Van Life Diaries: Europe 1985 – Denmark, Sweden and Norway – Episode 364 of The Thoughtful Travel Podcast

In this episode of the Van Life Diaries: Europe 1985, we move on to Scandinavia. Starting off in Denmark, we looked for Lego, noticed the size of the Little Mermaid, and enjoyed spending time in Copenhagen. From Denmark it was a short ferry ride to Sweden, and while my Dad and I muse that we don’t have many strong memories from our time there, my Mum’s diary does the heavy lifting contributing details about our time in some seaside islands, followed by Stockholm, and an intriguing visit to a timber mill area. Finally, we chat about how much we loved Norway, including time in Oslo, the fjords and playing badminton in Bergen.

This is the fifth part of a monthly, six-episode series celebrating the fact that exactly 40 years ago this year, my family and I spent six months in a striped motorhome travelling around Europe. I was nine years old and yes, this trip had an enormous impact on my life – I’m sure you wouldn’t be listening to this podcast today if Van Life 1985 hadn’t taken place! Throughout the series, I’ll include chats recorded with my Dad this year, extracts from my late Mum’s travel diary from 1985, and of course my own memories and thoughts. 

A big thanks to Context Travel for sponsoring this series, and an even bigger thanks to my Dad for agreeing to be part of it.

Links:

• Context Travel – use the code THOUGHTFULTRAVEL to get 15% off any online booking
• See Part 1 of Van Life Diaries: Hong Kong, England and France
• And Part 2 of Van Life Diaries: Spain, Italy and Greece
• And Part 3 of Van Life Diaries: Austria and Switzerland
• And Part 4 of Van Life Diaries: Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands
• Join our Facebook group for Thoughtful Travellers
• Join our LinkedIn group for Thoughtful Travellers
• Sign up for the Thoughtful Travellers newsletter at Substack.com 

As promised, some photos from our albums …

Episode Transcript

Amanda Kendle 0:00
Hello and welcome back to the Van Life Diaries Europe, 1985, this is part five of our series, and it’s also Episode 364 of The Thoughtful Travel Podcast. During 2025 these episodes are traveling back in time to the most important trip of my life, the one that set me up to always be curious about the world, because it happened 40 years ago this year, way back in the 1980s!

During the Van Life Diaries Europe, 1985 series, I’m reliving this six month budget motorhome trip my family took around Western Europe when I was nine years old. I have interviewed my dad to help me with this, and I also am lucky to have access to my late mum’s travel diaries and our family photo albums, as well as what I can remember. And along with reliving these memories of a life changing trip, I am talking about how travel memories impact us, what’s changed and what hasn’t in the world over these four decades, and also why taking your kids traveling is always a good idea. Two things before we start, I’d like to pay my respects to the Whadjuk people of the Noongar nation where I’m recording this podcast. I also want to say a huge thanks to the sponsor of this series, Context Travel. They’ve been operating walking tours in cities around the world since 2003 they’ve been a certified B Corp since 2011 and they find incredibly interesting and qualified subject matter experts to be your guides on a very special tour. More from Context Travel during the episode.

So to follow on from last time we moved on from Germany into Scandinavia, and Scandinavia is where we will be for this whole episode. My son and I had a road trip around Denmark only a few years ago. And it’s actually funny to notice now from my mum’s diary, that back in 1985 we traveled along some of the very same roads, but in reverse, of course, we drove up from northern Germany and made our way north east towards Copenhagen with one section on a car ferry. And my mum noted there that the Danish ferries weren’t as interesting as Greek ones, but were more efficient, seems to track we reached then the main island of Zeeland, and my mum reports, thus visited the Viking Museum at Roskilde. Interesting. On to Copenhagen, camped at Park, large one belling ho the next day into Copenhagen, easy bus trip. About lunchtime, walked to the streets for Lego and saw the mermaid. Lots of shopping, expensive and touristy, as usual, Lego not in Copenhagen, but back where we had come. Dined at the railway Bistro, quite well done smorgasbord, and then went to the Tivoli Amanda and Zoe enjoyed it and lights when they finally came on about 9:15pm were lovely. Late Night. I revisited all of this with my son just a few years ago, including the Viking museum, but I do remember as a child, we really did enjoy the Tivoli Gardens amusement park, a memory that absolutely endured for me, and so I was very pleased to take my son back there some decades later, my dad and I also chatted about some of the key sites of Denmark.

