Sognefjord - fjord and stave churches, all at once

My next target was the Sognefjord with all the stave churches, so I took my way on the E39 by the many waters, encountering the home-travellers (it was a Sunday, all Bergen must have been on the road, what wonder on this brilliant day....).

At Ytre I took my first ferry in Norway - that was exciting, it was a small boat with all cars on the outer deck, everything went easy and quickly, as the traffic was huge but going the other direction.

My first fjord

The Sognefjord is very large, much to see and one gets the feeling of the enormous surface of the water, just amazing, the water is very calm, sometimes even like a mirror; strange to me as I grew up by the largest lake in Europe, the Lake of Constance. There's always some swell as the German and Swiss shores are rather flat, so we Austrians get constant western winds coming in from those directions.
The fjords are like huge bath-tubs, surrounded by more or less high steep walls of rocks - so the circumstances are totally different there, that's also a reason for the many various colours the water may have - from anthracite to oliva-green or muddy yellow, sometimes just pure black. The water simply reflects the fascinating light that comes along with the constantly changing weather-situation. Local winds may occure, mostly in the evening when the different temperatures cause heavy katabatic winds, that's weird!.

Fjords are a fascinating phenomenon to me - first of all they seem so unreal, they can be very depressing or frightening, if one looks at the long and narrow Lysefjord from the Preikestolen-view one can easily imagine what those two youngsters must have thought last winter before they jumped off....when the oppressing dark clouds hang over the long, slightly snowy tube of the Lysefjord, turning the dark rocky walls even scarier, the water must tear you down like legions of Medusae....

Still by daylight I headded on to Balestrand where I wanted to visit an ancient Viking farmland.
The ride along the fjord was better than I'd ever imagined, colours of water changing every other minute and wild wind coming up, something that enhances the mystical feeling inside me a lot. But darkness came quickly and so I didn't find the viking farm, there was no sign anyway. In Balestrand it was blackest night, together with the wind it seemed almost scary a bit - the gusts blew buckets, waste and other things in the air, noises of continuously smashing doors and not one soul on the dark streets - like in a grotesque french film of the 70ies... Balestrand is a famous holiday resort by the "lake" and therefore you may find some nice oldfashioned buildings that remind a bit of Brighton or Blackpool. The village is situated by the fjord and dominated by the tectonical opportunities left by the rising hills around Balestrand. This leeds to more or less only one road leading throught the centre, very close to the water. And this again means no good sleeping places for me in my hearse - of course no 24 hours petrol station, only one wasted looking garage with loads of empty oilcans and tires lying all over the place. As there were houses nearby I gave it a try.

The mad boy

While I had my dinner still sitting behind the steeringwheel, funeral curtains (with reversed crucifixes, he he...) closed, I watched a teenaged boy with a bicycle approaching, obviously he was astounded by the long black likvogn (t.i. hearse in norsk), which he kept repeating to himslef. Of course he couldn't see me and I kept as silent as possible, I didn't want anyone to know that I was there in the car. He kept driving up and down for at least 15 minutes, which becomes eternity if you can't move, and I got the impression that he was mentally handicapped. Suddenly he came very close to my side and I feared he'd get aware of me; I was fed up anyway and so I started the car with one strike, lights and blinkers, loud music on, all at once - he must have got a shock for his life! The bike shot off the car, in a second he was accross the road, right by the water, starng in fear. In a rage I turned around and headed to the next village, f...ing Balestrand!

Stormy weather in Dragsvik

The nightride along the fjord reminded of those narrow streets on the Riviera coast with crippled trees and windy edges; the next village, Dragsvik, was right opposite Balestrand, one could almost reach it by hand. After that came the ferry across the fjord, so I had to find a hidden place in Dragsvik by all means. Luckily the nice situated campingsite was open, there were even some hytta occupied. I had an unforgettable stormy night there by the black water, where I sat on my own for at least two hours, listening to the wind and the moving waters, watching the reflections of Balestrand - it felt just wonderful! I had my car parked underneath some huge fir-trees that waved with the wind and dropped some fir-cones onto bonnet and roof now and then....
I hope I didn't scare people away with the car - imagine their faces, as they step out of the hytta in the morning, looking forward to a nice, calm fishing day and there it stands, the long black hearse.....
The ferry in the morning was too neat - they had only four short lines to queue up, three cars waiting...

My next go was Sogndal, a famous runestone should be there. But the ride between Hella and Sogndal was maybe much more surprising - still windy, the landscape reminded of Italian coastal areas - appletrees and even vinyards along with little stone houses and tiny stonewalls by the side of the street made me feel like approaching Malcesine by the Lago di Garda - but this was in the middle of Norway!

