Journey to Flåm

I left beautiful Bergen, Norway on a train this morning and made my way to Flåm, still in Norway. The journey required two trains, Bergen to Myrdal and Myrdal to Flåm.

The total scheduled trip time was just under three and three-quarter hours, with about two-and-a-half hours for the Bergen to Myrdal run, about an hour for Myrdal to Flåm, and an almost fifteen-minute connection time.

Bergen to Myrdal

I didn’t time it, so this is only an estimate, but I think the view outside the window for at least half of the journey from, Bergen to Myrdal was black.

Tunnels. We spent a lot of time in tunnels. I’ve mentioned tunnels in other journal entries during this trip. Train tunnels. Road tunnels. I’ve been through great lengths of both in Norway.

If someone told me that Norway has tunnels exclusively for transporting tunnel-boring machines, I’d believe them. Yes, I know. I can be too gullible at times, but, still, there are a lot of tunnels in Norway.

And thank goodness for them. The scenery out the window in a tunnel might be bleak, black, and, not to put too fine a point on it, nonexistent, but with all of the tightly packed mountains here, I can’t imagine how long a journey from point A to point B would take if the railways or roads had to wend their way through valleys and passes.

Without tunnels, travelling across Norway would probably span generations. I exaggerate, but still, tunnels significantly shorten travel times.

When not in tunnels, the scenery was glorious. We spent a considerable time travelling beside a long body of water that I assume is one of Norway’s numerous fjords. We also passed a clear stream with its water burbling over a bed of rocks and stones. (I assumed it burbled because that’s what streams of that nature do. But I couldn’t hear it on the train.)

At another spot, we travelled for a piece alongside a somewhat larger river with aquamarine water rushing over a rough riverbed.

And when not travelling through them in tunnels, we journeyed past a great many mountains of various shapes and sizes. Some were forested up to the summit, but others had sheer, craggy, grey-brown rock faces. Small waterfalls occasionally rushed down the mountains.

We passed several mountain ridges with patches of snow at the top. Today was fairly warm and, while the ridges were quite tall, they didn’t appear to be the tallest mountains I saw on today’s journey. I didn’t spot snow on those seemingly taller mountains. Although, it’s possible we travelled through snow-capped mountains in tunnels.

And it’s likely that the ridges only appeared shorter than some other mountains because they were somewhat farther in the distance.

In addition to the mountains, we also passed a few small verdant valleys with pastures, farms and homes. Here and there, charming wood homes with walls painted ochre, brown, white, or one of a few other colours dotted the mountainsides where they could. And small towns—or, at a couple of stops, they looked no larger than small hamlets, if that—sat by stations along the way.

What a resplendent country Norway is.

Myrdal to Flåm

The train from Bergen was late getting into Myrdal. It arrived roughly when the train to Flåm was supposed to leave. But because just about everyone on my train got off at Myrdal to transfer to the famed Flåm Railway, including a large tour group that had reserved a whole car or two, and joined the passengers already on board, they held the train for a couple of minutes to accommodate the connections.

But before getting into the train ride, let’s clear up a couple of points. First, the “famed” Flåm Railway. It is famed, and as will soon become apparent, that fame is due. That said, I hadn’t heard of the Flåm Railway before starting to plan this trip. But a couple of Norway travel resources I looked at featured it prominently. And they should have made an even bigger deal of it.

Second, because this entry heads into and spends time in Flåm this is a good time to talk about the pronunciation of “Flåm.” If you, like me, are a unilingual anglophone, you might think that Flåm is pronounced like flam, as in flimflam man. Or maybe you wouldn’t assume that. The point is, I did. Before I came to Norway that’s how I thought it was pronounced.

It’s not. It’s pronounced more like “plum,” but with an “f” instead of the “p” and just a soupçon of a soft “a” sound melded seamlessly in the “u” sound.

I learned this when a waitress in one of the cities I visited previously here, I forget which, asked me where else I was going in Norway. When I listed Oslo, Kristiansand, Stavanger, and Bergen (omitting whichever city it was I was in) she had no problem whatsoever understanding me. I’m sure I was well off the correct pronunciation, but I was close enough that she knew immediately where I was talking about.

But when I told her Flåm, which I pronounced as flam, a look of extreme confusion invaded her face and laid siege to it.

“Where,” she asked.

I repeated “flam,” thinking she just didn’t hear me.

“Where?”

I spelled it for her.

“Is there a circle over the a?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, that makes it flum [my best attempt at phonetic spelling], not flam.”

Schooled and embarrassed, I now know the correct pronunciation of Flåm. I probably still don’t pronounce it correctly because Norwegian pronunciation can be so finicky (see “shilling” vs “shilling” for the word spelling “skilling” in the linked entry). But I can now get close enough that Norwegians can figure out where I’m talking about.

Flåm Railway

The endpoints of the single-line Flåm Railway are Myrdal and Flåm. Myrdal’s elevation is 867 metres. Flåm is beside a fjord and sits at 27 metres. The Flåm Railway journey spans that elevation change. The parts that aren’t in tunnels are spectacular.

Outside the window were steep, craggy mountains, with several waterfalls plunging down them. At one point, an announcement in the train directed our attention out the left window to see the road down into Flåm with its many hairpin turns descending quickly down the mountain.

There were a few stops on the line. One was at a station where, apart from the small station hut, I didn’t see any other structures other than one house built a piece up the mountain from the station. But there was a dirt road beside the station. One car and a few cyclists were in the small lot.

