Bergen, a member of the Hanseatic League of free trading cities, is 80 years older than Moscow and in the 13th century was even the capital of Norway. Almost throughout its long history, the city traded dried cod: it bought from fishermen in the north of the peninsula and sold to merchants in the north of the continent. For at least 300 years, Bergen greeted travelers with the same landscape as today: a square main square, a fish market with the morning catch, and colorful houses tightly packed in a row (so that a returning sailor could see them from afar). Their gingerbread beauty is so genuinely pleasing that you don't immediately believe it's a very, very careful reconstruction of what survived numerous fires.
Only in the 20th century, Bergen burned twice, in 1916 and 1955, and there was also a colossal explosion in the port of Bergen in 1944, when on Adolf Hitler's birthday, 124 tons of explosives detonated in the holds of the Dutch cargo ship "Forbode" that had come in for repairs. Sabotage was suspected, but the investigation showed that the explosion was caused by spontaneous combustion. The wave raised by the explosion threw ships that had entered the harbor onto the shore and demolished part of the waterfront. Urban legend says the wave height was over 100 meters. There is no photographic evidence of this, but the anchor of the "Forbode" was later found on one of the seven hills surrounding Bergen, at an altitude of nearly 400 meters.
In Bergen, the road to Hardanger begins – a region surrounding the third longest Norwegian fjord (it's less than an hour's drive to the water). Hardangerfjord, reminiscent of a figure caught in an ecstatic dance, extends inland with its branches for more than 100 km. Almost along its entire length, two-lane roads accompany it. The views are magical, but the driver will have to look not around but straight ahead, so as not to accidentally leave their lane. The mountains along the fjord banks rise so steeply that winning an extra half meter of width for the road is sheer luxury, so the width of the road along the fjord equals the width of two cars plus ten centimeters for the dividing line.
Like all Norwegian fjords, Hardangerfjord owes its appearance to a glacier that covered this land with a three-kilometer layer 2.5 million years ago. As it retreated, the glacier deeply tore the rock. Now the water divides the mountain in a ratio of about two to one: 1,000 m (and sometimes 1,500) above water and another 500 m below (maximum depth is nearly 900 m). If there is anything in the world that so easily rehabilitates and brings back to reality the metaphor of "water surface," it is the water of the fjords – stretched smoothly, very smoothly, without a wrinkle, a thick gouache blue. This pedantic evenness and smoothness reflects the world above so plausibly and clearly that dizziness is not far off: above your head is the sky, under your feet is the sky. And where are you? Nowhere. You don't exist at all.
At the ancient town of Utne (the shorter and simpler the name, the older the Norwegian settlement), Hardangerfjord branches into three arms. The one that goes east runs into the Sima valley and ends in a dead end of water as calm as everywhere else. You would never guess that here is hidden one of the most powerful hydroelectric power plants in Europe. All the rooms of the HPP are inside the mountain: both the 200-meter machine hall and the 700-meter shaft cut into the rock. Tours are conducted three times a day to the machine hall – you just need to put on a helmet, and at Christmas, jazz concerts are held right among the turbines. The acoustics are not spoiled even by the 10-meter rotor displayed in the hall. It has already served its time, but still shines like new.
The first hydroelectric power plant appeared here almost 100 years ago in the mountains above the Sima valley, in the village of Kjesen. The father of the family, a farmer, built a micro hydropower plant for his own use. His daughter, a kind lady over 80, still lives in the farmhouse (though it's no longer lit by its own electricity) and receives guests. As a child, she walked to school in the valley, daily climbing and descending half a kilometer in elevation; now Kjesen can be reached by car. The road cut into the mountain is narrow, so traffic here is reversible: traffic up – every hour on the hour, traffic down – every half hour.
From the Sima valley, it's not far to the most famous Norwegian waterfall – Vøringsfossen, a column of white boiling water with a drop of 182 meters. Here and there, small clouds of water mist depart from the falling water, only to shatter against the edge of the stone bowl enclosing the stream. At the top and bottom, there are viewing platforms with parking and souvenir shops. From the top point to the bottom, you can walk in an hour and a half, and you need to look not only at the falling water but also at your feet so as not to trip over thick boletus mushrooms.
In the nearest tourist center at a small museum describing the nature and daily life of the inhabitants of the Hardanger plain, it's worth watching a 15-minute panoramic (on five screens) flight simulator film over the valley, fjord, and waterfalls. The simulator is very honest: you'll get motion sickness in about five minutes. Also here is a large center for water and mountain adventures, Flat Earth Adventures. You can go kayaking on the fjord even in winter; wetsuits and other gear are provided on the spot.
There are many waterfalls in this region, but if you want to see about 15 in an hour, you should head north from Bergen and go to Voss – a resort town halfway between Hardangerfjord and Sognefjord, the longest fjord in Norway and the second in the world (only Scoresby in Greenland is longer). As a transit point between two fjords, Voss has been known since the late 19th century, when the elegant white Fleischer's Hotel was founded here. Since then, it has, of course, been renovated, but has retained the old-fashioned charm of a family hotel: it is still managed by the descendants of the founder. It is very, very quiet here – despite the fact that one of the hotel facades faces directly onto the platform of the railway connecting Bergen with Oslo. Norwegian trains run so quietly (the wheels don't knock at all) that the stationmaster has to announce the arrival of a train by striking a bell.
In 40 minutes, a train with plush seats will take you to Myrdal station, from where the highest mountain railway with normal, not narrow gauge begins – the 20-kilometer Flam Railway (Flamsbana), manually laid through the mountains in the 1930s not for tourists at all, but for the inhabitants of villages on the other side of the ridge. Now it carries passengers of multi-deck cruise ships that easily squeeze into the narrow Sognefjord, but before, all these beauties with mountain peaks and waterfalls were just part of the railway landscape. In the most picturesque places, the train slows down so that owners of Canon and Nikon, like tea in a cup, wave from side to side and click, click, click the shutter, capturing white threads of waterfalls and green mountains in their lens. In an hour, the train will arrive at the final station – Flam, where the rails will abut directly into the white side of the ship, which seems to occupy all the water of Aurlandsfjord. To see the same mountains from the water, you don't have to buy a cruise ship tour: smaller vessels also sail along Sognefjord.
In Voss itself, there is also plenty to do. In summer, it's worth going to the rafting center (most water activities are available from May to October) and Klatrepark, where, after putting on a helmet and safety harness, you can play tightrope walkers to your heart's content, balancing on ropes, logs, ladders, and other unstable contraptions stretched parallel to the ground at a height of at least ten meters. In winter, Voss turns into a ski resort. Advantages of Voss for skiing: early and guaranteed snow, ski passes cheaper than those in the Alps, and many easy slopes for beginner and intermediate skiers and snowboarders.
However, you can ski in Norway even in summer. Conditions for this exist on the southern branch of Hardangerfjord, the Folgefonna glacier, which is a quarter the size of Moscow. On its lower part, people ski from May to August (you can also jump from a ramp), but in winter, they don't ski here at all, because there is too much snow and it covers the lift. The average ice thickness underfoot in summer is 50 m, the thickest place in winter is half a kilometer, the length of the run is about 1100 m, the elevation difference of the snow-covered part is 250 m.
To be continued.