Gudvangen and Flåm

Previously on Joel’s Journeys & Jaunts, this morning I enjoyed a Nærøyfjorden Cruise that took me from Flåm to Gudvangen, Norway. As I noted in that post, I intentionally spent more than three-and-a-half hours in Gudvangen before catching a shuttle bus back to Flåm. Now that you’re caught up, let’s proceed with this afternoon’s episode.

Gudvangen looks smaller than Flåm to me, but some towns in the mountains have a way of hiding portions of themselves in hidden valleys, so I’m not sure. I saw only a couple of restaurants, a few residences, a hotel, and a Viking Village.

Viking Village at Gudvangen

“Hey, Murgatroyd. Wake up! That damn fool said there’s a Viking Village in Gudvangen, Norway. I think he’s pulling our legs.”

No, ma’am I never pull legs without first getting informed consent.

That’s what they call it. Viking Village. I might have missed a relevant sign, but at the site, I saw it named only “Viking Village.” But I found it on the web and there they gave their fictional village a name, Njardarheimr.

It’s a collection of 30 wood buildings, many with sod roofs, that is supposed to represent a Norwegian Viking village. People walking around the village (not the paying customers) were allegedly dressed like Vikings. (How would I know if they really were dressed like Vikings? I don’t usually travel in Viking circles.)

The person at the entrance said they are Vikings, but I’m skeptical. I want to see reliable DNA evidence before I’ll accept that.

There was a blacksmith who was working a bellows when I walked by. Other alleged Vikings undertook other alleged Viking activities.

Guests could line up to try archery and axe throwing. Those were two separate activities at separate locations. There weren’t archers and axe throwers going for the same target. I hate to think what the Viking Village’s liability insurance premiums are.

There was also a roped-off area with chickens and roosters. One of the roosters wandered a bit out of the roped-off area. This elicited a lot of squawking from the other fowl. I don’t speak chicken, but I’m pretty sure they were saying something to the effect of, “Fred, you damn fool! Get back here this instant! There are humans out there. Don’t you know they dismember and devour our kind? You’re going to get yourself killed!”

Fred quickly returned to the roped-off area.

Admission to the Viking Village includes a free guided tour of the place. As is my habit, I just missed the start of one. Rather than wait a half-hour for the next, I joined the one already in progress.

When I caught up with them, the guide dressed as a Viking was speaking in front of a Viking boat. I missed what came before it, but he said that when the Vikings first raided England and France, those countries paid Vikings to go home and leave them alone. The Vikings took the bribe and dutifully went home. Upon their return, they told their compatriots about their experience with the French and English. Their compatriots then went to England and France to be paid to go home too.

I’m not sure I completely buy that story. Or maybe the Vikings initially took the bribes, but then later took over parts of, at least, the British Isles. I don’t know the chronology or how that dominion came about. And I have no idea if there were any periods or places in France that ever had Viking rule.

I say this because I’ve been to some places in the British Isles that speak of their histories of Viking rule. York, England and Waterford, Ireland are two.

The guide then walked over to spin a yarn. Literally. He took some raw wool and started combing it vigorously. Then, he took an already-started spindle of yarn, twisted one end of a small handful of the combed wool onto the end of the existing yarn, and dropped the spindle so it was hanging above the ground while he held his as-of-yet unspun combed wool. He then twirled it in a process called drop spinning. He said that in the Viking days, they didn’t have spinning wheels and drop spinning was how they did it.

His efforts created a very credible extension of the yarn.

The guide also told us which plants were used to create dyes of each of the then-available colours and the processes that were necessary to do it. For example, some dyes had to be heated to within a reasonably narrow temperature range to get the correct colour.

The Viking’s method of fixing colours so they wouldn’t bleed out was rather gross. They used ammonia to do the job. They got ammonia from pee. The guide said, although I admit to some skepticism, that when the Vikings needed ammonia to fix colours they drank a lot of beer so they would pee a lot. How would anyone know that? Did the Vikings leave a record of having drunk a lot of beer for that purpose? Maybe they did. I don’t know.

The collected pee was left out in the sun for a couple of weeks until it reeked. The Vikings then had ammonia. 

The guide next moved on to a table with a small collection of Viking-style weapons, a plywood reproduction of a Viking shield, and a reproduction of a Viking helmet. He held up a single-headed axe and said that double-headed Viking axes are Hollywood phantasies. Lots of single-headed axes have been found in Viking graves but, according to the guide, there’s never been a Viking double-edged axe found, nor has there been any indication of them.

The guide held up the recreation of a Viking helmet and asked his audience what was missing from the recreation. Had I known it was a trick question I would have known the answer. The answer is nothing, but Hollywood depicts Viking masks with horns. As I mentioned in my write-up of the History Museum in Oslo, I already knew their helmets didn’t have horns.

The guide ended his tour in a small area with some poles stuck in the ground. The tops of the poles bore painted carvings of some of the Norse gods. He talked a bit about the Norse religion and their afterlife beliefs. Warriors who died bravely in battle went to Valhalla, which was the purview of Odin, a Norse god who forfeited one of his eyes in return for getting all of the knowledge of the world.

There’s also a Hel, but it has nothing to do with the Christian idea of hell. The similarity of the names is purely coincidental. It was just the place where people who died innocently of natural causes went.

There was a separate afterlife for people who drowned at sea. I forget its name or the name of the deity responsible for it, but according to the guide, legend had it that the deity made the best beer in the world. The guide thought that if you couldn’t die valiantly in battle and go to Valhalla you should try to die by drowning. To be honest, I’d rather not die, period. But, I don’t think I’ll get that choice.

