Natural Norway

Norway: the country which is a national park, where the journey is more than the destination, and in Chad's words, "Norway is the Columbia Gorge turned up to 11 with roads that are gorgeous, frightening, and fun all at the same time." In other words, the perfect country for a road trip. Coming from Oregon, which is beautiful in its own right, Norway is at another level. The waterfalls, the fjords, the glaciers and mountain passes. Dramatic scenery at every turn and you can tell Norway has invested in their infrastructure with beautiful, albeit sometimes narrow barely single-lane roads (it's really kind of hard to find potholes anywhere) and rest stops that are architectural masterpieces of metal, wood, and glass. I had posted our preliminary itinerary previously but things tend to change. We generally stuck to it as we had accommodation already booked but the map below shows what we actually did.

Our first full day in Norway was the day I was most nervous about. We had a long 6-9 hour drive ahead of us between Kongsberg and Bergen at a max speed limit of 80 KPH on most of the roads we were planning to take. And really, we were going slower much of the time as we got used to the roads, the car, and stopping to take in the scenery. After an early breakfast at the hostel, we headed west on E134 with a very quick stop in Heddal to see the outside and grounds of the stave church as it was not yet open. As we wound through Telemark, the scenery got very dramatic, very quickly: mountain passes, lakes, patches of snow, and tunnels. Lots and lots of tunnels. I had started counting tunnels the day before when we went through the tunnel below Oslofjord (3 km at 7% grade!) but quickly lost count (and interest) today since there were just so many of them!

We turned north on RV13 at the base of Hardanger Turistvegen and stopped for lunch at Latefossen. Let's talk about Norway's Turistveger, or National Tourist Routes, for a bit. About midway through Hardanger, after the umpteenth close call with a truck, we joked that turistvegen is Norwegian for "it's fun to reduce tourists to quivering piles of driving jelly". Narrow roads, cliff drops, rock walls, blind curves, construction, sheep (!), and large buses and trucks driving as if they were on 4-lane highways. This is why you should toss any notion of "making good time" out the window. For us, Hardanger was the most nerve-racking. Likely because it was also a route used for commercial traffic as well. It got much better as we worked our way north where the larger E highways were. We continued on through Hardangerfjord after lunch, with a quick stop at Steinsdalsfossen to walk to the top of the falls, and reached Bergen around 6 PM, long after the last cruise ship left port. 

We checked into the Scandic Neptun for the night and went in search of dinner. We enjoyed traditional Norwegian food at Pingvinen - fish pie; meatballs; Chad even tried the whale! So what does whale taste like? Sea cow is an apt description. It was served with a dill tartar sauce and if you tasted it without the sauce, you would think it's a piece of lean beef; however, with the sauce, the meat took on some fish undertones. It was wild! After dinner, we walked down to the harbor and explored the night fish market and the alleys of Bryggen, Bergen's old wharf. 

As is common in maritime areas, the fog rolled in overnight. We took the Floibanen Funicular to the top of Mt. Floyen despite warnings from the ticket booth that visibility was near zero. And yes, it was foggy, damp, chilly but that didn't seem to stop a group of Norwegian children on a school outing from stripping down to their swimsuits for a float on the lake. We walked back down to Bergen Center and headed out of town to Sognefjord.

What happened next can be blamed on Donald Trump. Wait, what? Yep, let me explain. Our route today took us on the E16 to Laerdal then on RV5/55 to Hafslo where our Air BNB base for the next three nights was located. We stopped in Dale to get gas before swinging by the Dale of Norway factory for a little shopping. At the gas station, Chad got a huge kick out of the pump display.

Nothing like political messages at the foreign gas station, eh? Anyway, we went on to the factory and I headed in immediately, you know to maximize my yarn and sweater time. A few minutes later, Chad and Nathan walked in and asked if I had Chad's wallet. Uh, no....Crap! he had set his wallet on the top of the car while he snapped the photo and promptly forgot about it. Best case is that it fell off at the station. Even worse is that it's on the E16 somewhere. And the worst case? It's in the 2 KM tunnel we passed through right before the Dale of Norway turnoff. He left us at the shop and hustled back to the gas station and creepily started looking under random people's cars. Luckily he found his wallet but it was missing the credit card he used to pay for the gas. Uh oh...back up five sentences. He slowly walked the road from the pump and the E16 and thankfully found his missing card right at the intersection. Whew! Crisis averted. Meanwhile, I was indulging in retail therapy and definitely came home with knitwear. Next stop was Voss to stock up at a local supermarket, always an adventure but we muddled through it OK buying bread, eggs, fresh trout, fish cakes, potatoes, and other things we think we'd need for the next three days. Luckily, we didn't end up buying anything that surprised us later.

