Postcards From Across the Pond

No way! Norway? Yes way! Our way. (I’ll stop now before you tell me to Go aWay.)

Yeah, we went to Norway, a country I had never thought of visiting, but the trip to the Hebrides we booked in 2019 got postponed, postponed, cancelled, re-scheduled, and eventually set to a date that conflicted with another oft-postponed trip. So, they offered us a swap. Consequently, we went to Norway. (I’ve got nothing against Nordic nations, they just weren’t on our bucket list. Having visited this one, however, we are modifying our plans.)

Norway was beautiful: soaring, snow-capped mountains, spectacular fjords, and more mountains, and fjords, and another mountain, and Hey! Isn’t that a fjord over there? The scenery is so stunning that it becomes monotonous, and I pity the locals who, having grown up there, take it for granted, and must find anywhere they move to a little drab.

The village of Balestrand, where we were based, has made an industry out of their view. The small town is dominated by a huge (though tasteful) hotel, cleverly built so that every room, on all sides, has a view of the fjord and the mountains, and I suspect that everyone in the town works there at some point in their life because there really isn’t much else around.

Balestrand isn’t a small town in the way that Handcross, West Sussex is. You don’t jaunt down the road to Horsham or Crawley to enjoy a nice restaurant or go to the theatre. Bergen, the closest town large enough to have those things, is a four-hour drive—over narrow (and often snowy) mountain roads, or a four-hour aqua-bus ride—away.

But you play the cards you’ve been given, and the Balestrandians have played them well. It is a pleasant, very clean little town, and the hotel—though massive—is charming and staffed with faultlessly polite people, all of whom speak English. In fact, I rarely heard a word of Norwegian, and I never saw a Norwegian Krone outside of the £50 worth I got at the airport, which I never used and ended up leaving as a tip for the maids.

I expected they could use it. If you have heard that Norway is an expensive place, you heard right. This was driven home to me on our first evening when my wife pointed out the prices on the wine menu. I didn’t think the figure I saw was outrageous for a bottle of wine until she informed me that the price I was looking at was for a single glass. Fresh produce was also expensive and rare (probably because it’s difficult to farm on vertical land), which caused my vegetarian wife to become the envy of our dinner table.

What they do have an abundance of in Norway is fish. Therefore, every entrée at every dinner was a fish dish, and the main was either fish, or some type of meat (very nice cuts of meat, I must add). My wife, however, was always served a plate of roasted vegetables which, after a few days, began to temp the other diners into requesting the vegetarian option. (Not me, I see enough vegetables at home, and I like fish.)

We were on a package tour, complete with the traditional, attached-at-extra-cost mini-tours, so during the week we saw a glacier, rode on a spectacular mountain railway, took the aqua-bus to Bergen, and cruised down a breathtakingly beautiful fjord.

The region of Norway we visited was also home to a surprising number of superlatives, perhaps having the most superlatives per square kilometre in southern Scandinavia. Perhaps.

Day 1 – The Town

Our first day was free, allowing us, according to the brochure, to “explore the shops, cafés, and neat cottages of Balestrand, and enjoy a warm welcome from the friendly inhabitants” and I have to say that assertion was (to be kind) just a little bit optimistic: nothing was open and we saw no one.

Like our visit to Lake George on our recent trip to the US, we landed in Balestrand during that awkward period between winter sports and summer fun. Therefore, everything was closed. Not that there was much in the small town to begin with, mind, but the few things that were there were locked up tighter than a miser’s fist. (I thought of a couple other similes to put there, but this is a family-friendly blog, mostly). Additionally, the place was deserted. The hotel was big, but it couldn’t be employing everyone in town, and not all at the same time. There was, literally (in the literal sense) no one there.

This meant that our exploration of Balestrand took all of fifteen minutes. After that, it was just an exercise in meeting the other people on our tour. We’d wander up one lonely road, encounter another couple who were, invariably, from our group, and we’d stop and say:

“Seen anyone?”

“Nope. You?”

“Nope.”

Then we’d chat for a few minutes and wander off on our solitary journey down another lonely road until we ran into another couple from our group.

Throughout the week, we’d get up in the morning and look over our balcony—with its view of the Sognefjord, the not-so-distant icing-sugared mountains, and the entire village of Balestrand—and see…no one. No cars on the roads, no one walking a dog, no one delivering milk. Nothing.

It was almost like being in an episode of The Twilight Zone. Until the last day, when I became certain it really was an episode of The Twilight Zone.

Day 2 – The City

On the second day, we travelled to Bergen. This is a view of the city from the top of Mount Floyen, curtesy of the Floibanen Furnicular. It was, naturally, raining, but Bergen has 239 days of rain a year, so the odds were in our favour.

