Norway | Camino Bay Books

2022 The Northern Route – Near Nordkapp

Robin — Mon, 03 Jul 2023 13:30:36 +0000

27 September: We’re about an hour away from the farthest point north we go—71 degrees. We will dock and I’ll join a tour to the North Cape (Nordkapp), return for my last night onboard, and then tomorrow it’s Kirkenes and the bus south. The terrain is still mountainous but seems treeless; shrubs have moved into their place. Fewer people. A brief glance at an Aurora last night. It’s been a superb trip; I can understand the temptation to stay aboard and return to Bergen but even if I had the time, wouldn’t do it. I may not see equal beauty and mystery of landscape again but I wanted to spend time in and looking at new places and I’m doing that with considerable satisfaction. The Earth is big but not unknowable and even with differences place-to-place never seems completely unfamiliar. It’s like a very extended family, although the sense of kinship does not abate as I reach the edges of the previously unknown, even though the faces change.

28 September: I had looked at this ferry trip as the highlight of the trip with the Ring Road in Iceland right behind it, and both have met my expectations. The joy of Nature’s great expressions, of course, but seeing how many people carve lives in relative isolation in remarkable landscapes turned out of more interest than probably would have occurred to me if I had thought about it. I feel the importance of place more than ever, of small community, of life in demanding, unique, and beautiful places where Nature’s domination is never in doubt. These are small countries I’m traveling through, superior ones in most ways. Can they hold onto it in a commodity themed world? I have three weeks and three countries left, and I want to learn what I can of them; I feel myself on the downslope toward home.

Photo by: Arnstein Rønning

2022 The Northern Route – Near Trondheim Norway

Robin — Sun, 02 Jul 2023 13:30:07 +0000

24th September: I could see it happening yesterday afternoon and now, this second morning, it continues—the terrain changes, becomes lower and less treed mountains. Bergen’s latitude is 60.4 degrees N. and now we’re above 63 degrees, although I’m not sure exactly where we are. Seems a lot of change for so little latitudinal difference; geology isn’t affected by it but climate would be. I hadn’t noticed before on the map but there’s progressively less carving of the coast line by fjords as we go north. Does lower elevations mean less ice movement and so less fjord- cutting? I don’t know. Trees are shorter, reminding me that tree-line seemed to appear, as the train moved upslope from Oslo, at about 4,000’. So many variables conspire at every locale to produce a landscape just right for it. Nature and nonhuman animals always seem to know what they are doing and where they are and maybe what’s best for themselves. By my compass we’re now moving southeast; we may be sailing toward Trondheim. The map also shows me that there are fewer roads now, so less joggling around to follow erratic coastline and probably fewer people.
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I have realized on this trip that I am less drawn to “spectacle” (as the noun form of spectacular) than ever, particularly if it’s humanmade. Nature’s versions still draw me but even with them, as in Iceland where tourists thronged them, I was readily drawn to less popular, less spectacular areas where I found it still possible and much easier to quietly appreciate what was before me. I enjoy Nature’s variety and I believe in the intrinsic unity of it all and want to be open to its experience at all times. If 500 tourists approached a grand waterfall in silence, reverently, hand-in-hand, unitive relationship would be possible even then, but I don’t count on it happening. Illumination is never assured or predictable, but I can open the window whenever I choose—no question that the energy of 500 would be powerful itself but it won’t happen spontaneously and my responsiveness can.

Thinking again of all these remote communities, I always wonder how people choose where to live. I imagine that most of the time it’s work- or family-related but I’d like to know how often it’s a specific choice of place or kind of place. My own relocations were never forced but resulted from attraction to a kind of work, and retrospectively I regret that I didn’t factor locale into my equations strongly enough. I didn’t understand the power of surroundings to shape inner meanings. Now that humans have mostly severed their relations with the natural world I’m sure my early ignorance is common, and I believe harmful to spirit. Better late than never for me but I don’t doubt that the delay was costly.

Photo by David Becker on Unsplash

2022 The Northern Route – Gudvangen Norway

Robin — Sat, 01 Jul 2023 13:30:18 +0000

23 September: On the ferry north, as expected (or hoped after the relative disappointment of Greenland’s coast), it is mountains covered in trees and islands, inlets, islets, water cascading down from remnant snow, and communities and houses strung out irregularly. Words have become repetitive and inadequate, and it comes down to feeling and inner reaction and wonder. A measure of envy, also; I have the sense I ought to have been born, grown up and lived in places like these. There are more houses than I expected but it’s a tradition among Nordics to have summer places so I’m sure many are second homes.

Mile after mile, how can this be? Will it end?

I don’t want to go too far in idealizing the small communities I keep mentioning; I know that people can flourish or not regardless of where they are. But I have an interest in the social arrangements that are apt to provide the best foundation and setting for solidarity, individuality, and social health (which tends to promote individual well-being simultaneously). If I inventory the characteristics of such places they include: existence that respects local Nature; relatively low population (not sure how many that allows but it requires face-to-face contact with a large portion of one’s fellows and communal engagement with social/political arrangements); minimal economic inequality within contexts that promote and enable optimal diversity and self-expression; solidarity (group consciousness) in which “your suffering is my suffering and we work together for alleviation”; economy subservient to the good of the community

2022 The Northern Route – Norway

Robin — Fri, 30 Jun 2023 13:30:49 +0000

The trip from Oslo to Bergen was the first time ever that I’ve felt shuffled around in a prototypical “tour” group. Thirteen hours from point to point with five changes of transport (train to train to boat to bus and back to train)—a recipe for exhaustion and annoyance. Both of which it was but what saved it were the two hours on the fjord boat. I look at the route we took on the map and am surprised to see that it was a relatively short V-shaped course from Flam to Gudvangen, a mere arm of what’s known as the longest (a couple hundred km) and deepest (1,300 meters at one point) fjord in Norway, the Sognefjord. Seeing the complex of arms on the map it doesn’t seem possible to identify a starting place; presumably the ice sheet and glaciers that carved these regions did their work starting from various places that eventually merged. What I saw yesterday was the prototypical fjord of my fantasy (that I didn’t see in Greenland), and it was a pleasure to suddenly realize that I’d seen it before and it’s Yosemite Valley. I think the Norwegian version is also carved into granite and it clearly had similar results on the fjord walls: steep with occasional waterfalls and green with trees (and here grass that Yosemite lacks for being in a dryer climate). If Yosemite extended to the Pacific, it too would be a fjord, and long ago when it contained a lake it would have looked much like the one here. I was oddly touched to see how similarly glaciers can do their work where the geological conditions resemble each other. But it’s a lonelier “fjord” existence in the Sierra than here where they’re everywhere. There are others, Hetch Hetchy and Kings Canyon, for example, but here they grew in rampant abundance, or so it seems from the map. I’ll know more after my time sailing along the west coast from Bergen to Kirkines at the far northern extreme of Norway. Although I have no competitive feel about these things, I am glad to know that Yosemite is as lovely as what I saw yesterday. Will I see any along the way that are superior? Hard to imagine, but if so I’ll acknowledge it and maintain my loyalty. Yosemite helped make me who I am.

Photo by Mark Twisselmann on Unsplash