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Two Icy Tongues High Above a Norwegian Fjord

There’s something poetic about summer evenings on a fjord. There’s a mellow, steady, no-shadow light that hardly changes from 8:00 until 11:00 p.m. The steady call of gulls and the lazy gulping of small boats taking on little waves provide a relaxing soundtrack.

When settled into a Victorian-era fjordside hotel, I find myself spending lots of time sitting on porches, mesmerized by Norwegian mountains. Rather than jagged, they’re bald and splotchy, with snow fields on top and characteristic cliffs plunging into inky fjords. Tonight I took my strawberries à la mode onto one such porch and sat there long after my coffee cooled and the ice cream melted.

After dinner, I strolled through the village enjoying the blond cherubs running barefoot through the stalled twilight. Cobbled lanes led past shiplap houses to rock cliffs — gullies and cracks green with trees. Half the sky was taken up by the black rock face of the mountain.

Sitting on a lonely pier, I enjoyed the souvenir stains: black splatters on my khakis — carbon smudges from my glacier hike. Apparently ancient plant matter peppers the glaciers and is eventually exposed as the slow-moving river of ice makes its way down the mountain.

In my research work, I did the two most-promoted “glacier trips,” taking me to the two most-visited tongues of the Jostedal Glacier — northern Europe’s largest glacier. One trip sails down Fjærlandsfjord to Mundal, Walter Mondale’s ancestral home town (and just as exciting), from where an awaiting bus shuttles visitors up to Bøyabreen. The other trip, up another fjord, goes to a tongue of the glacier called Nigardsbreen.

Being here tunes you into the glory and tragedy of nature. Bøyabreen has retreated to the point where it’s actually dishonest to sell a trip there as a “glacier visit.” You look at it in the distance past a lake made by its run-off, listening to your guide, who sounds more like an environmentalist who lost a loved one.

The other, Nigardsbreen, still thunders to the lake at its feet. To reach it, you pay to enter a national park, hop a small boat to cross the lake, then hike over glacier-smoothed rocks to a small group of tents where local guides are lashing spikes onto visitors’ shoes to take them hiking up into the mountain of blue ice with its black speckles.

Roped up with a dozen visitors, we did the hour-long hike. At first I moved gingerly — not trusting my simple, four-spiked crampons. But as long as I walked “with angry steps,” stamping each step deliberately, I could climb steeply up and down with no problem on the ice.

It took me the better part of two days. But now I can say with more certainty than any information I found in print: Bøyabreen is a waste of time. If you like your ice on the rocks, head for Nigardsbreen.

Sleepy Solvorn, under towering rocks with peeling paint, provides a restful, fjordside escape.
Enlarge photo		 The Bøyabreen glacier experience? It sounds good in the ads…but you’ll need binoculars. As glaciers recede, some tour experiences are left on the rocks but without the ice.
Enlarge photo		 Nigardsbreen, a tongue of the Jostedal glacier — Europe’s biggest — offers Norway’s best easy-access glacier experience.
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All roped-up on the one-hour family hike, you’ll be glad you made a potty stop before setting out.
Enlarge photo		 Climbing on the ice with flimsy strap-on, four-toothed crampons, you proceed gingerly. But by making “angry steps” you realize they grip, and soon you are confidently glacier hiking.
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Swinging through Norway, from Stave Church to Stave Church

Sometimes I wonder why I lug my bag through airports, following my own recommendation to pack light enough to carry on and avoid checking any bags on international flights. It can be a drag, dragging your bag through airports.

But last week, flying to Bergen, I remembered the joy of having everything with you. I got from Seattle to Copenhagen on time and began loitering, knowing I had a bit of layover. Then I remembered to check the departures board. Sure enough, a plane was leaving for Bergen in 20 minutes — too early to have booked legally from Seattle…but giving me plenty of time to hike on over to the gate, ask if I could be put on, and be told, “Sure.”

I got to my Bergen hotel two hours before planned and enjoyed a jumpstart on my Norway time — a lovely evening in a salty port town where magic hour lasts until 11 p.m.

