June 20 - Sognadal to Fagernes

We slept comfortably last night in Sogndal. During breakfast, we had a conversation with the owner, Erik. He noticed that John had Parkinson’s, and came over and introduced himself. It turns out that his brother has PD, and apparently had the ‘deep brain stimulation’ operation a few years ago at age 58 with good success.

With some additional ideas from Erik, we headed north along Sognefjorden. This fjord is the longest fjord in the world … ~204 kms. At its deepest, it is more than 1300 m deep, and the mountains along the margins rise to over 1700 m. Indeed, this is an impressive fjord!

We traveled north to Solvorn where we took the ferry across Sognafjorden to Urnes where we wanted to visit Norway’s oldest single nave stave church which was built about 1130 - 1150 with 16 columns.

By this point, you are probably wondering about our fascination with stave churches. These ‘wooden’ churches are over 900 years old, and a beautiful architecture. The churches were all built out of pine that was selected and dried standing, following a long and old Norwegian procedure. The main structural columns (staves) are about 40 cm in diameter, and stand 10 m or more tall. Many of the wall planks are 30-40 cm wide with a beautiful grain. All the wood is saturated with dried pine tar which has now hardened. The smell is wonderful, and wood grain and joinery fantastic. There are no structures like them anywhere else in the world. One really cannot see and enter a stave church without being awed by their beauty and their history. At one point, there were about 1000 stave churches in Norway. Now, only 28 remain. The remaining stave churches in Norway are an important contribution to the world’s cultural heritage.

From Urnes, we drove along a road that paralleled Lustrafjorden. The road was about the width of our car and we prayed that there were no ‘blue’ trucks to be encountered. There were few pull-outs to allow other vehicles to pass, so one proceeded carefully. Part way along this road, we stopped and hiked up through the trees to visit Feigfossen (200 m waterfall).

When we reached the head of Lustrafjorden, we rejoined Hwy 55 and proceeded along Solgnafjellsvegen from Skolden to Lom.

On the way up to the ‘plateau’, we came to Turtagro and turned south to drive across Tindevegen to Ovre Ardal … and back. Most of this route crossed an area that was about 90% covered in snow. To the north were 3 tall peaks: Fanaraken (2069 m), Skagastolstindane (2405) and Austabotntindane (2203 m) . By the time we had driven across the high plateau, down the other side to Ardalsfjorden, then back up and over the top, we were tired to ‘switch-backs’. There were simply too many to count.

Once again back on Hwy 55, we drove over the summit of Sognafjellsvegen, past a snow-covered landscape, frozen lakes and many spectacular snow-covered mountains that rose from 2000 to 2400 m. As we passed Billingen, we saw a training area for x-c skiers. There was defined loop track with many skiers obviously doing timed circuits. There were lots of vehicles at the hotel, including equipment serviced trucks, e.g., Madshus. This made us wonder if this was a training camp for the Norwegian x-c ski team. The weather was sunny, and relatively calm, so most of the skiers were wearing shorts (guys without shirts or just t-shirts, and gals with t-shirts or halter tops).

From the summit of the pass, we quickly descended into green-sided U-shaped valleys with the occasional large boulder field from talus slopes and cliffs. As the valley broadened we entered forest once again. Once we reached Lom, the valley had become relatively wide and flat, and faming was the main activity. It was interesting to note the change in farm buildings after leaving the high plateau area. The buildings now looked more like the ones that we had seen at the Oslo Folk Museum.

At Lom, we turned east onto Hwy 15 as far as Strondsaetnerghoe where we turned south onto Hwy 51. Again, we found ourselves climbing up through numerous switchbacks … this was getting tiresome … but the scenery was beautiful both in front and behind us. Once on top, we found a stark landscape. There was snow in every direction. There were snow-covered mountains on both sides of the road. The mountains rose to 1700 - 1800 m to the east, and up to 2400 m in Jotunheimen Nasjonalpark to the west. The road that we were on reached 1166 m near Bygdin. We passed a downhill ski area at Lemonjo and what looked like a x-c ski area at Ostre Slidre.

As we headed down the other side, we could distinctly see the snow-line below, and following that the tree-line. Next, we were driving through an area with many nice houses and cabins. We hadn’t expected this, but we now found ourselves in the town area of Beitostolen which is a popular downhill and x-c ski centre only a few hours from Oslo.

We eventually reached Fagernes in the evening, and decided that we had driven far enough today, and that it was close enough to Oslo for tomorrow’s drive.