Peeps at Many Lands: Norway

by A. F. Mockler-Ferryman

Chapter VIII

The Hardanger Fjord

All that is grand, all that is beautiful, will be found in the Hardanger—the “Smiling Hardanger,” as the Norwegians themselves call it; and even if an English visitor went nowhere else, he would have seen typical Norwegian scenery of every possible kind.

The easiest way to go there is from Bergen, and most people bent on a tour in Norway make a start either from Christiania or from Bergen. Bergen itself claims to be the most beautiful town in the country, and it really is a lovely spot, with its old wooden houses all around the harbour, full of picturesque shipping, and with its amphitheatre of bold mountains rising upwards almost from the centre of the town. But Bergen has its drawbacks, and the principal one is that it rains every day, or nearly every day.

To reach the Hardanger from Bergen, and to go from one end of the fjord to the other, you take a passage in one of the comfortable little local steamers, and you begin your journey early in the morning. It is a very pleasant way of travelling, as you sit on deck all day and enjoy the scenery, and only go down to the saloon at meal-times. If you do not wish to go all the way to the very end of the fjord, there are numbers of pretty little places where you can break your journey. But if you like you can travel throughout the day and finish up late at night at Odda, or at Vik-i-Eidfjord, each of which is at the head of a branch of the Hardanger Fjord.

Let us take our tickets right through to Eidfjord, make a good long day of it, and see what there is to be seen. For some little time after leaving the harbour we see nothing of great interest, only a few graceful-looking barges in full sail, reminding us of the pictures of the old Viking ships, and flocks of seagulls fluttering and screaming round the stern of our boat. Then the steamer begins to pick its way through the scattered islands, some of which are mere barren granite rocks, others partially cultivated, and with neat little farmsteads lying snug in the valleys.

So we go on for an hour or two, occasionally stopping off a small group of farms, to land, perhaps, a farmer returning from the Bergen market, or a girl coming home from her situation in the town. Presently we come alongside a pier under an overhanging cliff, and we see the name of the place written up on a board, just like the name of a railway-station. This is Godösund, a favourite holiday haunt of the Bergen people. It is not a town or even a village, but just a châlet-like hotel of two or three buildings, standing on the side of a fir-clad hill, in the midst of a fairyland of creeks and wooded islets—as pretty a spot as one could wish to see.

Now we are nearing the Hardanger Fjord; we pass through the narrow straits known as the Löksund, and we enter the fjord. Glorious and ever-changing views open out before us, as hour after hour the steamer passes from one small station to another, dropping a mail-bag, and perhaps a passenger or two. We pass farms lying close to the shore, the wooden houses being in many cases painted red or white, and thus forming a brilliant contrast to the blue-black mountains and dark green forests which rise up behind them. We see every now and then a clean white wooden church, and, away up on the mountain-sides we can discern tiny specks, which, we are told, are the sæter dwellings.

Sometimes the steamer is out in the middle of the fjord, which, in parts, is five miles or more in width, but at other times we find ourselves close in to a rocky precipice, and wondering how it will be possible to avoid grounding. Above us the mountain-side rises perpendicularly to a height of, it may be, 3,000 or 4,000 feet; and, looking down into the clear water, we can see that it is ever so deep. As a matter of fact, the chart tells us that hereabouts it is a little more than 2,000 feet in depth.

Soon we reach the bay in which is Rosendal, where one could spend a very pleasant week or so, with trout fishing to be had in the streams and lakes, and mountain walks up to the edge of the great Folgefond snowfield. The steamer calls for a few minutes, and then goes on up the beautiful little branch fjord known as the Mauranger, at the extremity of which lies Sundal.