Day 8

Hunsdorp to Vinstra (foot and car) to  Dovre (train) to , Ingelshush (foot)

Miles walked: 9.2

Cost: 300 NOK

Our host at Dale Gubrandsdal made a new itinerary to follow which included taking the train up to Dovre pronto. The train left at 1:06 ish and we were to walk 12 km on the trail to get there. He said it was a beautiful walk, but still burned from previous beautiful walk promises, we kept to the road. We hit a pretty good pace and could have made it to the train on time, but alas, two ladies picked us up and dropped us at the station. 

So Vinstra is the setting of Peer Gynt, who knew? There is a statue there and they put on an annual play. I had seen some photos of the play in a book at our lodging which were pretty wild and made me want to see more. The Peer Gynt in the play is not what we saw in filmstrip as a child. I remember my 5th grade teacher playing the music and slotting through a filmstrip, although I can’t really remember the plot except there was a mountain king.

Statue at Vinstra train station

At any rate, there is a yearly Peer Gynt festival in Vinstra and it would be super fun to see it sometime.

The train ride to Dovre was 45 minutes and the train only had two cars chugging through the mountains. It was quite lovely.

On arrival in Dovre we had 4 km uphill to walk to reach our lodging at what I now see is a typical Norwegian farmhouse. There is never just one house, but always it is a compound with multiple buildings, many or all with living roofs. 

Our approach to the farmhouse outside of Dovre.

Our hostess greeted us with coffee and Norwegian snacks: a large round cookie (not krumkake, it had -brod as a suffix) and a pancake with the suffix -kake topped with brown cheese. Yum. The communal kitchen was stocked with various items to be used in the preparation of dinner, each with a price tag. we chose salmon and potatoes and added our own fresh broccoli. Cost of dinner, mostly made by Laura, was 50-60 kroner.

Brown cheese and kakas/brods

Norwegian flatbread kitchen. So twice now we have stayed at farmhouses where there is a special outbuilding for the making of bread. Flatbreads require    A special large, round iron — always electric today — and need a very large board and rolling pins. Our hostess today must have made the cookies we at in this kitchen because we found the cutter for one of them, a larger cutter with prongs in the middle. I would love to try to make some of these flatbreads, but fear that many expensive tools are required.