Troldhaugen - Edvard Grieg's Home...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

Edvard Grieg has been one of my favorite

composers since high school & Troldhaugen is the intriguing name of his home, meaning 

"Troll Hill" 

 

We managed to avoid any trolls on our hour's bus tour out of Bergen to visit that home... discovering a lovely Nordic wood home, favoring the Victorian age in which it was built.  It is being refurbished, so unfortunately we were not able to view its interior.

 

 

Romantic trellising at the side door at first suggested to me there might once have been a porte-cochier entrance... but the old photos show the family & guests enjoying the sun there instead. This was a summer home, no doubt, to one who worked winters in concert halls.

 

 

 

 

I'm trusting that other visitors in later times might be able to see its simple grace better restored...

 

But, his studio is indeed well painted, red! 

 

  

... the most interesting part of the home was his studio, to which one walks down a fair slope, some parts of which offered split-rail hand holds.

  

 The disappointing part was that its windows hadn't been cleaned in far too long, rendering a dreary light on his piano & the view through that light out the further window from which he took inspiration. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I trust the house renovation will soon continue down the slope! If only a window washer!

 

The far more more polished piece of the tour's program was a concert in the truly effective Troldsale... the concert venue built into the hill along which we'd walked down to the studio where the music we were going to hear was composed. The stage was backed by a wall of glass open to the view. A grand piano waited. The pianist  appeared from the steps below to play. The Peer Gynt Suite at home in the Hall of the Mountain King!  

 

 

 

 

 

 

We lingered, admiring the venue's ambience before emerging from such a brilliantly spacial underground experience, into a yet more brilliantly sunny day. Ordering lattes at the cafe we sat to enjoy the sun, while realizing that the performer had done the same, so we chatted, to learn that he too was only there for the  first time that day, so he accepted our invitation to join while we explored to find the vault where the couple rested... another small walk along the rocky shoreline of the lake, finding the simple slab closing, with little marking its reason for sheltering so much significance so insignificantly in that cliff... a profound closure to the day. 

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This drawing of Madame Grieg, which I found in the museum, is so happily impish that I want to suppose she was a ready anodyne to any negative troll energy in their life!