I’ve been traveling to Europe for 30 years, and teaching travel for 25. I have to be careful that old ideas nailed into my teaching structure don’t live on when they should die. I’ve always said that “younger locals speak English.” I’ve noticed here in Norway that, these days, older locals do too. It’s been an entire generation now since English became the dominant language of travel. And many of us “young travelers” are a generation beyond that, as well — and now essentially everyone speaks English (at least in Norway).

My big lesson in Bergen: Sights are underwhelming, but the guided tours included in almost every admission bring the topics — from composer Edvard Grieg to dried cod to leprosy — vividly to life, making your visit well worthwhile.

After a few days in Bergen, I grabbed a car and headed into fjord country. While travelers swing from castle to castle through Germany, in Norway we seem to swing from stave church to stave church. Medieval Norway was essentially a society built of wood. Devastating fires were commonplace. Bergen had 50 major fires. Oslo had 17. Finally, in the 17th century, a king decreed that in the big city, building would be done by brick and stone rather than wood, and that streets would be made wide to provide fire breaks.

The only grand architecture surviving from Norway’s Middle Ages is wooden churches — built like upside-down Viking ship hulls supported on each corner by staves, or thick posts. While originally built a thousand years ago, they have mostly been burned down and soullessly rebuilt, or cluttered up with 17th-century bell towers and windows. See two or three, and they start getting old. Still, you can’t bypass them. They are about all there is for a tourist taught to look for architectural remnants of a civilization’s past.

The key to really enjoying Norway is to understand that nature is its real draw. Norway’s story is the story of a people’s struggle to live comfortably in a harsh natural world. They leave little beyond pitch-covered wooden stave churches as proof that they’ve been here for ages. Everything else is gone, like a masterpiece on an Etch-a-sketch.

I kept thinking how it’s man and nature here. Driving along fjords — diving for a pull-out each time a car approaches — I remember how I always feel it’s a very dangerous place to drive. Not because of traffic (there’s very little), but because of the scenery. It’s tough to keep your eyes on the road. At the mouth of one fjord, a cute bird flew in front of me and never came out. Later, on a ferry crossing, I noticed people gathering around the front of my car — pointing at a bird still in my grill. It was a great conversation-starter until, on the third ferry ride, I finally pried her off.

The tourist season here is short — just July and early August. In the summer, restaurants and hotels need to scramble like chipmunks to survive the winter. Wondering how that affects the employment scene, I noticed that most of the employees were seasonal. On the front line were cute Norwegian kids visiting home for the summer from big-city studies to be with family and help out, as it’s all hands on deck. And behind the scenes, immigrants cooked and cleaned. Local hoteliers and restaurateurs figure tourists don’t come to some cute fjord village to be served goat cheese by a guy from Pakistan or fishballs by a gal from Romania.

If you haven’t had a chance to read my daughter Jackie’s blog, she’s just a click away — well into a wonderful adventure with her best girlfriend in Spain and Portugal. Check it out while I scramble up some old Norse tales from the fjordland.

The fairest stave church in Norway? Hopperstad or Borgund. Hopperstad overlooks Sognefjord in the town of Vik.
Enlarge photo		 Of Norway’s many stave churches, just see one or two. Borgund is my choice—no fjord, but in a pristine, remote setting, with the best adjacent museum.
Enlarge photo		 Norwegian design, carved in wood, to decorate a church door circa 1050.
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Nice lines; the Vikings built some sleek ships.
Enlarge photo		 This bird and I were both distracted by the fjord scenery on Highway E16…then bam!
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Jackie Steves Goes to Spain, Leaving Mom and Dad Only a Blog to Read

When I was a young guy, my friends knew how well I cooked. When there was a big party, they said, “Why don’t you bring chairs?”

I still don’t bring any dishes to a party…but what I cook up is travel plans. I just love helping friends and family plan their trips. It’s what I do. In the last week, I’ve been immersed in helping plan our daughter’s Iberian escape.