Norway is a water-world. If it isn’t coming down out of the sky at you in the form of snow or rain, or cascading down a precipice to crash onto the rocks below, then you are probably standing on it, having boarded a ferry or water taxi, because you cannot get very far in this region without having to cross a fjord.

Day 3 – The Glacier

The Jostedal Glacier. It is the largest glacier in mainland Europe (not the second largest, or the largest in Norway, the largest in Europe) but, naturally, all we could see was a bit sticking over the edge of a mountain. To see it all you need a helicopter. (Not included in this tour.)

We saw two bits of the Glacier, which I have to admit, was a little underwhelming. They seem proud of it, though.

In an effort to fill time, they detoured to this unnamed town that they claimed was Norway’s answer to Hay-on-Wye. Those few people you can see are all from our group. The town was as deserted as Balestrand.

Day 4 – The Country

This was the day of the famous Norway in a Nutshell tour. Originally, we had decided against this optional add-on, figuring we’d be ready for a quiet day by then, but having already taken in all that Balestrand had to offer, we shelled out the additional dosh for the privilege of a railway journey and a boat ride.

We are glad we did.

Our first stop was the Flam Railway. The Flamsbana Branch Line–an incredible feat of engineering–runs from Flam, at sea level, to Myral, at 2,000 feet above sea level. It winds around the mountains for 12 miles and offers such spectacular views that it is considered the best (not the second-best, not one of the best, the best) railway journey in the world (not in Norway, or Europe, the world).

Oh, and it’s also the steepest incline for a non-clog railway in the world (not the second steepest…).

The line was originally used to access the tiny settlement of Myrdal, which until then, had no connection to the outside world and consisted solely of 120 inbred locals.

During the ride from Flam to Myrdal, the passengers were treated to a commentary along with the stunning views. One of the things the commentary told us was a legend about the mountain spirits, called Huldra, beautiful women who would appear in the mist and lure passers-by into the mountain.

Then, about mid-way, the train stopped so the passengers could disembark and take photos of a truly stunning waterfall. But as we stood at the railing with our cameras, eerie music began playing and a woman, dressed in red, started dancing on the hillside. It was the Huldra!

A bit kitsch, but a fun bonus.

No one from the train followed her, though.

On the way back, we stopped there again and, now that we knew what was going to happen, we all had our cameras ready. I also saw the guard from the train on his mobile phone as we got off, and I assumed he was telling the Huldra crew that we were ready, giving me a vision of this poor woman and her sound man sitting in a hut behind some rocks, with a tea kettle and an electric heater, waiting for the phone calls so she could put on her red dress and go dance in the rain.

Once back in Flam, we boarded the Future of the Fjords, the boat that would take through the Aurlandsfjord and Naeroyfjord, to the tiny port of Gudvnagen. The Future of the Fjords, naturally, claims to be the World’s First (not the second) All-Electric, Cardon-Fibre vessel. But wouldn’t they just.

Boating superlatives aside, we saw some world-class scenery.

Due to the chilly weather, we ducked outside only occasionally to get a photo. With such unendingly beautiful vistas, it was senseless to stay on deck. So, it was just luck that I got this shot:

We had just turned a corner and, as we swung around, I saw the scene pictured above and got a photo. That is the money-shot, and, as far as I am concerned, it made all the expense and travel worthwhile. The photo does not do it justice, you need to go there. Right now.

Day 5 – The Past

The Sogn Folk Museum, which, being a freebee thrown in with the basic package, I assumed would be a bit lame, turned out to be a highlight of the trip, even though it was only one of the oldest folk museums in Norway, with almost 40 houses

It was something like the Weald and Downland Living Museum (which is also worth a visit) and, like much else in that area at that time, was closed for the season.

However, they opened it up especially for us, and recruited Lars, who had worked there some ten years ago, at the last minute (I wonder how far down on the “phone in case of emergency” list he was on) to give us a tour. As it turned out, he did a splendid job and really made the day special.

There was also a multi-level museum with lots of old stuff in it. I found it fascinating and wished we could have spent more time there.

Day 6 – The Twilight Zone

By unbelievable happenstance, our second scheduled free day fell on Norway’s Independence Day.

And, incredibly, people came out of the woodwork, wearing national dress, to gather at what passed for a town square, to sing and listen to speeches (in Norwegian, as far as I knew).

After that, we all walked up to the local high school for sausages and drinks, and the graduating class put on some wonderfully amateur entertainment.

And then we left, and the people disbursed and when I stepped onto the balcony later that afternoon, I saw…no one.

The people had all disappeared, back into the Hobbit holes they had come out of, or the hidden fleet of coaches used to bus them in, so we’d think Balestrand was a real town instead of a toy belonging to an alien race of giants, like in that old Twilight Zone episode.