Mostraumen Fjord Cruise
In my entry from yesterday afternoon, on my third full day in Bergen, Norway, I alluded to already having something planned for this morning, but I didn’t say what it was. The more astute among you likely deduced from the subtle clue I cleverly hid in the headline on this post, that the activity was a Mostraumen Fjord Cruise.
Before I get deep into that, you deserve considerable clarity. If I had it, I would certainly give it to you. But I’m somewhat confused. Somewhat confused is a near-constant general state for me, but I’m confused about something specific today.
Here’s what I’m confused about. “Mostraumen Fjord Cruise” is what the company that runs it calls the journey in its sales pitch, but I don’t know if Mostraumen is a fjord. The body of the cruise description refers to the “Mostraumen fjord.” The lower-case “fjord” makes me think Maustraumen is a region and we were in a fiord in that region. But I don’t know.
A web search for “Mostraumen Fjord” turned up only pages about cruises titled “Mostraumen Fjord Cruise” run by the company that runs the one I went on and at least one other. But it turned up nothing about a Mostraumen Fjord other than mentions on those cruise websites.
I think there’s some possibility that Mostraumen starts as a channel but becomes a fjord when it narrows, but I’m not sure.
Elsewhere in the cruise’s bumf, it mentions that the cruise goes through “narrow fjords,” plural. That served to confuse me even more. Were we in multiple fjords? If so, which ones? The online cruise description didn’t mention the names of other fjords.
I heard the commentary on the cruise mention Osterfjorden, which I know is a real fjord, but I couldn’t make out if it said that’s what we were in or if we just passed by the entrance to it.
But enough about that. I was in a fjord or some fjords. Let’s move on.
Mostraumen Fjord Cruise Vessel
The company that ran the Lysefjord cruise I took out of Stavanger is the same one that ran the more-than-three-hour cruise I took today. Today’s vessel was perhaps a bit smaller than the Lysefjord one, but, after some internal debate, I referred to the earlier one as a ship rather than a boat. I’ll follow the same convention for this one.
The Mostraumen ship’s configuration was a little different. Like the Lysefjord ship, the lower deck was almost entirely an enclosed cabin with lots of chairs, some tables, and a snack bar.
The upper deck on today’s ship was mostly open space, with much less seating (only a few short benches) than on the Lysefjord ship. Unlike the Lysefjord ship, there was no small observation level above the upper deck on the Mostraumen ship.
As with the Lysefjord ship, the only enclosed space on the upper deck was the closed cabin where the captain ran the ship. The Mostraumen ship lacked the open, publicly accessible aisles on either side of the captain’s cabin that the Lysefjord ship had. Instead, in these spaces, there was an opaque front wall a little way behind the bow* on either side of the captain’s cabin. The wall was almost shoulder height for me. A flat surface extended from the top of the wall to the bow.
(* The “bow” is the front of the ship, right? I’m not very nautical. If it isn’t then please mentally rewrite the preceding paragraph accordingly.)
This wall and surface obstructed the view out front, where the best vistas into the fjord would have been.
I would be a giant among hobbits or munchkins, but not among many human populations over the age of eight. To snap a picture pointing in front of the ship, I had to hold my phone up as high as I could to shoot over the obstruction. Even people of normal height or higher held their cameras higher than they normally would when taking pictures in that direction.
The sides and back of the open deck had walls that came up to not all that much above my waist and afforded good views of the mountainous borders of the fjord. That’s where I spent most of the cruise. However, a picture straight onto a lens-filling sheer cliff is not as dramatic as seeing that cliff lining the side of the fjord.
Oh, by the way, as you might have gathered from my mention of hearing Osterfjorden on it, there was an occasional recorded commentary played during the “Mostraumen” cruise, including an introduction just as we were getting underway. The introductory comments referred to the open upper deck as the “sun deck.”
Um, no. At least not when we set out. Then, I’d accept “cloud deck,” “gloom deck,” or “menacing sky deck”. But not “sun deck.” To be fair, it never rained, not even a drizzle, and we had some blue patches, but we didn’t have full sun at any point in the “Mostraumen” cruise.
The Mostraumen Fjord Cruise
After leaving Bergen harbour, the ship started barreling along rapidly through what I think was already the Mostraumen channel by then, but I’m not sure. It’s only natural that the ship would barrel rapidly then because barreling slowly defies the laws of semantics.
