7. Classic Fjord Country

I could really do with an upgrade to my brain’s thesaurus, particularly for ‘Spectacular’ and related words in order to do some justice to this landscape without repeating myself too much.   I’ve managed to avoid ‘awesome’ because of its recent devaluation but it does fit the bill for a lot of Norway.

We’ve come far enough south to be seeing some night time with the sun down for four or five hours now but the weather has continued to be variable.  I don’t know about midnight sun, some midday sun would be good on more than the number of days we see it.   What seems to happen is that we get a stunningly good day, blue sky and temperature up to mid 20’s C which is then followed the next day by mist, low cloud and rain.  So perhaps with all the lakes, fjords, waterfall spray and snowmelt evaporating, it just falls back down the following day.  Sorry about the technical jargon there.   We’ve been told at one tourist office that they had two winters this year and at a campsite that this has been the worst summer for 60 years, great timing then but we have seen some spectacular snow.

This is classic fjord country and we see cruise ships in quite a number of fjords in the standard semi-aerial view of ship dwarfed by near vertical rock walls coated with trees splashed by waterfalls, but themselves so dwarfed they look more like moss than trees.  The first cruise ship we saw was actually called Costa Fortuna which we thought must be some sort of comment on the ticket prices but then realised it probably wasn’t a British Ship and hadn’t been named by a native speaker.  This was in Sognefjord, the longest in Norway at 200 miles and deepest at over 4000 feet with rock walls alongside rising in places to over 3000 feet.   See para.1 above re : Thesaurus.  Geiranger Fjord really is beautiful, hence its popularity.  We saw it in sunshine (with a bit of rain of course) and the local brochure lists the dates, ships and number of passengers arriving each day.  On some days three cruise ships with a total of about 10,000 passengers arrive, many of whom take off in the hordes of coaches we see driving to local land-based sites. 

Just before we got to Sognefjord we’d spent a couple of days at the Nigardsbreen arm of the Jostedalsbreen Glacier but having ‘done’ the glacier hike in New Zealand we stayed off the ice itself.  That and the £75 or so each it would have cost us.  In front of the glacier nose is the normal lake of former glacier of what could be reasonably deduced to be chilly water plus several hundred yards of bare scraped rock where the glacier has retreated in recent years.  When ice breaks off the front of a glacier it’s definitely called ‘calving’ when the ice falls directly into the lake but I’m not positive if it’s still called calving if it falls onto rock.  Having more than one word for it would be a bit precise, after all it is completely untrue that Eskimos/Inuits have a hundred words for snow.   Anyway, in the past we’ve seen apartment block sized chunks of ice calving from glaciers and treat a fifty to hundred foot fragile melting ice wall in mid-summer with some respect.  There are warning notices aplenty and pictures for those unable to read, even ropes stretched across the access to the face, presumably for the blind, but no apparent method to stop the lunatics who duck under the ropes, amble up and lean on the ice or get their children to pose for photographs with a towering ice wall above their heads.  I was faced with a dilemma, so I set the camera to medium telephoto and a fastish speed but was unable to get any newsworthy shots of tourists being ’iced’.

Cycling is bigger here than you might think with the amount of severe ups and downs but many of the roads alongside fjords are relatively flat.  The mountain roads do need very low gearing and still look like a lot of effort.  There aren’t as many dedicated cycle paths as there are in Sweden but there are a lot more than in Britain.  A surprising number of people are cycle touring with panniers either side of their back and front wheels plus a saddle and handlebar bag while some even tow small trailers but the best head-turner we saw was leaving one small town and was a cyclist in full lycra gear plus helmet riding a proper sized penny-farthing.

A couple of days back we saw a Viking Market with as you’d expect lots of people dressed as Vikings.  We didn’t look but I imagine these were the Vikings who made T-shirts, jewellery and scented candles while serving traditional Viking food like burgers or slices of pizza.  I accept that I live in the very village where the famous 18th century Fayre (and how I hate that spelling) takes place.  Yes I’m a horrible cynic and I also know that the Vikings made some exquisite jewellery.  Anyway, the raping, pillaging and burning demonstrations weren’t taking place when we were there.   To my surprise, there were some Vikings staying at the same campsite as us that night.  In the morning, for the whole time I was in the shower block one was brushing his hair.  I think he might not have been a real Viking.

We are still driving the Scenic Routes when they’re convenient and what is particularly good is the number of view points and stopping spots which are often set up with barbeque stands, benches and tables.  In a land of so much rock, lots of them are constructed from enormous lumps of roughly hewn stone and look like something Fred Flintstone would be proud of.   What we have noticed here in Norway is a touching desire to be numbered high in a list somewhere.   We see claims like “named one of the eight best waterfalls”, meaning of course eighth, “the longest tunnel to tunnel bridge in the world” and my favourite “one of the most read tourist brochures in South-West Norway” (my italics).   I know I’ve mentioned tunnels before but we enjoyed a new first actually in the tunnel leading to the ‘tunnel to tunnel’ bridge.  An electric blue glow in the distance turned out to be a roundabout with three roads leading off it.

