Greetings from the Hardanger Fartøyvernsenter in Norway!
The Hardanger Fartøyvernsenter is an amazing place.
Greetings from Norway! Its beautiful here, and I'm learning a lot quite fast. It's the rainy season here and while I can tell the landscape is beautiful, sunny days have been hard to find. Nonetheless, the Hardanger Fartøyvernsenter is an amazing place. Here are a few impressions:
Hardanger Boat Shop
The small boat shop in the Hardanger Fartoyvernsenter is run by Peter Heller Hanson. He has made his life’s work preserving the small craft of the Hardanger fjord. The specific designs are from boats built in the area in the 1800s, but the center has heritage in boats built since the time of the vikings.
Peter’s shop has the most refined aroma of pine tar. Not the intense smell when pine tar has been freshly applied. Its the smell of a building in which pine tar is used on an almost daily basis and residual pine oils are perpetually in the air. It is a pleasant smell, but very noticeable upon entering.
Peter and his apprentice Arne are focused and work fast. This is not a culture that works long hours. They start at 7:30, take a half hour coffee break at 9, break for lunch at 11:30 and finish the day by 3pm. To an American this might be short 6 hour work day. But the time they are working they are focused. No music is played, and they often don't bother to turn off the band saw because it takes so long to slow down they figure most of the time they will turn it back on again before it gets quiet. Arne and Peter spend a good amount of time in the morning looking at the details of the boat, and making their plan for the days work. Peter, with over 30 years and more than 100 small boats under his belt works incredibly fast. Arne has been apprenticing for over a year already and knows exactly what needs to be done, but can't compete with Peter's efficiency.
This week I learned about planking these wide-planked clinker boats and about fastening with trunnels. If you are interested in learning more, visit my website and sign up for my newsletter. I'll be going into more detail on what I'm learning in my weekly letters. www.manywatersboats.com
