The air temperature on the glacier does not exceed plus five Celsius even in summer, but if the sun goes away and the wind picks up, it feels like August frosts have hit. Over your equipment, you will have to put on a safety harness and helmet, strap crampons onto your boots, after which the guide will hand you a real alpenstock, also known as an ice axe, also known as the murder weapon of Leon Trotsky. The heavy-looking piece of iron unexpectedly sits comfortably and easily in your hand. Without it, you are not allowed on the ice, although for a first “beginner’s” climb it will probably not be needed. The rules are simple: don’t lag and don’t rush, stop all together, step only in the footprint of the person in front to avoid accidentally falling into a hole where the ice is especially blue (it’s just a trick of the light, the guide will explain, all ice is actually the same).
Such a climb is accessible even to an agile eight-year-old, and many indeed come here with children, including Russians. “This year,” says the guide with angelic appearance, with dignity and without a hint of boasting, “one of your oligarchs came with his children, very calm, introduced himself as Roman.”
The view from even the lower part of the glacier is quite postcard-perfect: there are bare rocks, green patches of forest below, a leaden high-mountain lake not visible from below, and a piece of deep blue fjord. Below, after descending the serpentine road along which sheep fearlessly walk, a huge area begins, entirely planted with fruit trees: apples, pears, plums, and cherries, which ripen perfectly in Hardanger, defying all our ideas of Norway as a terribly cold country.
Monks taught the local inhabitants to grow fruit as early as the 12th century; they also taught them to press juice and make cider from it, which eight centuries later, in 2009, received the status of a controlled appellation of origin (AOC), like champagne from Champagne and cognac from Cognac. A hundred years ago, cider production by Hardanger farmers reached industrial scale, but simultaneously with the proclamation of independence from Sweden, Norway established a state monopoly on the sale of alcohol. Everyone in Hardanger still makes homemade cider, but unfortunately for travelers, only for their own consumption: they are not allowed to sell it. However, cider can be tasted right at one of the local factories, and you can also see the production process.
Fruit growing remains the main occupation for the inhabitants of small towns on both sides of the Sørfjord: Lofthus, Utne, and Ulvik. The mountain slopes along the fjord are entirely planted with fruit trees. There are half a million of them – far more than people. In May they bloom together; in September the foliage turns equally together into rich red-yellow tones, and this quiet beauty approaches the highway from above, from the mountains, and from below – in the reflection of the gardens in the asphalt-still water of the fjord.
Local cherries ripen a month later than European ones, at the end of July – beginning of August, and in sweetness and size they boldly compete with the June Uzbek cherries. Cherries from Hardanger are a patented name, as are the local apples, pears, and plums. In season, patented fruit is easily sold from stalls along the road on homemade wooden tables, where you don’t even need a seller: you put your bill into a money box, you take a cardboard box of berries. And if the filled boxes are already taken, here’s an empty box for you, here’s a tree, pick yourself.
An excellent view of the gardens and Folgefonna opens from the eastern side of the fjord, from the 150-year-old Ullensvang Hotel in Lofthus. It was this landscape that inspired Edvard Grieg to write the music for “Peer Gynt.” Both in Grieg’s time and now, the hotel is run by the Urne family, although back then it was much more modest than today’s “five stars.” Grieg, for example, always stayed in the same tiny house that only fit a piano and a bed. Since then, many weddings have been held here: a white dress looks great against the dark water and bright grass.
The two most famous and very “postcard” views involving the fjord, however, are located much farther south, in the county of Rogaland. These are the perfectly flat ledge at the edge of the 600-meter precipice Preikestolen (“pulpit” in Norwegian) and the securely stuck boulder between two vertical cliffs in a crevice at a height of 1000 meters on Mount Kjerag (Kjeragsbolten). Both of these attractions, photos of which inevitably appear in any guidebook to the fjords, are located above the waters of Lysefjord.
Hiking trails have been laid to them, but climbing requires considerable patience. There will be plenty of people wanting to take photos at the edge of the world above the blue abyss, so you will have to wait at the top as well. If for some reason you don’t feel like climbing the mountain, you can view the hanging rock from the water, from the deck of a ferry (no worse than a cruise, only cheaper).
Lysefjord begins near another ancient city of Norway – Stavanger, the capital of fatty Norwegian herring and (one does not interfere with the other) oil production, the basis of the kingdom’s current prosperity. Getting onto the oil platforms, which look like huge futuristic houses on stilts, is difficult, but you can visit the oil museum. There is also a canning museum in the city, including herring canning. Besides herring, they also prepare other food excellently: each year a large gastronomic festival, the largest in Northern Europe, takes place in Stavanger.
As for herring itself, as well as mackerel with a moiré skin, cod, and halibut, it is worth going fishing further south, in Farsund, to the very quiet (unless a wedding has arrived) Farsund Resort. A very diverse crowd comes here to fish: families with children, men’s groups, and business colleagues. Fishing for horse mackerel in the open sea with a spinning rod, which at first seems catastrophically melancholic, turns out to be a choleric activity.
First of all, you should put on a professional fisherman's overall, waterproof and warm – exactly like a Teletubby outfit. This comical garment will reliably protect from wind and cold that comes from the sea water even in summer. It will take about 40 minutes to get to the fishing spot by motorboat, winding between islands with rare colorful houses. ('Meine Frau,' the mustachioed and taciturn captain, as imagination demanded, will say at some point, pointing at a yellow house, and fall silent for another hour and a half.)
It's better, though unsportsmanlike, if the boat has an echo sounder. If you're lucky enough to find a school of mackerel, even an inexperienced fisherman will pull a dozen thick autumn fish from the gray water in an hour, previously familiar only as headless smoked fish. And if the school is large and dense, the horse mackerel risks catching on hooks even with its sides, back, and other unreliable parts.
You can cook the catch yourself (cottages with 3-4 bedrooms have a full kitchen), or you can persuade the chefs at the local restaurant Moll&Nielsen to smoke it or prepare an unexpected horse mackerel sashimi. Norwegian laws allow exporting up to 15 kg of caught sea fish from the country (the restriction does not apply to catching salmon, sea trout, and crayfish in rivers, but for such fishing you need to buy a license from the landowner) plus one large trophy fish. The size of the trophy is limited at maximum only by luck, and at minimum by law: you cannot catch cod shorter than 40 cm, pollock and horse mackerel shorter than 32 cm, halibut shorter than 80 cm. These numbers, promising serious fishing, warm the heart of even a novice fisherman.
It is worth including Norway in the list of potential destinations primarily for those who value the opportunity to spend a vacation away from the broad masses of compatriots, and for those who travel with a diverse group and are afraid that there will be nowhere to escape for a day or two if needed. Yes, there are still not many travelers from Russia in Norway, including at the increasingly popular ski resorts, but there are many English people from cities on the other side of the North Sea. Not that this matters to everyone – but for those it does, keep it in mind.
And yes, in Norway it's easy for a group to split up. Don't want to climb mountains? Go canoeing. Don't want to row? Go for a walk along the doll-like embankments of fishing towns. Don't want a city? Hide on a farm and press cider with the locals. Don't want to see anyone? That option is also possible. In Norway it's easy and, most importantly, pleasant to be alone with yourself. Sometimes, you know, you really want to.