Wednesday, December 25, 2002

Happy Christmas, God Jul, Felice Natale to one and all!
If you want, you can visit our special Christmas page for 2002 and leave us a message!

Patrick & Patrizia

Monday, December 09, 2002

Got some rather sad news this morning from philosopher friend and ex-NTNU colleague Anita Leirfall, now in Oslo: a whole quarter with wooden buildings from the 1850-1900 period in Thomas Angell's gate, in the antique centre of my old home city of Trondheim burned down to the ground Saturday (7.12).



Source: Aftenposten



Source: Verdens Gang


Fortunately nobody was seriously hurt in the blaze, which started in the kitchen of a restaurant in the quarter that burned to the ground. Two firemen were however treated afterwards for smoke inhalation and one for back pains.

One light point in the general gloom is that the whole zone damaged by the fire has previously been extensively documented with both photography and video by city artist Henning Meyer, who has been drawing details of the city for years, so we can be reasonably sure that at least some form of faithful reconstruction of the quarter will be possible.

Apropos the fire: here in Italy (Bologna) I hadn't heard anything at all during the weekend about the event in local and national media. Well, my interest in this particular story is very personal, since I have come to know and love Trondheim after 26 years of highly formative and happy citizenship there. But I guess that I just have to accept that it is not really considered in mass media terms as one of the most important places in the world, especially when viewed from a still rather "provincial" Bologna in the "deep south" of Europe - even though Trondheim is the ex-capital of Norway, site of the highly innovative Norwegian University of Science and Technology, as well as the largest Gothic cathedral in Scandinavia (Nidarosdomen), and not to mention its tenacious Rosenborg Football Club, who surprised everyone in Europe in 1997 by beating AC Milan 2-1, eliminating them from the Champion's League Cup that year...

Anyway, here are a few links to websites with news stories about Saturday's Trondheim fire:

Norway Post (English)
Norway Post (English)
Verdens Gang (Norwegian)
Branmannen (Norwegian)
NRK Trøndelag
Archive of reports from NRK Trøndelag