Skagerrak

The Skagerrak is the eastern arm of the North Sea that separates southern Norway and Denmark. Farther east and south, it becomes the Kattegat, on its way to the Øresund, near Copenhagen, and the Baltic. I learned about the Kattegat and the Skagerrak from some strategy board game when I was a kid. I think it was called Diplomacy. Pronouncing them was easy, but now I'm having to learn how to spell them.

When you take a ferry from Hirtshals on the northern coast of Denmark to Kristiansand, on the south coast of Norway, you sail west northwest across the Skagerrak. Which is what we did, on a very large, very fast Colorline ship. The SuperSpeed ferry holds more than 2000 passengers, more than 700 cars, and can go 27 knots.

We landed in Kristiansand mid-afternoon on June 19th. We would be in Norway until July 4th, when we would drive across the bridge into Sweden after leaving Oslo.