Exploring Trondheim, Norway, where the sun never sets

The sun never set in Trondheim; instead it made a big circle over our heads. At the end of May, the gentle but insistent sunlight gave me constant energy, which I needed to keep up with my 15-year-old son, Eilif.

This central Norwegian city is where he was born, when my wife, Katy, and I lived there for a year. The Norwegian government paid for the delivery, plus a bonus $5,000 to help with expenses. We could at least pay Norway the courtesy of visiting again.

Eilif and I arrived at the pier in Trondheim aboard the Hurtigruten ferry from Bergen, after a two-night trip winding around islands and waterfalls on the coast of the North Sea.

He considers himself Norwegian despite not having citizenship and never having lived here, apart from his first six months on Earth. So we were there on a kind of mission: We wanted to find out if he could fit in as a student — and if attending a school there would even be a good idea. It was a fine excuse to explore this beautiful city on a fjord.

Should he pursue a free degree at the Norwegian University's glorious Gløshaugen campus, with its Harry Potter-esque gothic styling? I remember the hazing ritual for the botany students with their faces painted green who marched through town in green pajamas with green Dahls beer cases on their heads. And the students who ate raw fish innards and crawled into barrels used to store fish to prove that they were worthy of the marine biology department. My son would probably love these college shenanigans.

Instead of a trip through campus, I took him to Nidaros­domen, the gothic cathedral where Norwegian kings are crowned and St. Olav's body is (likely) buried. My teenager perked up only after I mentioned that one of the statues on the church was sculpted in the likeness of Bob Dylan. While searching for St. Bob (hint: it's St. Michael, which crowns the top of the northwest tower), he was enthralled by the statue of Bishop Sigurd holding a bowlful of his nephews' disembodied heads.

Inside the west entrance, an organist tested a giant new pipe organ that complements the historic organ in the north wing. Eerie bursts from the bass organ pipes interrupted the ghostly hush of the church. Then, as if descending from heaven, or at least the vaulted ceilings, a familiar melody emanated out of the second organ. Wait, this wasn't a religious hymn, but a Hippocampus rock 'n' roll anthem. I looked over to see Eilif pounding away on the keyboard like the phantom of the opera. I quickly stopped his favorite song.

"What does it matter?" he complained. "The cover to the organ was open. Besides, they let that other guy play!"

After all, isn't this Dylan's church?

From baby buggies to bikes

Eilif and I stayed with friends who hooked us up with bicycles, the best way to see Trondheim. Fifteen years ago, I had mainly seen the city by pushing baby Eilif in a stroller, "trilling" as the Norwegians call it, over the cobblestones. Eilif and I constantly got lost by bike, but it didn't matter. It is easy to regain your bearings with the fjord on one side, the river on the other, and the fortress atop the hill.

We biked through vast neighborhoods of classic workers' housing, colorful two- or three-story wooden buildings lining cobblestone streets. The government has protected these buildings, many of which date to the 1920s. My friend Joffe told me about boligsamvirke, or housing cooperatives, that help keep rents down and conserve these historic buildings.

Eilif was intrigued by Svart­lamon, an alternative community of squatters in occupied houses that hosts music festivals — one is called Eat the Rich — and is full of sculptors, artists and punks. Besides coffee and art, the only thing I saw for sale in Svartlamon was Klassekampen, or "class struggle," the daily left-wing newspaper that even a couple of journalists I met from NRK, the public broadcasting system of Norway, told me is the best. The colorful murals and political posters showed that all is not lefse and lutefisk in Norway.

All this rage against the system makes a teenager hungry, so we explored the array of pastries at the Rosenborg Bakeri, which got its start in 1902. Later, we relaxed at the Pirbadet pool, where Eilif did his first babysvømming, or "baby swimming," which Norwegians begin at a few months old. The best swimming pool ever, it has saunas, slides and warm pools overlooking the fjord and Munkholmen Island, where monks supplanted the Vikings who used to place severed heads on poles to ward off intruders. "Cool!" Eilif said after I explained the gruesome details.

