As I was rowed out to the steamer by a bright young boy, my friends, whom I had arranged to meet here, greeted me from the deck, and, as I climbed up the steps on the steamer’s side, gathered to welcome me and hear the account of my tongue-tied wanderings of the past three days.
The rain had ceased, and we steamed up the fjord beneath a bright sun, amid a glorious panorama of ever-changing mountain views. At one village two spirited horses were rowed out to us in a small boat, from which they calmly walked up two planks to the lower deck of the steamer.
The Geiranger fjord is conceded by the majority of travellers to be the most magnificent fjord in Norway; its sides of barren rock rise from the water almost perpendicularly to the height of four thousand feet, with scarcely space for even a foothold at their base, the water beating directly against the precipitous rock. The sides are worn and chiselled smooth by nature, and have but scanty growths of vegetation in occasional depressions, and upon their receding summits. The fjord is in places a mile wide; a lofty peak guards the entrance on the right, and in winter its falling avalanches break by concussion the windows in a farm house perched high on the opposite side of the fjord.
Beautiful waterfalls stream down the sides, fed by the mass of snow on the mountains above, and as the rocky walls are at times capped with mist, the water then has the effect of falling directly from the clouds.
Over the side of a cliff descend a series of silver cascades, called the “Seven Sisters,” leaping from ledge to ledge, until in unbroken streams they reach the fjord, whose transparent waters reflect their entire course. At one point is a little clearing, with a farm house, sixteen hundred feet above the water, reached by a dizzy path in zigzags up the cliff; back of it towers a wall of rock two thousand feet high, and one wonders how a human being can choose such a place for a habitation, midway between heaven and earth, exposed to falling avalanches from above, and to sliding down the yawning precipices into the fjord below. It is said that the parents here tether their children with ropes, to keep them from the edge of the cliff, and from “taking a header far down below.”
The fjord contracts as we advance, and the rocks upon the sides assume fantastic shapes when viewed at the proper angle; high up the cliff we saw goats, in apparently inaccessible places, browsing upon what seemed to be barren rocks, and heard the shouts of a solitary goatherd, as he waved his hat in salute.
At the head of the fjord, ten miles from its entrance, is Merok, where the mountain sides slope more gradually to the water. The inns and small houses composing the little settlement extend along the shore, with a background of lofty mountains, and the situation is most beautiful, although on account of the winding course of the fjord not much of its extent can be seen.
After leaving freight and passengers here, we returned down the fjord, all the grand scenery passing once more in review, and proceeded to Hellesylt, at the head of the Sunelvfjord.
A landing pier extends into the water, the approach to which is very interesting, as the pier is close beside a wide and imposing cataract falling into the fjord, into whose foaming waters we seemed to be headed, and its spray was blown in our faces as we drew up at the pier and stepped from the steamer.
Hellesylt lies in the midst of scenery almost as grand as that along the Geiranger fjord; but we preferred to feast upon something more material than mountain views, and hastened to the inn, where the genial landlord, Herr Tryggestad, provided us with a delicious supper and comfortable beds.