Barry Kendle 3:37
Ah, yes, yeah. That was interesting. The Viking Museum. Yep, it was good. But I must say, I was so disappointed with the Little Mermaid. The Little Mermaid in Copenhagen is so little, it was just hard to see. I don’t know what the fuss is

Amanda Kendle 3:55
all I know. I mean, it’s in the name Little, but you don’t expect it to be so

Barry Kendle 4:00
little, but it shows you with the little mermaid how good a little item can promote tourism and bring money into the country for

Amanda Kendle 4:10
decades and decades. Yeah, that’s right, yeah, forever, probably, yeah, yeah, exactly. Now I also remember going to Tivoli,

Barry Kendle 4:17
yes, yes. There’s something interesting about that. Did something fall over while we were there, or was it after? I don’t remember that bit, something bad happened to Tivoli. Oh, no.

Amanda Kendle 4:29
So of course, my dad’s impeccable memory wins again. Perhaps my parents didn’t even tell us about this at the time, but apparently Google tells me, just a couple of weeks after our visit to the Tivoli amusement park. There was a terrorist attack in Denmark, and one of the bombs exploded right next door to Tivoli. It was it gutted the headquarters of Northwest orient airlines. So there you go. That must be what my dad mentions. Funnily enough, I actually have a really vivid memory from my childhood trip to Denmark of trying to decide on a souvenir. We had just a small budget to take some kind of memorabilia home, and I couldn’t decide between a pencil case, which actually featured the Little Mermaid, or a red and white Danish scarf, which I really liked, and I guess probably sensibly, given the warm climate that we live in back here in Perth, my parents persuaded me to take the pencil case, but for years, I have had this feeling that I missed that scarf. Isn’t that crazy. So last year, the Danish soccer team played here in Perth, and I got to buy my Danish scarf. Decades later, it is so weird that isn’t it, the moments that we remember from our childhoods, and especially our childhood travels from here our campervan rolled on into Sweden via another short car ferry trip, this one from helsingor on the Danish side to Helsingborg on the Swedish side. And then my mum’s diary gives us a good overview of her first impressions of Sweden. Lovely, sunny morning in Sweden, drive with headlights on, dipped all the time, crops and potatoes and peas in flour flat country shop and lunch at milbernd, quite used to lunch in a car park, as it is difficult to park the van anywhere. Looked at beach near morop, black sand and water about ankle deep for ages. Dozens of people camp for holidays, all very flat, more so then Denmark over to islands of Sweden, similar to scenery at Albany, camped near Torp. Lots of people met school teachers, Mark and Jenny and Ben from Australia, Melbourne. It took me a while to figure this out on the map. It seems there are many places called Torp in Sweden, but I located us. We were on a series of islands just north of Gothenburg. Funnily enough, my dad and I actually both have little memory of Sweden, but we tried to jog these memories looking at our photos,

Barry Kendle 6:49
Sweden big in my memory bank.

Amanda Kendle 6:52
No, me, neither is it Stockholm. Okay, I can’t

Speaker 1 6:55
remember. I can’t remember it at all.

Amanda Kendle 6:59
It’s like I’ve never been there, to be honest.

Barry Kendle 7:01
How’s that picture labeled? Park at Stockholm? It looks like sort of, there’s an event happening, but doesn’t ring any bells. People sitting down, lying down, all over the place, yes, very orderly, but very orderly. Yes.

Amanda Kendle 7:15
Very Scandinavian order. I don’t have a big memory of Sweden at all, but this all this, this timber mill. Does that ring a bell?

Barry Kendle 7:23
Does vaguely, but I can’t remember why we how we got there, is the use of pine in Europe’s a lot more established than we here in Australia. Ah, yeah, okay, yeah. Take eye care, for example.

Amanda Kendle 7:39
That’s a good example. They’ve been in the furniture game a long time, those Swedes, let’s say flat packs. In our albums, there was like a whole page, maybe six or eight photos of floating logs and a timber mill, which is what fueled our speculation about the Swedish furniture industry. But my mum’s diary did clear up some of this when I went to check onto skocol, where logs are floated downriver, some from Norway, 250 kilometers away, small timber milling place on water. Looked at skogols Log works. Loved the lady directing by remote a boat through the logs, millions of logs going to factory. So skocholl is indeed an area dedicated to the forestry industry, and there are still meals there today, apparently. But how on earth, as tourists, we ended up spending a full night and day? There is a mystery lost to time, and while my dad and I couldn’t recall much about the Swedish capital Stockholm, either, my mum’s diary does give us some detail. Morning, lovely and sunny, half a day in Stockholm, pleasant city, wide streets and footpaths, nice shops walked through old town, lots of large buildings in Stockholm, saw Palace huge back to camp, where beach area was packed and people swimming, but mostly getting the sun topless. No worry. Bra manufacturing non event for Sweden, not many Australians in Sweden, according to locals, alcohol not available in supermarkets, some beer, but no wine. Government controlled stores. We shall look at one on Monday. Now this is an interesting topic, and my dad and I discussed the controlled stores for alcohol as well. It’s not clear in our photo album if this store was in Norway or Sweden. It seems to be in the Norway section. But since my mum mentioned this in her diary under Sweden, perhaps it’s there, but Google tells me both Sweden and Norway had very similar government restrictions on alcohol in the 1980s in any case, we discussed this intriguing issue.

