Another hellride crosscountry

I took the route 45, cross-country so to say, but it was worth it, incredible rocks and gloomy valleys near Svartevatn (Blackwater, suitable name for that region), after that the Øyarvatnet was even worse - singletrack road, curves like in the highest mountains in Switzerland, and weather moods - incredible - an easy to scare person shouldn't take that route....

At Nomeland I took the mainroad No. 9 along the Setesdal, which is a famous and proper region, nice old houses in nicely done gardens, everything with an old touch, very lovely.

Runestone in the backyard

Somewhere on that road (I forgot the actual place) I found - more by accident - a runestone, situated in a very weird place:
The stone was easy to miss - right by the road it looked more like a menhir with some graves aside and it was placed right in the garden of a house, so I drove past it the first time. Funny, a certain Norwegian had placed it there as his own gravestone (so it says on the instructional board) not too far back and the house was obviously built later on. Imagine you have your own runestone in the backyard....

My go was the E 134 towards Telemark and so I moved to the cross-country road 45 again...it seemed as if darkness came earlier here in the deep down valleys, I only made it to Dalen, that was - as the name says, deep down between two steep mountains - so one had to brake like hell to catch the road properly...

Dalen, odd and gloomy...

Dalen itself was an unforgettable impression. First of all - I stopped at a petrol station for Chef-Pølser (yes, Sir!) and as I sit there in the car, eating, an old guy in a red car - not a Golf this time - cruises around me 4 times (he left and came back in between to have another look..), staring at me as if I was the Almighty (who knows...) - where am I here? Pretty soon he was joined by some youngsters who came from the petrol station, but they seemed to be more open - I've also spotted a car from Lithuania being fixed in the garage of the petrol station...an odd place.... whatever....so I had a look inside this village - I knew I had to sleep here by all means for the next spot was on top of that overhanging rock underneath the black night sky....
On my way through Dalen I passed at least three sect-churches (...), so not many normal houses left, the village is tiny, and finally I ended up at a "hotel" that would have made the perfect background for a special horror movie. The fassade was of wood, huge with several side-wings and the style was a mix between the house of Norman Bates (Psycho) with a huge, dark roof and the Munster's villa, with little towers and even decorations of the viking age. The building was painted brown red (like dirty old blood by night...) and seemed enormous, wicked and depressing in front of the blackening sky...prrr.... some rooms were lighted, one could even see the antlers on the walls of the top hall. In the kitchen of the west-wing the guys were busy, but there was not one car on the parking space.....so whom would they cook for.....(all very spooky).

I thought I'd maybe go inside to have a look at the prices, who knows, off-season...

May I have your liver?

That was the best adventure then that day: The doorhandle was very brittle, the door itself making a strange noise as I opened it, an enormous elk-head popping into my face as I move forward in the elegantly decorated entrance hall, all lighted by dim candles, very nice piano-music in the big hall further on....
The receptionist (who got alert by the door-noise) was a guy with a french accent, looking really totally like a gigolo-vampire-kind-of midaged person, Bela Lugosi in his earlier days... rather small but sturdy, black suit, very oldfashioned with pomade in the hair, just perfect in this ambiente. I was only waiting for him to say...."may I have your liver?" (Monthy Python's Meaning of Life....) instead I asked for the prices...well, yes, they were quite high....some 800 NOK upwards for a single room... but that was off season. I was not too much astonished, for this hotel was really something special. I had a short peep into the absolutely GREAT hall, all upholstery in leather, a couple drinking their whisky (hemm...) the piano obviously live-played, a great decoration with wall-carpets, a huge fire place, even more antlers, all covered by wooden panels, just like an english Noble house.
For a moment I thought - hey, why not stay here for a night, it might be fun to sit there with these people (he he) and take it as it comes....(guess what they'd thought if they'd seen the car....even I myself must have seemed strange to these snobs...)

But then I had my money in mind and thought that even a whisky might cost a fortune in here, so what, I can have that at home (the antlers, the fire-place and the whisky...) and tomorrow never knows - one fine day I'll spend one night in that Dalen Hotel, no question...
I parked my car outside instead, uninjured by the supected sect-members out there, no kitchen-boy comming around for my offals....

