[RD] Hiking through Norway

[Cutlass]

Fløibanen Video

Here's a video of me going up in the cable car, without any editing at all

How many Swedish Chefs were on that cable car?

 

[warpus]

Do you hear Swedish? I hear Polish! There were also Danish tourists on that car with me IIRC (I chatted with them afterwards) and some others

 

[Cutlass]

Do you hear Swedish? I hear Polish! There were also Danish tourists on that car with me IIRC (I chatted with them afterwards) and some others

Ah, well, for the most part, I can't tell the difference when hearing a foreign language. I was never able to actually learn one.

 

[Lillefix]

How many Swedish Chefs were on that cable car?

As a Norwegian I understood one sentence sentence in that video. And that was a woman saying "Here you go" in English at the end. Wonder what this "tak, tak tak" meant.
It doesn't meant that there isn't spoken any scandianvian language there, but I couldn't catch it.

 

[warpus]

"Tak" means "Yes" in Polish, there were a couple Polish ladies on the car somewhere behind me. The guys I thought were Danish guys might have been Dutch, I can't really remember now. We only chatted briefly and their country of origin wasn't really important at the time

 

[The_J]

I could only hear some eastern European language (and need to trust you that it's Polish). Didn't catch anything else, else I'd be able to tell you if it was Dutch .

 

[warpus]

Day 19 - Stegastein

Stegastein is a lookout point near Flåm that overlooks the Aurlandsfjord. It's got jumping tourists posing for photos and beautiful sights in all directions.







A selfie. Sort of

 

[warpus]

Day 19 - The Flåm Railway Museum

The rail link between Flåm and the rest of Norway was completed in 1940 and is currently the 3rd most visited tourist attraction in the country. Flåm is not a very big place, so the train station definitely sticks out as an important part of the landscape. One of the old station buildings has been since converted into a museum, which I had the pleasure of visiting.





A miniature reproduction of the train station and area:





Back at my hostel I met the people I would be sharing a dorm room style accommodation with for the night. Turns out we were all Canadians or had connections to Canada! There was a couple from Winnipeg, a guy from Windsor, a German who was soon headed to study engineering in Canada on an exchange program, and "NY art lady" who said that she had relatives in Canada.

Here's one of the last pictures of the day that I took just outside the hostel.

 

[Cutlass]

I like how the signs have English translations.

 

[warpus]

Most of the people who make their way through Flåm are non-Norwegian tourists, a lot of the stuff there is very tourist oriented. I guess they pretty much had no choice

 

[warpus]

Day 20 - Stalheim

Stalheim is a small municipality overlooking the Nærøy valley. The backyard of the Stalheim Hotel in particular has become a popular lookout point. It's more or less open to the public, provided that you walk through the souvenir shop and consider purchasing a refreshment.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Day 20 - Stalheim

Stalheim is a small municipality overlooking the Nærøy valley. The backyard of the Stalheim Hotel in particular has become a popular lookout point. It's more or less open to the public, provided that you walk through the souvenir shop and consider purchasing a refreshment.

That's a gorgeous view.

 

[Leifmk]

Somebody needs to correct that. They had contact with the Beothuks and the Thule (precursors to the Inuit) during their seasonal trips to L'Anse-aux-Meadows (of course that's not what the Vikings called it!). Archaeological findings support this.

And according to the sagas, it was due to conflict with the (far more numerous) locals that they ended up calling it quits.

Not really surprising, given that:

1. Iceland was colonized by people who got thrown out of Viking-age Norway for being difficult. (Think about what that means for a while, and consider how the early centuries of Icelandic history are a tale of murder and revenge and revenge for the other guys' revenge and so on).
2. Then Greenland was colonized by some people who failed to get along in Iceland and got kicked further west.
3. Eventually there were these guys who were just too plain anti-social and ornery to fit in there as well... and they tried to set up shop even further west. Not the best at making new friends, probably.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Eventually there were these guys who were just too plain anti-social and ornery to fit in there as well... and they tried to set up shop even further west. Not the best at making new friends, probably.

Nothing I've read says the L'Anse-aux-Meadows site was anything more than a seasonal place for annual supply runs for timber and other things they either didn't have in Greenland or were running short of. It wasn't set up to be a permanent settlement (although it might have become that eventually if they'd been able to get along better with the Beothuks).

 

[Snerk]

Those mountain look really cool but they seem tricky to traverse.

 

[warpus]

Those mountain look really cool but they seem tricky to traverse.

I took a tour bus to this lookout point, I have some videos of us making our way through the mountains (although nothing really cool enough to post here I don't think). This particular valley is beautiful and turns into my favourite fjord of them all. More on that later.

Coming up soon is a mountain bike ride through nearby mountains as well.

 

[warpus]

Day 20 - Bus to Gudvangen

The bus ride from the Stalheim lookout point down into and through the Nærøy valley was spectacular and deserves its own post.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

What are those falls called?

 

[warpus]

What are those falls called?

I looked it up, they are called Kjelfossen (Kjel Falls)

I had no idea, but apparently they are the 18th tallest waterfalls in the world!

 

[warpus]

Nærøy Valley bus ride video

I quickly threw this together from the available footage