We biked back under a rainbow over the little bridge by the bryggen, or wooden wharf, into the Bakklandet neighborhood. We were blocked by a hill that looked impossible to scale. Fortunately, we discovered the world's first bicycle lift. Cyclists put out a foot for a little metal pedal that appears in a track to push them up the steep incline. "Keep a stiff leg," one advised us after we failed three times.

Free college?

Eilif is considering a Norwegian folkehøgskole, folk high school, or perhaps the university with free tuition, so we visited the university, where students prepared for six-hour final exams in each subject. Eilif wasn't too sure about that, or the lunch menu at a nearby high school of salmonburgers, sod (meatball soup), or grøt (porridge) with cinnamon.

I was more alarmed by the graduating high schoolers who put on bizarre outfits of red, blue or black (depending on their major) overalls and hazed each other in hilarious hijinks that would surely be outlawed in the U.S. These are the Russ, short for the Latin cornua depositurus, which refers to the removal of a horn that first-year university students had to wear until they passed their first-year exams. The practice began before the University of Oslo was established in 1812 and is continued in high schools across Norway.

While this may sound honorable, the Russ students compete with one another for the craziest parties and most outrageous pranks. Unless someone is hurt, the police look away. Some of the tricks are brilliant (giant troll footprints up an entire water tower), while others are baffling (cleaning a kilometer of train track with a toothbrush).

I would prefer that Eilif admire the Norwegians in their bunad, traditional Norwegian outfits, as they celebrated the country's Constitution Day on the 17th of May. The day honors the constitution, and the country's independence, especially from Sweden in 1905. Nearly everyone in Norway was out waving a Norwegian flag to hail Syttende Mai, except for the Russ, who gently mocked the whole fun day. While the children's parade was the focus of the day, the Russ parade, or Russetoget, demanded attention.

I asked my Trondheim friend Petter about his time as Russ.

"I don't remember much; I just know that my mom wasn't very proud of me when I was Russ. She said that at the Russetoget I was taped passed out to a hood of a car."

No, I don't want Eilif to be Russ.

Come to the dark side

Our schedule was a bit hectic, but we were fueled by gullbrød, dark chocolate-covered marzipan and spicy ingefærøl ginger ale, both from Trondheim. The temperature shifts every 15 minutes and the weather report showed a cloud icon with a snow/rain mix with sunshine. "We have all seasons in a day," our host Runa told us. Indeed, out the front window we saw rain, the side window had sun, and the back had dark clouds with a double rainbow. Nevertheless, we set out for one last adventure.

Before bringing Eilif to Norway, I had taken our family to Norwegian sites around the Midwest. I have a photo of Eilif in front of a replica stave church in Wisconsin. The church was built in Orkanger, the same town outside of Trondheim where Eilif was born. The church was originally shipped from Orkanger to the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. After the festival, the church became a cinema and then moved to Little Norway, a living museum in Blue Mounds, Wis., that shut down in 2012.

As we planned our trip to Orkanger, we discovered that after 122 years, that stave church has returned home. Norwegians came to Wisconsin to pack up the church and lovingly restored it in Orkanger as a little bit of the Midwest in Norway.

On our way out of Trondheim we headed north on a train that wiggles for 10 hours, past the Arctic Circle to Bodø, the farthest north that trains go. Here the sun doesn't even pretend to set and day and night lose their meaning. This concept that time no longer has significance and that the past, present and future are all here at the same time is summed up in the book that both Eilif and I just read, "Naїve, Super," by Trondheim's own Erlend Loe.

Then, returning to Trondheim, the train passed through the town of Mørkved, the "dark side," and we realized we needed the night. While the sun gave us energy to keep going, we were ready for the darkness, and sleep.

Eric Dregni is the author of "Minnesota Marvels," "Midwest Marvels," "Weird Minnesota" and most recently "You're Sending Me Where? Dispatches From Summer Camp."