A helpful lady

The next day Dalen changed it's face totally - I stepped into the tourist office for some infos on the region (mostly landscape and the famous Telemark Kanal)and found a very nice and helpful lady there, she even let me use her internet and equipped me with maps and folders on the Telemark region and she arranged a tour in the Eidsborg museum for me.

Eidsborg

That Eidsborg was the mentioned village on top ot that rock....(poor car, steep as can be....), through rainy dark woody ravines, only some 8 km from Dalen.
Right by the Eidsborg folk museum is the famous Eidsborg stave church, a very old and rotting (thus not fire-caught) church, that seemed even older in the foggy landscape, great atmospheres again.
I got a private tour through the museum by a skilled yound man, this way I learned a lot on Norway and Telemark in details, also the house of the Juvekongen (Juveking), a rich farmer of the region, is situated there - one can see his heavily decorated sleeping-living-rooms and imagine their lives a bit from our nowadays view. I always missed the interiors of the ancient houses on my trip - in Maihaugen the houses were not open, Oslo neither.
As we had nearly finished with the museum (going to the church) we got joined by some intelligent Americans again....asking stupid questions about things one knows from ground-school or everyday life in Europe, such as .....why do you Norwegians put those stains on the gravestones? (she meant the naturally grown lichens and mosses on the old sandstone....we couldn't believe our ears as she said that....).
The church was secured by an alarm (...) and as I falsely asked for the reason, he told me about some satanistic guy who set fire on the churches (...aha...) the inside of the church was very impressive in it's bizarre roughness and it was extremely cold (the thermometer said 6 °), humid and dark, medieval paintings on the wall, but all very rotten of course, one could rather see the wooden structure than the colours.
The atmosphere inside that church was somehow uncomfortable, all seemed very antediluvian and christian, it reminded me of that weird norwegian film "Devil's island" that's about a modern danish female teacher who takes a job on some island in Norway for a change, looking for great nature and tranquility. What she doesn't know - the local priest, a friendly man, who's very occupied with her, has the village under total control, all women have to serve his perverse inclinations, the men won't say a word and all this happens in an atmosphere of numb fanatic 'believe', like a neverending nightmare.

Floodland, adrenaline and horny guys......

Frozen stiff I continued my trip and - struck by the heavy rains I spent the night in Seljord, at the great Motel there.
Great in any case, for the receptionist didn't speak one word in English, so we had to fetch someone to translate the necessary things (usually really everyone can say some words in English in Norway - they're lucky to have no norwegian synchro on TV, only norwegian subtitles, and thus hear it all in English).

Then there was a strange guy working at the petrol station by the Motel, obviously on drugs, joking around with his colleague, telling me about the norwegian potency and that he'd for sure come around later on (...) that wasn't too funny for the Motel was a very light house, everything groundfloor and he knew my room number, as I was the only guest there (so who would come for my rescue anyway)....then the motel had this typical Scandinavian transparence - the curtains were too short on every edge...so he could look inside from the darkness, but I wouldn't see him. You can imagine how calm I was...but that shouldn't be the final stress....

The rain was increasing every quarter of an hour, on TV they showed parts of Oslo flooded (Akersbrygge), Europe under water and the lake behind the Motel, which wasn't there when I arrived, reached my car! Heavens! What would I do if it's getting worse? I mean I don't know this region, Seljord is by a lake, who knows, maybe we'll be flooded soon, too? Which direction would I drive - would the car start at all?!?! Not a relaxing night, really. but that was not everything yet...

I stepped out into the rainy, black night to get sth. from the car. On my way back I thought ....hmmmm.....didn't the car move? Hell!!
It slowly rolled downhill!!!!!
I jumped to it, tried to stop it by the rear mirror...in vain, it's weight is overwhelming...and so I fingered around on the door to get the bloody key in that hole (that was hard as I was nervous to death and the rain made the night absolutely black! Finally I'd done it and jumped on the brakes! Heff.

I think I'd rarely had this much adrenaline in my veins, I was totally sick afterwards, almost a heart attack, imagine, the car just simply slowly rolls donwhill, I can't do a thing about it, just accompany it to it's grave.....it was amazing how slow but inevitable this black mass moved, like a heavy tank.

After all that stress I had a silent night, no guys coming round (I had some knives underneath the pillow anyway.....)...and the car was still there the next morning, not washed into the lake...