china radio international vikings norway

As he too waited to enter, a chair came flying out followed by crockery and cutlery. On a visit to Hotel Casino along with a friend in 1966 he remembers a crowd outside the hotel peering curiously inside.

Thomas & Co Private Limited, a tea broking firm, remembers a few incidents involving them. He writes about their unfamiliar and unpronounceable names- “though many were simple names like Hansen, Nansen, Olsen and Ellingsen some were hard nuts like Knut, Faengsrud, Oedegaard, Stenodeggard and Kjell.” Menon also mentions many social anecdotes involving his friends from the fraternity. The late Devidas Menon, a revered name in the industry and the IFP project writes in a light note, ‘Vignettes on Vikings’, about his Norwegian colleagues, in a souvenir published in 1972. To him the contributions by the Norwegians were not only in the field of advancement of fishing techniques and modernisation but also in community development and in establishing a health centre that changed the lives of fishermen in Neendakara. “When he arrives we all meet up and talk about the old times and about the changes in the fishing industry,” says Ravinath. Olson from Oslo, in his mid 80s, loves the fish curry at Hotel Grand where he faithfully stays on his visit down memory lane. He is still in touch with a few of the old timers who take a nostalgic trip down to the city. There was a mess, a hall, tennis court and rooms for bachelors in their gated compound, on the road opposite the Kerala Fine Arts Hall,” he says. The Norwegians came here on one to two year tenures. Houses were built specially for them, still in use are now occupied by Indian officials of the project. They were engineers, fish processing experts, scientists, technical men and women and lived in a colony made especially for them. “There were about eight to nine families stationed here, at a time, in the late sixties. He recalls the times with the men and women who came from drastically different climes and environment to work here. Ravinath began his career in 1964 with the INP and retired from there as Deputy Director, Fish Processing and Marketing. Till 1972, when the project was completely taken over by the Government of India and Indo Norwegian Project renamed Integrated Fisheries Project (IFP), the Norwegians lived here alongside expat English and other foreigners who frequented the city on work related to, the then prosperous, shipping and tea industry. In 1963 its headquarters shifted to Ernakulam, which brought the Vikings to town. It began operations in Neendakara in the then Travancore-Cochin State. Begun in 1952 as a tri-party agreement between the Government of India, Government of Norway and the United Nations it aimed at socio-economic development of fisheries and fishermen community. For a few years, in the late sixties, approximately 1965-72, the city was home to a number of Norwegian families who moved here to work with the one of its kind Indo Norwegian Project (INP).

China radio international vikings norway