The Jews of Trondheim

Trondheim plays a big role in Norwegian history. It was the civil capital before Oslo. It was the ecclesiastical capital as well, known then as Nidaros. The defining structure in the city is the cathedral, which was erected on the site of St. Olav's grave. Olav was the Norwegian king who brough Chrisianity to Norway back in the 11th century. He was martyred for his trouble by the Nordic chieftains who weren't quite ready to give up Odin and Thor. He got the last laugh, though -- his cathedral has burned several times and arisen even bigger and grander each time.

While the cathedral draws the attention and dominates the town, Alan and I spent our most interesting time in Trondheim at the synagogue. It's located across the street from the cathedral compound in what once was the train station.

We learned there that Trondheim is home now to a few hundred Jews. Their community came from the Baltic states, Latvia and Lithuania, in the late 1800s after the Norwegian constitution's prohibition against Jews entering Norway was repealed. They followed the traditional path of many Jewish immigrants. They were peddlars, merchants and as their community grew they became doctors and lawyers as well. The community grew to about 750 by the time of the Nazi occupation. Those who could fled to Sweden, whose neutrality gave them shelter. The rest were rounded up by the Norwegian police and shipped off to concentration camps. We were told that of those who were shipped off, only 4 returned after the war.

Norway today justifiably enjoys a reputation for liberal social democracy and progressive government. It is an active proponent of human rights around the world and does much good work through its foreign aid and liberal refugee policies. But for the Jews of Trondheim, all this came a little late. Our guide's dry comment on the occupation policies was "our police were very efficient and enthusiastic enforcers of the laws that the Nazis adopted."

The government did provide some reparations to returning families, some of which was used to restore and refurbish the synagogue. We were told that the government doesn't dwell on its treatment of the Jews during the occupation, but that it also has tried to acknowledge the past and provide some compensation as a result.

The synagogue today is both a community center and a museum. We spent about an hour with a young docent, a Jewish woman who grew up there. She was studying music in the UK and had just decided to switch over the medicine. She was a great guide to the history of the community as well as its current practices. We were joined later by another young woman who is studying medicine in the Czech Republic. They explained that the community today is mostly a cultural rather than a religious one. Services are held only every other week. More often, they said, and they don't get a minyan. It was built as an Orthodox sanctuary, and women still attend in the gallery. They described the community's approach as conservative. There is no rabbi in town, although there is a cantor. For the high holidays they "order out" to Oslo for a rabbi. Given the nature of the community and its small size, most young people marry non-Jewish Norwegians. Our guide had met "a nice Jewish boy" in the UK, but the young women both agreed that this is not a big issue for most of the families in the community.

Trondheim also has a lovely old city across the river from the Cathedral. There are old, old warehouses fronting the river and small, tidy homes on cobbled twisting streets. Cafes and trendy little boutiques have sprouted up there, but it still provided a calm and interesting stroll after the ponderous bulk of the cathedral and the somewhat melancholy story of Trondheim's Jews.

This marked the northernmost part of our trip. The sun had come out after days of low clouds and intermittent rain. That evening we were treated to the full Midnight Sun, with twilight enduring through the night as the Veendam departed late in the afternoon and steamed south for our next port of call.