I’d been looking forward to crossing a high plateau in the south which lies at a similar latitude to Bergen but which rises to 1500 metres or so with peaks considerably higher than that.  Hardangervidda is the biggest National Park in Norway and the largest mountain plateau in Northern Europe.  The landscape is so much more like I was expecting when we were in the far north, somewhat like tundra with nothing growing much above ankle height.  A few prostrate willows, birch and juniper and everything else hugging the ground even tighter than that.  There were very few flowering plants and it has a colour palette of muted lichen greens, dark reds and browns with a boulder strewn view containing patches of snow as far as we could see.  On the plateau the land just undulates and to the north we can see a huge snowfield with a glacier nosing its way off it.  It really is beautiful if you happen to be someone who likes wild country and if you ever want to know what bleak really means you just have to see the Hardangervidda Plateau.   According to the information we have, it’s the home of the largest populations of birds which are rare in southern Norway.  Well in a three hour walk we heard one raven but saw no birds at all, so very rare birds indeed.   For our walk we’d driven down a toll track leading about eight miles off the main road thinking few people would do the same.  Surprising us were fifty or so cars at the end but few people.  Some were off fishing but it appears that multi-day walks are made into the wilds around here and we did see a few people going out and coming back, carrying big backpacks.  Later in the day, we found a good empty spot for the night with a view of the snowfield and glacier to the north of us so we parked up and sat in the late afternoon sunshine enjoying the view.   There was still snow lower than we were but the van is very well insulated and we didn’t even have the heating on (now restored to working order by Heather) in the evening.   I try not to be anthropomorphic but just before bedtime a wonderfully perky stoat was just outside peering at the van as if we were in his/her spot.  He looked to be in fine condition with sleek tan fur and a slightly yellow/white belly and an inquisitive face.  He ran one way and then the other looking and then poof !  he was gone. 

The southern side of the plateau is less wild and we visited a place called Rjukan which if any of you oldies remember a 1960’s film called The Heroes of Telemark was the location of the action.  It was based on a true story of a WWII commando raid to destroy a heavy-water factory, something necessary for the production of an atomic bomb.  Rjukan is situated in a very narrow valley running east/west, unusual for Norway, but as much of the landscape has been shaped by glaciation advancing and retreating north and south it is understandable that it is unusual.  The sun doesn’t reach the valley floor from October until March, a situation familiar to inhabitants of Milton Abbas, a sleepy little village in Dorset.  Just over a hundred years ago someone in Rjukan suggested that some giant mirrors could be set up on the northern rim of the valley in order to reflect winter sunshine onto the village square.  It was such a mad idea it took the best part of that hundred years before somebody else came up with the same idea, thinking it was new and the town really does now have computer controlled mirrors reflecting sunshine into the town centre through the winter. 

This has been a really good trip and while unfortunate that the weather wasn’t as good as it might have been that’s just too bad.  We have done an awful lot of driving but we have seen some aweful things and a surprising amount of Norway.  I certainly wouldn’t visit for the towns but the countryside and wildness is tremendous.  In the early morning of 27 July we catch the ferry to Denmark and scoot down through Germany and the Netherlands for the Hook of Holland ferry to Harwich.  The Norwegian port, Kristiansand seemed very lively when we arrived on a Sunday afternoon compared to every other town we’ve seen in Norway and by chance we’ve arrived at the same time as The Tall Ships are in town or at least in the water next to it.

I have to say there were more tall ships than I imagined existed in the world but then found out that they are still being built.   There must have been at least fifty in a variety of moorings around the docks.  One we saw had a maindeck that was nearly 35 feet across and a couple of huge four masted ships looked to be at least 200 feet long.  The place was heaving and it was sunny.

Our van has performed admirably on the trip.  We left home on 19 April for our Summer 2015 Adventure and since we landed at Dunkirk a little over two months ago on 21 May we’ve covered a bit over 5,700 miles at (according to the odometer computer) 33.0 mpg, no oil or coolant has been used and the tyres needed the faintest adjustment right at the end.  From northern Denmark to the Hook is pretty level and nearly all on motorways so we expect that fuel consumption to improve over the 650 miles for that bit of the trip.  Since 8 June we’ve not had any hookup to mains electrics, using our two leisure batteries and solar panel for all electrical needs.  Just over a tank and half of gas has been used, about 16 litres of propane and apart from a couple of wobblies, the central heating has worked well.  We can still just get past each other in the kitchen so our net weight gain is minimal.  Oh and we’re still on the very best of terms.

Sorry about all the old jokes but I’m very keen on recycling.