Not far into the channel, we passed some salmon farming net pens in the channel. At this point, the commentary explained a bit about salmon farming. I was already hip to most of the information, and more, thanks to my visit to the Aquaculture Visitor Centre yesterday. But the commentary added something I didn’t know. The disembodied recorded voice said that Norwegians invented salmon sushi as a way of increasing salmon exports to Japan. (To be clear, Norwegians didn’t invent sushi. Just salmon as sushi.)
Later, we entered a fjord. The Mostraumen fjord? The Osterfjorden? Some other fjord? I don’t know. I couldn’t make out what the voice said.
I did hear the voice say that many fish species swim in the fjord. The voice listed the species, but I forgot all but two of them, cod and small sharks.
I also made out clearly that in the winter some orcas sometimes come into the fjord. Being a top predator of fish and other sea-based creatures, which is how they got their nickname of “killer whale,” orcas are probably familiar with all of the species that swim in the fjord. But I bet they don’t know the English names of any of them. So, Joel, 2; Orcas, 0.
The voice told us when we entered the fjord, but I couldn’t tell where the channel ended and the fjord started just by looking.
The mouth of the fjord looked as wide as the channel and the shorelines appeared pretty much identical. Those shores were mostly forested hills and mountains, with towns, villages, and hamlets dotted here and there.
Farther into the fjord, the mountains rose higher and were steeper. There were also fewer habitations.
Still farther in, the mountains became yet higher, steeper, and more rugged, and the fjord narrowed somewhat.
At a few points, at fairly sharp bends in the canal, the ship slowed to a crawl. Okay, “crawl” is an exaggeration. Any baby who crawled that fast would win the Summer Olympic Games speed-crawling event hands down. Then again, hands down is the only way to win a speed-crawling race. If you have both your hands in the air at any moment in the race the judges disqualify you.
(The lack of a speed crawling event in the Olympics is proof that our civilization lacks a true spirit of friendly competition open to all.)
The ship picked up speed again after navigating the bends, but not to the speed it travelled in the more open channel and wider mouth of the canal.
Despite the mountains being more rugged as we got deeper into the fjord, there was still room at the base of them for a road and villages and hamlets.
At one point, I saw the road head straight for a mountain with a sheer rock face that plunges straight down into the water of the fjord. I thought there was no way the road could continue. Then I saw how it did indeed continue. A tunnel. This piddly little road warrants a tunnel through the mountain.
In my post about the journey from Stavanger to Bergen, I mentioned going through a large number of tunnels, some of them very long, on that bus trip. And I’ve experienced tunnels elsewhere during my time in Norway.
I get the sense that Norwegians laugh at impassable mountains, which suggests an exceptionally eccentric sense of humour. But when they stop laughing they bore a tunnel to push through the impasse. You’ve got to hand it to the Norwegians. I don’t know what you have to hand them, but be kind and make it something nice. In my experience here, they are good people.
As we chugged along, the high mountains and the rugged cliffs dramatically meeting the water made for spectacular scenes.
Just before the ship turned around, we passed a point where there were two small waterfalls, one on either side of the fjord. They were gorgeous. (When I said “small,” I didn’t mean that they were just a trickle, but small relative to, say, the Horseshoe Falls at Niagra Falls.
Also at that turning point, there was a glen nestled into the mountains and a town on the glen.
Not far from there, on the way back to Bergen the commentary pointed out a small schoolhouse on one of the only pieces of reasonably flat land on the side of the fjord. The commentary said that they built the schoolhouse close to the shore because most students arrive by boat.
Mostraumen fjord or not. It was an extremely enjoyable cruise, with more than a few moments of truly dazzling scenery.
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Well, glad to hear that you had fun on the fjords (what difference which ones?). It certainly did look spectacular, and that tiny schoolhouse in the middle of nowhere was too picturesque to be true. Oh, to be a child in Norway and go to school on a boat! You didn’t have to, but it looks like you are making up for lost boating time on this trip. What fun!
I did have fun on the cruise.And that schoolhouse isn’t too good be be true. I saw it with my own eyes. It was from a distance, true. And my eyes aren’t particularly good anymore. But I did indeed see it. I swear.