The Norwegian Countryside

Hank Shiffman Wyświetlono: 618 razy 2003-11-26 21:01:16

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Norway is far more mountainous than the rest of Scandinavia. (Would you believe that the highest hill in Denmark is less than four hundred feet? Not even meters; feet!)
I've received quite a lot of nice comments from people who've visited my site. And the occasional complaint, usually from someone who didn't think much of my attempts at humor. But there was one group of complaints I couldn't ignore so easily. Those came from Norwegian visitors who were bothered by my pictures of Denmark, Sweden and Finland. How, they asked, could I have missed Norway? I had let slip the best part of Scandinavia!

So when I finally qualified for my sabbatical from SGI I decided that Norway had to be part of my travel plans. And so it was: one week of a three week coach tour that also included my first visits to Estonia and Russia, as well as return visits to Denmark, Sweden and Finland. I wasn't sure how I would take to such a long time in such close quarters, never mind checking in and out of hotels nearly every day. But I was worried over nothing; by the end of the trip all I could think about was where to go next. What a pity sabbaticals come only every four years...

Norway is far more mountainous than the rest of Scandinavia. (Would you believe that the highest hill in Denmark is less than four hundred feet? Not even meters; feet!) But coming overland from Sweden it would take a while before we saw the change. The first sights that impressed me were all the crystal clear lakes, with surfaces so perfect they created a symmetric image of hills, trees and sky. Next was the haphazard positioning of farms on every hill. It seems that every bit of even remotely level land was under cultivation. And so it is; with arable land accounting for only 4% of the country the Norwegians are hard pressed to find enough space to grow crops. Norway is also the only place I've been where prices are higher when produce is in season. Government policy prevents importation of cheaper produce when a local alternative is available. As a result, prices drop considerably as soon as the local product is gone. Which means the cost of living drops to merely exorbitant from completely insane!

All the snow and all those mountains mean a lot of water. There are waterfalls and rushing rivers everywhere you look. And with arable land at a premium the locals won't let a little thing like lack of rainfall get in the way. Like the residents of Lom, a little town that's home to one of a very few stave churches to survive the eight centuries since St. Olaf decided that Christianity was a better bet than Paganism. (The locals wanted it both ways. So they decorated the roof of the church with dragons and other symbols of their earlier beliefs. But I digress.) Anyway, Lom gets so little water that it would qualify as desert anywhere else in the world. But the determined Norwegians learned long ago to divert the mountain runoffs to irrigate their fields.

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