Written by: Florence L.
Bergen, on a July evening
It’s 10pm and we’ve just stepped off the train in Bergen. We should be tired but we’re not— not when the Nordic sun is still glowing, and the city streets are bathed in gold.
What was going to be a five-minute walk ended in us wandering to the harbour, where Brygge rowhouses sat across from us and the boats rocked silently.
We’re giddy and so happy. What was once a dream is now real.
We walk back to our hotel, passing groups of people roaring their team on in the world cup. Bergen is vibrant yet peaceful at this time.
The next morning
We wander the city’s streets once more; stop at a little blue house for coffee and a cardamom bun (I’ve lost count of how many I ate on this trip). This morning, the breeze is cool and the mist clings to my wool sweater. We wander the narrow alleyways of Brygge and look at the boats, the fish market. There’s dried cod that can be kept for 40 years; this fact sticks with me as we walk away, and I imagine the Vikings soaking the fish their fathers caught on one of their sea voyages.
Later that day
We’ve picked up the van, our home for the next few days. There’s a gas cookstove, duvets, everything we need to live in total (relative) luxury.
It’s the first time we are striking out on our own on this trip, away from public transportation and pre established routes — there’s no itinerary but our own, and that feels wonderful.
We follow narrow roads, the windows down, our favourite tunes playing. So far, it’s beautiful, but a beautiful we’ve already seen.
Then there’s a turn in the road, and we see the fjords, the real ones— going into the horizon, steep mountains channeling briny waters.
And all of a sudden, there’s salt water on my cheeks too.
I didn’t expect it to be so beautiful, to impact me so much.
Day 3
We wake up to a hazy morning, with a view of the harbour. After breakfast, I go for a few strokes in the incredibly clear water while my friend sits in the sun. Never was much of a swimmer before but this is too enticing to resist; I go fully under, and the cold water shocks my lungs.
We cruise along; don’t have too much driving to do before tonight’s destination, so we can fully enjoy every scenic spot we come across (and there’s a lot).
Just the roads are beautiful: there’s a pass before coming to Flåm where we pull over, speechless. The mountains flank the road and shoot high up, straight as fortress towers. It feels like the gate to a fairytale land; waterfalls tumble down, the sky is bright and blue, there’s a breeze, and even the flowers are gracious enough to release their fragrance into the air.
In Flåm, we try brunost ice cream— weird but so good (if you like brunost, which I do! It’s a traditional Norwegian cheese with a peculiarly sweet and caramelised flavour) and admire the picturesque views.
We sleep nearby, cooking our dinner to fabulous views of the Aurlandsfjord. The mountains are less sharply defined because of the hazy air; it feels as though we are dreaming the whole landscape.
Day 4
Another morning, another breakfast with views that don’t feel real. The whole scenery is blue, all different shades of blue: the deep blue-green of the nearest mountains, the lightening one of further slopes, the light blue-grey of rock, the varying shades of the fjord waters— almost aqua in some places, touched with silver wherever the sun strikes it.
We take a switchback road up to a viewpoint, so narrow and twisty and unlike anything we’ve ever driven; the windows are open and we catch ever-widening views of the fjord through the trees.
We spot last night’s camp from a bird’s eye view; everything is so small! Little people, little cars, little boats. And the fjord is just as big, bigger even for now we can see further down its narrow pathways.
I wonder where it leads.
We board our first ferry of the trip, another thing I’d never done on my own before. This trip has been an expansion, of horizons, of abilities, of perspective.
After a second ferry, we arrive to my favourite village of the trip: Balestrand. It wasn’t originally on our map, but a chance encounter with Hans Dahl’s paintings at the Oslo library made it worthwhile to stop.
It’s quiet, [I’m looking for a word here, that’s the boat-village-summer-escape version of pastoral if that makes sense]. There’s a park especially for snille mennesker (nice people) with a view of the water, a quaint hotel surrounded with blooms, and apple trees scattered among the front yards.
By some wonderful serendipity, we realize that we are sleeping in a work of art— one of Hans Dahl’s paintings that drew us to Balestrand is now quite precisely (down to the angle) and literally our view that evening.
Bundled in my wool sweater (it smells good— I love the smell of raw wool) because of the breeze, I feast my eyes on the cloud-wreathed mountains, the colours that are so real and vibrant, the sound of sheep bleating, and I know that this is one of the memories of this trip that will stay with me forever.
Day 5
The next morning we leave the fjords and head for the mountains proper: another switchback road up and up, and up again. Just as we arrive to the top, a ewe and her two lambs emerge from the rocks, their wool gleaming in the strong sun. They look about for a fraction of seconds before disappearing, their bells tinkling in the quiet.
We look down into the valley from the peaks, with the wind whipping around us. One can see the imprint the glaciers have left upon the slopes easily still, as if the ice has just left them.
Just beyond the pass we come across a lake like a brilliantly blue gem set in its casing of green grass and rocky shores; there’s a little house sitting next to it, and further down the road the landscape has transformed from pastoral to resolutely Nordic. Boulders are scattered among the fields and there are no trees until we start going back down.
Day 6
It’s our last day with the van; we want to spend it near the open sea, so we head to the islands near Bergen. It’s windy, the water for my morning dip is so cold I gasp and make it a very brief dunking.
We eat gas station hotdogs for lunch and wander off for a short hike, crossing a pasture filled with valerian, going through a gate in a rock wall, and then sitting on sun-warmed rocks, looking at the Atlantic. The Shetlands are 200 miles as the crow flies, and home a longer way still across the water.
Sometimes I ask myself if I travel to fulfill a preconceived idea of a place, or to truly experience it.
It’s a curse of our time that everyone (it seems) has already been everywhere, and we are fed everyone’s experience of that place before we ever get to it ourselves— so that when we do arrive, we want to tick off places to achieve our conception of what a destination is, or should be.
I did have a rough idea of what I thought Norway would be like, but I didn’t expect it to seep into my bones the way it did. I didn’t think the air and water would be so pure and clean, the houses so red, the water so blue, the atmosphere so vibrant yet relaxed.
I left Norway with the sense of having been given a precious gift; of seeing a country and way of life so similar, yet so different from mine— and to have truly seen it.