One of the customers asked the guide if there had been a Viking village at that location. He answered, no. There had been a Viking farm and Viking burial mounds in the general area, but there was no evidence of a Viking village in what’s now Gudvangen.

Wandering Gudvangen

A little after I arrived in Gudvangen a group of people who had rented kayaks were being launched into the fjord. I don’t think most of them were seasoned kayakers, just tourists who thought it would be cool to try kayaking.

The staff of the kayak rental place outfitted them and gave them instructions. The customers then got into the kayaks still on the shore and the staff pushed them into the fjord and told them to stay in the bay near the rental place. Some of the customers had some problems maneuvering their kayaks and the staff gave them detailed, advanced instructions like, “paddle.”

I wasn’t there long enough to see if they ever got out much beyond the shoreline.

Speaking of the shoreline, on the shore there’s a wooden Viking statue. They like their Vikings here. Or they think it will draw tourists. Probably the latter.

I walked around Gudvangen a bit, I don’t think there is much more than a bit to it. There are some quaint residences along the street. And just outside of the village in the other direction from the residences, three waterfalls cascade down a mountain ridge. Waterfalls aren’t unusual in the area. However, these three falls are significantly separated at the top of the ridge, but they merge into a single waterfall by the time it reaches the base.

Bus from Gudvangen to Flåm

I mentioned this morning that the cruise from Flåm to Gudvangen took almost two hours. The bus back from Gudvangen to Flåm took only 20 minutes. The reason is that the cruise has to follow the U-shaped fjord(s) around strings of mountains. The bus takes a shorter route.

Very shortly after the bus left Gudvangen it entered a tunnel. It travelled in that tunnel for quite some time and then emerged into a lovely green valley. The bus travelled across the valley for a minute or two and then entered another tunnel. It stayed in that tunnel and exited only a couple minutes’ drive away from the main part of Flåm.

I worry that Norway is going to collapse because of all of its tunnels. Yes, I worry about pretty much everything.

Back in Flåm

Upon my return to Flåm, I visited the Flåm Railway Museum. Entry to the small museum is free, but to enter and exit you have to walk through a souvenir shop.

The museum contains a topographical model of the mountain the railway is on and in, information panels, and a bunch of old black-and-white photographs of the railway, its construction, and related buildings.

There was also a small roped-off room. Visitors are welcome to peer inside from behind the rope. Inside there’s an old wooden spinning wheel and a mannequin. If there was a sign saying how that relates to the Flåm Railway I couldn’t find it. Maybe it was just to rub the Vikings’ noses in it for not having spinning wheels.

A room at the back of the museum houses the railway’s first electric locomotive, along with some old service vehicles, including, essentially, a bicycle on rails and some motorcycles on rails.

A video was playing in the museum. It was a guy answering interview questions about the railway. The audio was in Norwegian with English subtitles. He hadn’t worked on the construction of the Flåm Railway (he was too young to have done so), but he had worked on the railway for, I think he said 20 years and seemed to know everything about it. Plus, he had known people from an older generation who did work on the construction and they told him their stories, but have since died. In the video, he relayed a lot of that information.

One unrelated tidbit he mentioned when talking about the electrification of the railway is that cruise ships will be banned from the fjord after 2026. So that scenery-blocking cruise ship that was in the port this morning won’t be allowed after that. And they’re even talking about banning all ships with emission levels that are too high. I’m pleased to say that the boat I was on this morning on the Næriyfjorden Cruise was electric-powered. The company that runs it has at least one twin boat. I know this because the two crossed paths (at a safe distance apart, of course) this morning.

After the museum, I went on a 45-minute “road train” ride. The vehicle was one of those things you sometimes see in amusement parks. It had three open-sided, unpowered coaches with a few benches wide enough for three or four people in each coach. The coaches were hitched to each other and the front one was hitched to the “locomotive,” a vehicle dressed up with a non-steaming steam locomotive smoke stack stuck up front. The locomotive and coaches were all rubber-wheeled and went on the regular road.

On the trip I learned that Flåm has a lovely, green valley that extends a fair piece back before mountains pinch it off. There’s more Flåm there than I realized existed. It’s probably still not enough to push it past village status; maybe to a small town, at most. But there’s more than what’s near the waterfront.

There was a commentary on the train and I learned that there used to be more farming in the valley, but now most of the residents work in tourism or public services.

Flåm’s original town was in the valley. Just before the train had to turn around because it ran out of road, it passed Flåm’s small, quaint old church.

After driving back down the valley to the waterfront, the train drove along a road beside the fjord for a piece. It was all very pretty.

Flåm Summary

Earlyish tomorrow morning I’m scheduled to catch the first of two trains (the Flåm Railway) that will eventually take me back to Oslo. The following day I’m scheduled to catch a flight back home. This being my last day in Flåm, a summary is in order.

Except for the food (so-so), I can’t say much about Flåm that doesn’t include superlatives. There isn’t much to “do” in Flåm other than bliss out on the beauty and take a fjord cruise. I’m not someone who likes to just sit around while travelling, but I would have liked at least one more day here just to absorb the gorgeousness of the place and its surroundings.

Perhaps I would have taken one of the somewhat longer hikes. Or maybe I would have spent more time in Gudvangen and tried kayaking. I’ve canoed, but I’ve never kayaked. “Paddle.”

I’m sorry to leave Flåm behind.