Barry Kendle 9:30
There’s a picture of your mother in a wine shop. I’ve got an idea. That’s where it was necessary to order drinks a few days before you could pick it up. Oh, wow, that’s extreme. May have applied only to Drinks With more than six or 7% alcohol. I don’t remember. Was strange that you had to order your drinks and then come back and collect Yeah, that’s really extreme. Instead of just picking one off off the shelf. Yeah.

Amanda Kendle 10:00
Well, I mean, when you go just down the road to Germany, they’re in the supermarket. They’re not even in a separate shop. So yeah, that’s more sensible, yeah. I remember when I was in Iceland, more recently than this, they were also separate shops and with very, very short hours each day. So we missed out many times being able to have a drink with dinner, because we Yeah, I think they were different in little towns and very short, you know, yeah, it was like, I don’t know, 12 till two or something was the only time you could buy alcohol.

Barry Kendle 10:27
So trying to discourage the use of alcohol.

Amanda Kendle 10:31
Well, especially in those dark, cold places, I can imagine it would be, uh, tempting,

Barry Kendle 10:37
warming, yeah, perhaps it was, uh, they don’t need the revenue from taxes.

Amanda Kendle 10:42
Yeah, that’s true. A quick fact check there on my memory of buying alcohol in Iceland, you can buy alcohol only from the state run shops. There’s 53, of them dotted around the country, and they do have limited opening hours, but not quite as short as I thought. However, there was one I tried to visit in Vic which was only open from 2pm to 6pm for example, it’s fascinating to see all the different approaches to these kind of issues across countries and cultures and time. Context. Travel offers walking tours in both Copenhagen and Stockholm, and they sound as interesting as always. In Stockholm, my pick is the serger man neighborhood tour. Surda is the area just south of the city center, a previously working class district which has become a destination for creatives in Copenhagen. I’m especially intrigued by the newly launched Copenhagen Royals tour it takes in Rosenberg castle and christiansborgs Castle. Remember that we Aussies have sent one of our own to be the Danish queen, and don’t forget, you can get a 15% discount on any context travel tour using the code [email protected] and on to Norway. We spent a bit more time in Norway, and we all have fond memories. We began in Oslo, and these were my mum’s first impressions into Norway. Scenery soon changed. Camping in Oslo, we can see the mountains, nice to see camped at ekerberg And yes, as we were told by some Australian guys, free and real hot water in showers, best we have seen for a while. Inter Oslo booked ticket Bergen to Newcastle approximately 26 hours. Looked at Kon Tiki raft, took ferry to do so. Not a really busy city, lots of tourists, mostly us and German met Australians from Queensland back at camp. They said, Too expensive here, and they were only going short way and back to Yugoslavia, which they liked, scenery good and everything cheap. I love my mum’s ongoing descriptions of other travelers we met in the meantime, my dad and I also discussed the Kon Tiki

Barry Kendle 12:40
raft. The Contiki. You remember that that was brilliant?

Amanda Kendle 12:44
Yes, tell me more about that. I have a vague

Barry Kendle 12:46
that’s the serious ocean crossing on a flimsy looking old thing made of papyrus. I think it was, gosh, I’m not sure that’s correct, but my memory, too, of me eating something like that. It looks pretty flimsy anyway.

Amanda Kendle 13:02
Yeah, yeah. It looks like it would sink immediately.

Barry Kendle 13:05
As I recall from my earlier times, it was a very significant thing. So I’m glad you got a couple of photographs of that. Well, I’m glad you took them. You wouldn’t want to be relying on me to give you a ball by ball description.

