Force of nature

Andrew Stephens encounters the mythical and majestical in Norway. When you look down on Norway from on high, or study it on a map,it seems as if its edges might be crumbling into the sea. That'sbecause of the fjords thousands of elongated fingers of land thatpush out into the Norwegian Sea and the Arctic Circle. The toweringland masses up to 1300 metres high are majestic. Coloured thedeepest of greens, they are the Western Fjords. Mother Nature, it seems, spent a lot of time perfecting thispart of the world just so I could come here and gasp. Any moment, as I travel on the ferries that chug up and downthese endless waterways, I expect Thor to appear on a mountaintopwith a bolt or two of lightning. Advertisement: Story continues below Or perhaps a Viking longship will come careering out of aharbour. Those Norsemen were fond of a raid these days, Norwegians aremostly peaceloving but I'm disappointed to hear the hornedhelmet thing is a bit of a myth. And I have met no Hagars, not asingle Helga. What isn't a myth is the amount of water in Norway's fjords andthe sheer beauty of this part of the world. Even the train trip from Oslo to Bergen before you even getnear a fjord is touted as one of the best in the world, crossingan amazing variety of terrain (suburbia, plateaus, rolling greenvalleys, snowscapes and dramatic harbours). In the fjords themselves, the landscape is so elevated, meltingsnow rushes down in magnificent waterfalls for most of the warmermonths. In fact, there's always snow on the higher peaks, which adds anextra dimension to one of the world's most famously handsome spots.It is, as our ferry captain announces with some pride, a "boodifoolplairz". A fjord, put simply, is a deep inlet in steep mountainousterrain, created by glaciation. But saying the word "fjord"immediately Rosetta Stone Latin Spanish makes me sound Nordic and, as Norwegian is an entirelyincomprehensible language (except, of course, for the 4.6 millionresidents who speak it daily), I say "fjord", "Thor", "yawn" and"mourn" as frequently as possible, usually in that order. Not that you'll be yawning or mourning. Goodness, that air isfresh! When I arrive in Bergen, Norway's secondlargest town andtheatrically located between a couple of mountains and a lot of(you guessed it) water, I find out about the walk across the Vidden(that's Norse code for moor, Nullarbor, prairie or plateau). It's about 600 metres above sea level and, even though it's spring, a bit on the thermalundies side. But very beautiful andinvigorating. To start the energetic fivehour hike across the Vidden from Mount Ulriken (640 metres) to Mount Floyen (320 metres), you haveto take the cable car very steeply up to the top of Ulriken, ashuttlebus ride away from the centre of Bergen. Once there, Iscore a cablecar full of schoolchildren and their teacher forcompany. She is terrified and keeps closing her eyes and muttering to herself. The naughty children try to make the gondola rock fromside to side thanks guys! but fortunately we make it to thesummit without actionmovie sequences. And the teacher keeps her head and her stomach. Bergen looks tiny from up here but there's no time to linger: Ihave a fivehour walk ahead of me and after one hour I have alreadytaken a wrong turn and am heading to the bottom of Mount Ulrikeninstead of across the rocky plateau. Lucky I like walking. Back on the right track, what amazes me is that, even though itis late May, drifts of snow and ice are still thawing.

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