The mundane stuff taken care of, we soon entered Sognefjord, the largest and best-known fjord in Norway and the second longest in the world and it was stunning: waterfalls everywhere, high green cliffs on either side, narrow chasms. It was very different from the peaceful and bucolic Hardangerfjord. As we explored more of fjord country, it was very evident that every fjord, and sometimes different arms off the same fjord, has its own personality. Once we reached Aurland, we left the E16 right before the Laerdal Tunnel, the longest in the world at 24.5 KM, and opted instead to take our second turistvegen, Aurlandsfjellet, or Snow Road. The first 8 KM of the road up to the Stegastein Viewpoint was pretty hairy - steep switchbacks on a single lane road with lots of car and tour bus traffic. The viewpoint itself was stunning: a platform jutting out from the side of a cliff walled by plexiglass - truly vertigo inducing. They even had windows cut out of the WC - really one of the most beautiful places I've ever had the privilege of going to the bathroom in. Once we passed the viewpoint, traffic cleared considerably and it was clear sailing save for an incident with a crazy tour bus involving reversing on a narrow mountain road. It wouldn't have been a big deal except for a feature that Volvo has implemented in the side mirrors, automatic tilt. A nice feature when parallel parking, not so much when you're trying to drive backwards down a mountain with a tour bus barreling down on you. We nearly crashed into the cliff face. Needless to say, we disabled that feature for the rest of the trip. The rest of the drive was uneventful yet stunning with glacial lakes, waterfalls, and free range sheep. We checked into our Air BNB in Hafslo, cooked a simple trout dinner to enjoy on our porch with a view.

The next day brought the adventure I'd been looking forward to the most, a kayak and glacier hike on Jostedalsbreen, the largest glacier in continental Europe, with Ice Troll. We met our guides at Breheimsenter and caravanned to Styggevatnet, a lake on the Austdalsbreen arm. We geared up with spray skirts and life jackets before hiking over the dam to the waters edge where we broke into pairs, got a quick course in kayaking safety and techniques from our guides, and set off. The 6 KM paddle across the cold (~2 C), torquoise, mineral-saturated lake to the glacier took about two hours. The glacier created its own microclimate generating a headwind and dropping the air temperature significantly. Once we got to the glacier, we bundled up into down jackets, hats, and gloves before breaking for lunch. After lunch, we geared up with crampons and ice axes, got another safety course, and roped up into two groups for the glacier walk. We spent about 2.5 hours on the glacier exploring crevasses and learning about glacial poop which are rocks that disintegrate into mud due to the extreme pressures of a moving glacier before making our way back to the shoreline and paddling back to the dam, aided by a nice tailwind. This was an amazing trip and truly one of the highlights of our time in Norway.

Our original plan for the next day was to rent bikes and explore Lustrafjord but we were all sore from the glacier excursion that we decided to drive instead. We took the ferry from Solvorn to Urnes to visit our next UNESCO World Heritage site, the Urnes Stave Church. After touring the church, we made our way north along the fjord picking up farmstand raspberries along the way when we came to the realization that waterfall fatigue is a thing. There are so many of them and they're everywhere. We had reached a point where we only stopped for the most spectacular ones. Along Lustrafjord, that would be Feigumfossen. We had originally planned to hike to the base of the falls but we got a little rain overnight that made the trail muddy and slick. We stupidly forgot to put our hiking boots on so we ended up turning back lest we slip and become muddy messes or worse, hurt ourselves. After a picnic lunch under yet another waterfall, we headed off to the mountains on another turistvegen. We drove Tindevegen south from Turtagro and met up with the E16 where we made our final stop of the day at the Borgund Stave Church.

We said goodbye to Hafslo and Sognefjord the next day when we made our way northwards towards yet another UNESCO World Heritage site, Geirangerfjord. We were originally going to drive west around Jostedalsbreen but decided on the fly to include two more turistveger into our itinerary. This was the best decision because the first, Sognefjellet through Jotunheimen was easily my favorite road of the entire trip. Rock sculptures, glacial lakes, snow fields, and dramatic mountain views in spades! We picked up the E15 for a short stretch in Lom then peeled off again to follow Gamle Strynefjellsvegen, an old ancient road that took us to the backside of Jostedalsbreen on the way to Hellesylt. We sailed on the ferry to Geiranger past the Seven Sisters Falls and the Suitor just as the last cruise ship left Geiranger. Score! We were really lucky in our planning in that we were never in a place where we'd have to fight thousands of cruise ship passengers to see the sites. We checked into our fjord-view room at the Grande Fjord hotel and had an early dinner at Westeraas Gard, a local goat farm. After Chad made it a point to tell the goats that their mom's fermented milk and their brother (!) was delicious (yeah, I know), we retired to our room for some reading and tea on the balcony.

Our final day on our Norwegian nature segment is what I like to call "Hairpin Day" and it was my day to drive. Our first set of curves was driving Ornevegen, or Eagle's Road, up out of the fjord. We looped up to Andalsnes seeing Moldefjord and Romsdalen along the way before returning to Geiranger via our last and what may be the most famous turistvegen: Trollstigen, or Troll's Ladder. As turistvegen go, this was a breeze to drive aided by fewer crowds due to no cruise ships in port. Or maybe I was just used to driving in Norway. Since it was only midafternoon by the time we returned, we decided to drive up to Flysdaljuvet and the Dalsnibba plateau to get a birdseye view of Geirangerfjord. You need to pay a toll to reach Dalsnibba but the view at the top was worth it! One PSA: the shop and more importantly the WC on Dalsnibba both close at 16:30, even in the heart of the summer tourist season. The area of the building where the WC is could conceivably remain open all the time but it was not. So if you find yourself at the top of Dalsnibba after 16:30, please practice good backcountry habits.

After we got our fill of scenic views, we returned to Geiranger village and visited the chocolate factory where we sampled brunost (brown cheese; tasted like salted caramel) and cloudberry truffles before having dinner at Brasserie Posten where we enjoyed the smoked whale and reindeer on special - a perfect cap to the nature segment of our trip. Now on to art, culture, and history!

Next Post: On Art, Culture, and History