ships and nearly hundreds of whalers.

Waiting for the right positon for the killing shot

From the mid 1950's whaling was gradually decreasing. At this point the numbers of whales already had been reduced dramatically and the fight against whaling had increased constantly. In the late 1960's the last whaling expedition from Sandefjord occurred.

The whaling monument in Sandefjord

Beside the exhibitions in the hotel there are also a true a whaling museum in Sandefjord and a huge statue called Hvalfangstmonumentet showing whaling in action.

Although killing whales is history in Sandefjord today, whaling still exist in Norway, Iceland and Japan. The rest of the world, including me, wants to see an end of this bloody industry as soon as possible. There are several international organizations you can join in order to support the fight against whaling. Do that! Save the whales for the future!

This evening I spend at Gjennestad gartnerskole and delivered another lecture on the theme Biotope design in your garden for the garden society Staudeklubben Vestfold. It was a very cozy and well arranged meeting with a happy and interested audience. The threatened marine biotopes of the whales we never discussed however.

Biotope design in Norway

Last week I was invited to Norway in order to deliver two lectures about biotope design in parks and gardens. The first evening I visited Blomstevenners klubb in Oslo, a society with members of house & garden owners interested in gardening, flowers and all kind of plants on a rather advanced level. It turned out to be a cozy and amusing evening, with many questions and even a tasty cup of tea afterwards.

The members of the Blomstervenners klubb are gathering and chatting before the lecture

After the lecture we had coffee and tea and a lottery was hold with indoor plants as prizes

The next day I took a short walk from my hotel situated close to the railway station through the central parts of Oslo to the Botanical Garden and the Zoological Museum. This time of the year the garden was covered by a thick layer of snow, but inside the small greenhouses it of course was much warmer.

In the outdoor garden I found a tree with an interesting label on the trunk. It was obvious that it was a maple tree, Acer platanoides, but at the label it instead was written Oxyporus populinus. This is the Latin name of a fungus called mossy maple polypore in English and lönnticka in Swedish. It attacks living trees and particularly maples. According to the benefit of dead wood for the biodiversity in the garden discussed earlier on this blog it is positive to find fungi labeled as well, not only the trees themselves.

The Botanical garden and the Zoological museum are ruled by the University of Oslo

Mossy Maple Polypore, Oxyporus populinus on a Acer platanoides

Selaginella is here representing the Devon era

In the palm house the plants are arranged according to their evolutionary development, with examples from different geological eras. Among others there are species of genus as Equisetum, Dicksonia and Cycas.

The old Victoria waterlily greenhouse

Amorphophallus konjac in the Victoria house

In the zoological museum has several biotopes been created behind glass. All geographical regions of animals are represented, sometimes even with more than one biotope. Of course the show cases are too crowded with animals to look natural, but the displays are well made and also very interesting to watch.