Skien, Norway

SKIEN, NORWAY

My home for 9 months: September 21- June 2 Attending a Discipleship Training School though Youth With A Mission.

This is Skien, Norway. It is a larger city of maybe 50,000 people. My school was located really close to the downtown and right along a busy one way street. Small town sized places like Nenset, Gimsoy, and Gulset surround the town feeding its industry and people. There is not much here, but a stinky paper mill and the biggest shopping in the county (or kommune, in Norwegian).

Ungdom i Oppdrag...YWAM along Kongens Gate
It's a refurnished jail from the late 1800's. Its neat!

The view down Henric Ibsen Stairway, looking over Ibsen Garden
where the childhood home of this worldwide famous playwrite and writer.
I would run these stairs for exercise. 10 times up and down. Rediculous.
The school was down the stairs to the Methodist steeple and to the left. Easy.

This is the opposite side of the street than the above picture. The Ibsen stairs to the farthest horizon. Downtown Skien lies between here and those stairs. So, we are nevertheless close to everything.

Standing in the town square, you look at the State Lutheran Church to the north and when you turn around you see a set of five fountains that are running year round! Even during freezing Norwegian winter.
of course with the five steaming smoke stacks of the paper mill show how industry and nature meet again.