Almost all of the Flåm Railway, except for the two endpoints, is single track. There is one short section of double track, which is at one of the intermediate stations. When we got to that station, a train going up was there waiting for us to clear the track so it could proceed.

One of the stops had only a wide wooden platform beside it and no other buildings in sight. The train stopped there for five minutes and let all of the passengers out. I’m glad they did. It was a viewing platform that affords views of a thundering waterfall with bountiful foaming white water plunging down the mountainside

On one side of the waterfall is a verdant mountainside. The other side is mostly bare rock. It was breathtaking.

While the train was stopped and the passengers were on the platform, triumphant music played over a hidden speaker somewhere outside. A small plateau on the mountain sits on the verdant side of the waterfall. A woman in a red dress danced a flowing dance on the plateau while we were there. That part was almost surreal.

There were video screens at each end of each car of the train. Sometimes they displayed pictures from around the area. Other times they provided factoids about the Flåm Railway. When we went through tunnels, providing nothing to see out the window, I looked at the screen.

From it, I learned that 18 of 20 tunnels of the Flåm Railway were carved by hand.

Another factoid I learned is that the Fråm railway opened in 1941. It ran steam trains for the first few years, but it was electrified in 1944. I can’t imagine how people survived the tunnels while being pulled by a smoke-belching steam locomotive.

Then again, on the downward trip, they could probably shut off the engines and just use the brakes. Going up, on the other hand, would be a different story.

Because there were already a lot of people on the Flåm Railway train when my train from Bergen arrived, I didn’t get a window seat. Because I didn’t have a window seat, I didn’t bother trying to take any pictures out the window. Sorry about that. But you do have the picture above of the waterfall at the viewing platform. I hope that suffices.

In Flåm

Flåm is a village at the end of a fjord (the Aurlandsfjorden) which is a branch of a long, interconnected string of forking fjords. No, “forking” is not some sort of typo or a coy substitute for an expletive. Several fjords connected to Aurlandsfjorden fork off other fjords. Looking at a map of Norway, that seems to be the way of most fjords here.

If Yogi Bera had been Norwegian, he probably would have said, “When you come to a fork in the fjord, take it,” rather than a fork in the road. That wouldn’t have been any less ridiculous, but at least it would have benefited from alliteration.

Close to the fjord, Flåm consists of a few residences, a few restaurants, a few hotels, a grocery store, souvenir shops, ferry docks, a small marina, a small port that didn’t have a cruise ship in it this afternoon, parking for cars and tour buses, and the most awe-inspiring surroundings you’re ever likely to find. Other locales may equal the scenery, but it would be difficult to beat it.

(I said “close to the fjord” because I think there’s more along the road through a bit of a valley from Flåm, but I’m not sure.)

Mountains surround Flåm. Yes, there’s the fjord, but there’s a sharp bend in the fjord a little way from Flåm and there are mountains on both sides of the fjord. So mountains truly do surround Flåm.

That being said, behind Flåm there’s a somewhat gentle hill in front of more mountains behind it. There are interconnected hiking trails on the hill. Most of those trails are quite short, but there are some longer trails elsewhere. I think they go into the mountain valleys, but I’m not sure.

I arrived in Flåm at lunchtime. So, after checking into my hotel, lunch was my first activity in Flåm. Today was mostly sunny and warm. I ate a simple Caesar salad and a glass of wine on the patio of a casual café up a slight hill. My table had a view of the village, the fjord, and the mountains. What could be better?

After lunch, I hiked some of the short trails on the hill. The village, or whoever created and maintains the trails, strategically situated benches and chairs, usually at spots that offer stupendously spectacular scenery rather than merely spectacular, very spectacular, or extremely spectacular scenery.

I spent considerable time on those benches gazing at the extraordinary vistas. I hoped to absorb the brawny beauty of the majestic mountains through osmosis and transfer it to my physique and visage. When I got back to the hotel I looked in the mirror. I regret to inform you that my hope remains unfilled.

The hill is gentle enough that, while I certainly noticed I was climbing, I didn’t realize I had hiked up particularly high. But when I reached the highest point I got to and looked back out at the village and fjord below I saw I had indeed put a little elevation between me and the fjord level.

Between a couple of the paths is a fenced-in space of shrubs, grass, and trees. Two chunky horses grazed there.

I’m in Flåm for two nights, so, after today, I have one full day here. I leave the following morning.

Speaking of booking Flåm for two nights, Flåm played a major role in setting the schedule for this trip. As soon as I started planning I knew I wanted to come here. I also knew it was a small and very popular place. So the first thing I checked was hotel availability in Flåm. There were no decent rooms available on the dates I originally picked. I looked at other dates and found availability a couple of weeks later than that.

I originally planned to do the circle of southern Norway that I’m on during this trip in the opposite direction that I’m doing it. Flåm was going to be my first stop after Oslo, rather than the last stop before returning to Oslo to catch my flight back home.

But to push my arrival in Flåm off to when I could get a decent hotel room, I shifted the starting and ending dates for my Norwegian trip ahead one week and reversed the order of travel from my original plan.

Oh, and because I read that it can sell out, I booked the activity I’m doing tomorrow morning well before I left Canada. No, I’m not going to tell you what it is. But if you’ve been following my journal entries on this Norwegian trip and you try to guess what it is, I’m highly confident that you’ll guess correctly.