The runestone in Sogndal was very funnily situated - between two churches, an older stave-church-like and a newer red wooden church at the flanks of the stone that was looking into the valley, right besides a bench and a beautiful solitarian toadstool.

Urnes - Urnäsch

But my plan of the day was one of my favourite stave churches - Urnes - inobstrusive and rather small from the outside it has an outstanding north-portal with the most elaborate ornaments of the viking ages, the most beautiful and bewitching woodcraft I've ever seen. The interior is of heavy decoration, very original and tasteful.

Also I had to see it for it's odd name - Urnes - sounds like a village in Switzerland I grew up nearby - Urnäsch.
Many norwegian words seem to have the same origins like our Allemannic dialects, sometimes I can find norwegian words that have exactly the same meaning like those real old dialect terms that don't exist in High German.
An exciting idea - the common germanic dialects being spread so far over Europe and still meaning the same - against all oppression from prussian language doctrines...

From my position I could only reach Urnes via boat - but as I arrived in Solvorn the last boat was gone for 20 minutes, on that very day the boats don't go in the afternoon (....what great luck), some tourists were hanging around there obviously not knowing that they wait in vain, I even found out after a while that the church is closed in autumn, having it opened by a neighbour lady would cost a fortune....

As I spent a while there on the parking space I got more and more convinced that it wouldn't have been a good idea anyway to leave the car in Solvorn (the church was right across the water on a hill, so why take the car there and pay a whole lot for the ferry) with those strange guys hanging around the tiny port, staring at "us". So off as soon as possible, dawn was sure to approach and who knows when the next water (and inevitable ferry) was on the way....

The disco in Sogndal...

I stopped inside Solvorn for some water and tea and discoverred an internet-cafe right there in the middle of nowhere, run by a nice looking "gothic" girl - things happen there in the mountains! Still astonished by her appearance I asked where she goes in the evenings - Solvorn is a 30 souls village, most of them beyond 70.......well she goes to the disco on Saturdays in the shopping centre in Sogndal, it's nice there... (hard to imagine for me - we have tons of different clubs in Vienna, open everynight, easy to reach by subway or car, but there it's almost impossible to drive at night, the next "village" is an hour away and you see the same 40 faces there every - weekend - no disco during the week).
Slowly I started to understand - she was very happy with her situation - she had the nature as well, the fjords and the wilderness of the countryside, in winter it's even more exciting, one has to live with the circumstances in this country, but that even gives more freedom to the single individual. We'd surely see each other again next year - for the Urnes is on my list, no doubt.

As I was still thinking in european standards I had in mind to reach the Borgund church before dark, but that was another dream, I didn't calculate with the twisted roads and unexpected points of interrest on my way....

After Sogndal the landscape became more and more pittoresque and suddenly there was a sign to the Kaupanger stave church - so why not have a look.
The old, still original church was very nicely situated near a group of ancient huge fir-trees, that made it look even darker and mystical. I parked my car by the entrance, the usual old ladies caring for the graves and staring with hidden eyes at us, I got used to that during my trip - the young people watched us rather with joy, waving at us or making all kinds of supporting signs (very funny incidents at Århus in Denmark), whereas the older generation watched us with suspicion, obviously not used to this kind of morbide enjoyment.
The Kaupanger seems to be very nicely decorated in the inside, so I'll need to visit it again next time - another fence of alarm here, too...

Trollsveien til Borgund

The pittoresque countryside continued all the way to Mannheller where I took the late ferry to Fodnes. A remarkable phenomenon occured there - one can even see it on the photos - on the hills after Kaupanger the sun set and then followed darkness, but by the ferry, which is even further east, it was still dim light; one would expect the opposite rather - light on the mountains and darkness in the valley.

After several tunnels it became darker and darker and I finally looked for a place to park for the night, but Eri and Tønjum didn't seem very trustworthy (three houses and ten trucks....), so I continued to Bjørkum and up into the incredibly savage gorge Svartegjel with overhanging bolders and rotting trees on pikes hanging down like in the old King Kong movie, within time I could only see shadows on the black nightsky, then the heavy rain came and I was longing for a place to sleep... in this fuzz I even passed the Borgund stave church, the oldest still existing stave church, without remarking it, there's a newer wooden building right next to it and all looks totally different from the road-angle, compared to the usual pictures in books.

On my search for a safe camping site I got followed by a guy in a dutch VW Golf (!?another Golf?!) who even shadowed me into a nowhere leading deadlock by a wasted farmland where I did the faster kind of u-turn.... (what reasonable intention could lead him to follow me there??)...in the end I found a hidden camping site (again under an old fir-tree, but this time no fir-cones, only raindrops...) were I was happy to rest after a long and strenuous day.