Fjord Friends: Chance & Happenstance in Norway
I have always been fascinated by Norway and I am a little embarrassed to admit that it probably started at Disney World. Norway was my favorite pavilion at Epcot: I loved the scary Maelstrom ride that raced away from a troll and flung you over a waterfall and I much preferred smoked salmon sandwiches to burgers. So with Norwegian Air consistently offering cheap flights to this slice of Scandinavia, I booked it to Bergen.
For a solo traveler, Norway is the perfect summer destination. It’s safe, the public transportation is efficient, and the sun stays up way past its bedtime. I could rave and ramble about the picture-perfect fjords or the awe-inspiring glaciers or even the delicious, if jaw-droppingly expensive, craft beers. But the highlights of my trip to Norway weren’t the Instagrammable sights around every corner but the people I met. In the past three years of solo travel adventures my heart has been emboldened by the small angels I’ve met along the way, and nowhere did they show up for me more than in Norway.
Mariann, kaffe, and a katt
They say Bergen is the rainiest city in the world and true to its reputation, the skies opened up for me as soon as I disembarked from the Flybus from the airport. Although Bergen is a small, safe, and easily walkable city, my malfunctioning sense of direction can challenge even the most orderly Scandinavian city, and soon enough, I found myself lost, jetlagged, and soaking wet. Eventually I made it to my Airbnb, a cosy room in the home of Mariann, a single mom in her 40s. To make matters more emotionally exhausting, I’d touched down to news of the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando. Mariann offered me a much-needed cup of coffee and before I knew it, we were on the tiny roof deck of her apartment overlooking Bergen harbor, chatting while her silky gray cat Messi wound his way around my ankles. Mariann felt like a kindred spirit and I was so grateful to befriend her on my first night in Norway, a night when I felt so geographically and philosophically distant from home.
Two Austrian blokes on a boat
My next stop in Norway was a trip on one of the most famous fjords in the world, the UNESCO heritage Nærøyfjord. As I gazed up at the menacing cliffs, with waterfalls pouring and pounding into the fjord, I relaxed into the lulling sound of French being spoken around me. French? Oh yes—I seemed to be the only one on the ferry not part of a large French tour group. Except for two older gentlemen who had parked themselves in a corner not far from me. Being the only three outsiders on the boat, we struck up a conversation. I learned that they were brothers from Vienna, who had bought a camper van and were traveling all over Europe. At the time I hadn’t yet visited Austria and eagerly asked questions about the coffee and culture of their hometown, high on my bucket list.
As the ferry began to draw into port, my new friend Hans asked where I was headed. “First to Sogndal, then to Solvorn,” I replied. He pulled out a huge paper map and examined it. “I don’t think Solvorn is on our way, but it looks like we are passing through Sogndal if you’d like a ride there.” Without hesitation I agreed to his offer gratefully. Then I paused. Had I really just accepted a ride from a strange man? What would my mother think? I sure hadn’t stopped to think. I’d just taken a three-hour bus from Bergen and a two-hour ferry from Gudvangen; I had two more bus trips ahead of me and then probably a taxi before I reached my final destination. Getting a ride instead of yet another bus would be really helpful . . . unless these guys murdered me, of course.
When I travel solo, my guard is always up, but in this case my spidey sense wasn’t tingling. Deep in my gut I felt that Hans and his brother were good people and I got in the camper van. It was a lovely one with very cool appliances that they were eager to show off. We took a short, 15-minute trip to Sogndal, where I bid auf Wiedersehen to my new friends and promised them that yes, that evening I’d write about the “two Austrian blokes” in my journal.
An American, a Ukrainian, and some Germans on a glacier
I’d chosen the tiny village of Solvorn as my base for exploring the fjords, which afforded me tranquil solo hikes, delicious local berries, impossibly magical stave churches, and a surplus of sheep. But I also chose it for its location near to Nigardsbreen, an arm of the largest glacier in Europe. I was keen to do some glacier hiking as I hadn’t done it in Iceland. Trouble was, I was in Norway just before the busy season started: there were buses going up to the glacier, but not down. Scandinavian efficiency fail, if you ask me.
Was a taxi an option, asked the New Yorker accustomed to 24-hour transit and plentiful cabs? Not unless I wanted to take out a mortgage, laughed the owner of my guesthouse.
“You want to go to the glacier?”
I turned to see the source of the Eastern European accent. A pretty young blonde girl sat on a velvet couch across the communal room. I learned that her name was Anastasia, she was from Ukraine but lived in Poland, and she was as eager to tie on some crampons as I was. Together we decided to make the journey. Trond, our guesthouse owner, assured us we’d be able to hitch a ride back down with someone. Hitchhiking off a glacier seemed like a totally crazy idea, but hey, I’d just hitchhiked in a camper van, so why not.
Two bus rides later, Anastasia and I were crunching through blue ice with a handful of other hikers, breathing in the cool glacial air and feeling, almost literally, on top of the world. After the hike, as we rode a small boat through the glacial runoff back to the parking lot, we put our blonde heads together. A German couple had been particularly friendly with us, so we entreated them: were they going our direction? Could they take pity on a couple of carless travelers? They could, and offered to drop us off two towns away from Solvorn, from whence we strolled under the turquoise-gold skies of the late Norwegian summer sun, our muscles gladly sore from glacier gallivanting. We talked about solo travel, about work, about what was going on in Ukraine and in my own restless country. I was glad to have found Anastasia, without whose enthusiasm I might never have worked up the courage to seek out Nigardsbreen on my own.
It’s easy to take risks in a country like Norway, where the crime is low and English speakers are abundant. But it’s harder to really connect with people, especially when your paths may only intersect for one moment as we each traverse our own navigation chart. I love these brief blips of connection, of support, of camaraderie when I’m traveling, and I’m grateful to the Marianns and Hanses and Anastasias of the world for creating them with me.