(Later in the summer, Jackie will be assisting on our family tours — Rome to Paris, two weeks — orchestrating the kids’ activities. But on the way to Rome, she’s dropping into Spain for her own little vacation.)

As a parent (and her travel advisor), I’m excited to follow her adventures in Spain and Portugal. In fact, starting Sunday, I’ll be letting Jackie and her best friend, Zoe, take my blog stage and pack us all along for the adventures of two 19-year-old young women in Iberia.

With all the heavy news lately and my penchant for steering this blog into politics, their report will be a breath of fresh teenage air. Imagine just flitting around Barcelona, Madrid, and Lisbon with your BFF simply to enjoy the art, beaches, food, and boys.

Every day for a couple weeks, we’ll hear from Jackie and Zoe about their escapades. As a travel teacher, I’m personally fascinated by the party-centric hostel world that teen travelers enjoy. It’s something I can never report on. But Jackie sure can. I’ll be right there with you, commenting as the Dad 5,000 miles away to their blogs, and I hope you can travel with all of us too.

Then, when Jackie and Zoe finish their trip, I’ll hop back in: blogging from Norway, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, and Germany for the rest of July and August.

By the way, if you’d rather have anxiety-ridden and polarizing politics instead, my take on the tumult in Iran is featured in an editorial exclusive to the Seattle Times.

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Surviving the Psychological Economic Crisis

Anticrisis Menu. Business is slow at many of Europe’s restaurants. Prices are certainly not going up and many are coming down.
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While in Spain recently, I saw a guy wearing a T-shirt that read “Surviving the Psychological Economic Crisis.” If you lost your job or your retirement savings, the crisis is real. But apparently lots of people are still working and still committing themselves to travel this summer. I’m leaving for Norway in four days and ready for fish balls.

Having just been in Europe for two months, I was trying to get a feel for how the “crisis” was playing out in the tourist industry there. It’s hard to say. It seemed many restaurants were deathly quiet…almost too quiet to properly assess for my guidebook research. That was both scary and frustrating. But many of the sights were packed as never before. Dubrovnik was a literal human traffic jam at the height of the midday cruise ship crowd scene. The month before, in Rome, I joined the touristic mosh pit as thousands of visitors oozed slowly into and then out of the Pantheon. It was literally wall-to-wall people as I’d never experienced before. And everyone seemed to be having a blast. Regardless of whether numbers are up or down, those who are able to travel seem to be happy as could be. Everywhere I went, I was impressed by tourists on a travel high.

Clearly business is down in Europe. Guides told me the spring was saved only by the work they got taking school groups around. Group bookings are way down. In Eastern Europe, many hotels that generally accommodate groups have simply shut down. Travelers encounter restaurants both more generous and more aggressive. You’ll notice prices are being kept low. Many places advertise desperate specials. I even encountered “anticrisis menus” in Spain. While restaurants are feeling the pinch and creatively trying to win the business of diners, once they have you at the table, you need to be careful that they don’t push extras on you. Be clear, be strong, and understand the prices before you order. A restaurant I really like in Rome has great prices, but a 20 percent cover. Suddenly it’s not such a great deal.

Little hotels are being hurt as big hotels drop prices to attract business. Suddenly a small family-run guesthouse that used to be a fine value at 80 euros is no less expensive than the big, four-star, business-class hotel with rooms on the push list.

Cities are being more aggressive too. In Florence, everyone pays 4 euros each to book entry to its more popular museums. Even local tour companies need to prepay and prebook admission times long in advance. My favorite Florentine tour company is reeling from the cost as they booked thousands of entries at the start of the season, expecting a busy schedule of their groups visiting the Uffizi and Accademia. Now that the season is here, they are not running as many tours as anticipated…and the city won’t refund all those 4-euro booking fees.

 

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While our tour business at Europe Through the Back Door was slow for the first four months of the year, things have snapped back. People are less nervous about the safety of their savings, and with summer approaching, are booking tours at the last minute as never before. Suddenly we are calling guides who we thought would have no work from us and asking if they’re available to take groups in the summer and fall.