Amanda Kendle 13:18
So some more info there. Apparently, the Kon Tiki raft was constructed in the 1940s out of balsa logs and other local materials in Peru in the indigenous style, and then they sailed across the Pacific Ocean because the expedition leader Thor Heyerdahl wanted to prove his idea that a white race from South America reached Polynesia before the Polynesian people did so further research actually rejects his idea now fairly conclusively, but the raft is still at the KonTiki Museum in Oslo, and it is still definitely not a journey I would want to try ever, ever. Just a side note from a thoughtful travel perspective, apparently, some artifacts had been taken during this expedition, and they have been gradually repatriated from the museum to Easter Island over the past few decades. So that is good. From Oslo, we headed further north into Norway, through some really incredible scenery and towards the fjords. My mum reports it’s so huge river we have been following and clean like Switzerland, more into mountains, going to Geringer, small river, lovely water road at foot of mountains, not winding through like Switzerland. More snow now, but not close enough to get some for tonight, lovely to see snow again. On to gerringer, top of fjord. Lovely, similar to Milford, sound New Zealand, and on the next day, off to see the lookout over the fjord, fantastic views back towards strn and up to the very high Lookout at dahls Niebuhr, really, 360 degree views and right back to garringer. Also snow we can walk to and out with our faithful plastic bag. Lovely slide. I love that we got to use. Our makeshift coat in a plastic bag sled, again in the snow. You might remember that from the Switzerland episode, I think the long summer nights seem to have my mum spending more time on her daily diary entries. At one stage she mentions still light at 11pm so there are lots of random musings about Norway like this. One unbelievable a washing machine at camp at songddahl. So clean clothes again, it would be good to be back in England, where I can read the instructions on the washing machines and not guess expensive. Cost about $13 for wash and dry. Oh, well, at least we have clean clothes. Walk into town. Can’t buy a wine in this town, only a beer. Don’t think I will reside in Norway back at songdal shower and hair wash. Feels great shuttlecock with girls. Nice to have a break. So yes, I remember this at some stage we had bought some badminton rackets and shuttlecocks, and we had lots of fun playing with these in caravan parks around Northern Europe. But beyond everyday life, both my mum’s diary and my chat with my dad also mentioned a sightseeing spot in central Norway

Barry Kendle 16:06
church. I’m not sure that we were big on churches.

Amanda Kendle 16:10
No, there’s actually very few churches in this photo album, but this is a fancy looking one.

Barry Kendle 16:15
Oh, very Yes, very fancy. Probably still standing. I had a timber or bits and pieces.

Amanda Kendle 16:21
Yeah, it’s really unusual design. We were indeed not big on churches on this trip, but this one we mentioned was the Borgen stave church. It’s been standing since around 1200 and, yes, still standing today, made out of pine wood, which we’ve already discussed this episode, and in a very special design without nails. It really is spectacular looking. Definitely check the show notes for our photos. Eventually, our time in Norway had to come to an end. Remember, we had booked that burgerton Newcastle ferry early in our stay, so we kind of had a deadline, although it seems that deadline got a little extended. My mum’s diary explained that apparently a number of army vehicles headed for England were booked on the ferry, so they had no more room for a high vehicle like ours. But luckily, we all enjoyed an extended stay in Bergen. I remember we played we stayed, was this in Bergen, where we stayed somewhere that was, like a, um, like an ice rink or something in the off season, or,

Barry Kendle 17:16
Yes, I’m not sure where that was. It’s where they played. Uh, was it ice hockey stadium?

Amanda Kendle 17:22
Oh, yeah, maybe,

Barry Kendle 17:24
yeah, an unusual place, yeah, yeah. Sort of see the inside of the building. Can’t see the outside.

Amanda Kendle 17:29
I can’t No same, same, because I feel like we, or maybe all of us, played badminton inside. Oh yeah, this is like, non ice rink that usually should have ice or something. That’s my memory of it, which is random, not too big. My mum’s diary comes to the rescue with some better details, back to Bergen and into Bergen’s Holland camping, an ice skating rink used for camping for summer, lovely indoors area and nets. So we enjoyed shuttlecock, good as it was wet. Bergen, in morning, visited fish market and bought salmon, pink, expensive, over $20 per kilo, and the next day late rise girls and I shopped down Street and BK off to Bergen to check fishing tackle shops still wet. Played shuttlecock again, and girls did schoolwork. Good showers at camp, like ship, but free hot water. Girls and I could actually all shower at the same time in separate showers, almost washed ourselves away. Had salmon for dinner, quite nice. Eventually, we did get onto that ferry. It’s kind of amazing to imagine a 26 hour ferry journey in hindsight, and we ended up back in the UK. But that is the topic of next episode, which will be the final in the van life Diaries series. So a big thanks to Context Travel, the series sponsor, for their support in creating these special podcast episodes.