Beautiful nature in the Norwegian mountains

Being born and raised in Norway, it is almost embarrassing to talk about how little I have seen of my own country. Growing up my friends would go up to the mountains and I would go on vacation to a beach somewhere abroad – although to be honest I still think that is the better option. This also means that my experiences hiking mainly comes from my brief stint as a Girl Scout and the trips I was forced to go on with school. Oh, and most of the places I have seen in my own country comes from my time on cruise ships, and that one Norwegian vacation I went on as a kid. With this in mind I decided to head up to my friends cabin in the mountains to do some hiking and re-discover what Norwegian nature is all about.

 

 

Hiking at Grotli

My friend’s cabin is at a place called Grotli, up in the mountains at about 1000 meters above sea level. It is a beautiful area with loads of small cabins, but not much else – the closest convenience store is 1 hour away. We spent a few days hiking at Grotli, starting with an “easy” 3-hour hike and increasing the difficulty levels until we hiked up a mountain on the last day. For the two first hikes I was somewhat distracted by all the pretty scenery I wanted to photograph, and by the blueberries and cloudberries growing everywhere. Just like a 5 year old I ran around picking and eating berries until both my mouth and my hands were blue. We also stopped by small mountain streams to drink some of the freshest water there is, and sometimes just stopping to relax and enjoy the scenery. We also had one small hike to a bigger lake in order to do some fishing, however it started pouring down with rain just as we got there and we ended up turning around and walking back again.

 

 

 

 

The most strenuous hike we did was up a mountaintop just behind my friends cabin. At the beginning you have to make your way through shrubs with no clear pathway until everything gives away to rocks. You also cannot hike straight up this mountain as some parts are way to steep, so you end up walking in a zig-zag pattern. While the hike up is exhausting, the views once you reach the top are totally worth it! In one direction you can see the valley with all the cabins and the big lake bordered by high mountains with a massive glacier on top. In the other direction all you see are mountaintops! As we walked towards the cairn at the top I spotted some snow a bit further away – so I decided to explore. On the way over to the snow I saw the most beautiful patterns in the rocks, and even collected some to take home with me. What I expected to be a small patch of snow turned out to be a big sheet. It was beautiful to take pictures of, and as much as I wanted to go all the way down to the snow I did not know how stable it would be and decided not to as the top of a mountain in the middle of nowhere really is not the place you want to get injured.

 

 

 

 

Rafting in Sjoa

I tried rafting for the first time last summer in Canada and really enjoyed it, and I mentioned to my friends that it would be cool to try some rafting in Norway as well. As they had never tried it, they agreed, and we drove for 2 hours to get to Sjoa, the closes place to go rafting. When we got there we were given instructions and told to change into wetsuits for the trip, we were also told that  would be a good idea to wear wool clothing underneath the wetsuits to stay warmer, but really there was not much point as the water was a balmy 17C / 63F. We were taken up the river and set off on the rafts. In the beginning they had us paddle over to this inlet where we could practice for a little bit, and also got the opportunity to get in to the water. We then headed down the river with beautiful scenery and some cool rapids – oh and “wildlife” consisting of sheep and pigs. At one point we headed down these rapids where we were told to paddle as fast as we could, something we did not manage – luckily for us the raft behind us managed to push us out of the rapid before we flipped over. The best part of the trip for me was a calm area where we were allowed to jump out off the raft and float alongside it for a while.

 

 

 

 

Loen Skylift

One of the big tourist attractions in Norway the past years have been a skylift which was installed at the end of a fjord in a community called Loen. Funnily enough the day we were there, there were 3 cruise ships in this tiny fjord, and a record-breaking 11000 tourists! We took the skylift, which is pretty much a standard gondola, up to the top of this mountain and stopped for a wile to enjoy the unbelievable view – In addition to the fjord you could also see the clear blue Loenvatnet lake. There are several hikes starting at the top of the skylift, and we decided to head out on a relatively easy 4km roundtrip. Again the hike up was intense, but the views more than made up for it – I have never seen this many mountaintops in my life! Back at the top of the skylift we stopped for Norwegian waffles before heading back down.

 

 

 

 

Music festival in Geiranger 

The last stop on our trip was in the small fjord community of Geiranger, arguably one of the most famous places in Norway. I have a friend from uni who runs the main hotel there, and she invited us to stay with her and attend a private electro festival. The festival was held in a barn on top of the famous Ørnesvingen road, with what would normally have been an incredible view of Geiranger, but when we were there it was so foggy all we could see was a white wall. The festival was really cool with fantastic music and a nice atmosphere, and really yummy cinnamon buns. We also spend time in Geiranger itself, relaxing and enjoying the scenery – and of course the delicious food at the hotel`s bistro. On the last day the sister ship of one of the ships I worked on, was in town and I actually ran into an old colleague of mine. I really enjoyed catching up.

 

 

 

 

In the end I had an amazing trip to the mountains. While I had been to some of the places before I did not remember much of them, and got to re-discover them altogether. I even got reminded of how beautiful Norway really is – and most importantly I got to spend quality time with some amazing friends!