The sensory overload
is intoxicating, but there’s
another feeling as well—
some uneasiness or fore-
boding that I can’t quite
identify. I look around at my fellow passengers
as they scramble from one side of the boat to the
other, taking selfies and fighting winds strong
enough to blow their phones out of their hands,
and for the first time on this trip, the skies turn
more typically Norwegian—which is to say, dark
and brooding—so I attribute the sensation to
that. In any case, it’s soon forgotten when we
dock in Geiranger, a tiny town with just 230 res-
idents, most of whom, as far as I can tell, live off
souvenir shops and ice cream stands.Energized by my friluftsliv quest, I don’t blink
at the prospect of biking up the mountainside on
a road that could be described as vertical. Or may-
be I do blink a little because the helpful man at
the tourist office shepherds me toward the elec-
tric bikes. And 100 yards up the road, I have never
been so grateful to Benjamin Franklin in my life.
I manage not to ramp the power all the way up—
surely friluftsliv requires at least some outlay of
effort—but even the medium range allows me to
concentrate on the views rather than on my own
pain. By the time I arrive at Westerås, I’m feel-
ing quite exhilarated.
A family farm with cabins and a café
open to the public from May to September,
Westerås has its own set of spectacularlandscape stretches beneath us—the fjord spills
into the sea, islands crowd the eddies, and snowy
peaks compete with the waves for the distinction
of sparkliest. Maybe, I think to myself, it’s not just
that Norwegians have so much nature, but that
the stuff they have is so surpassingly beautiful.
My time in the remote far north makes Åle-
sund, a small city famous for its art deco archi-
tecture and located 700 miles down the coast,
seem like a sprawling tropical metropolis in
comparison. Thanks to its proximity to several
fjords, Ålesund is a gateway to all sorts of friluft-
sliv. I reach one of the region’s most iconic spots,
Geiranger, via a three-hour cruise during which
the cranes and tankers quickly give way to so
much beauty that, once again, it’s hard for me to
take it all in. Do I look to the placid gray-blue wa-
ter that precisely matches the gray-blue sky? To
the long streams of water that striate the cliffs?
To the snowcapped behemoths in the distance,
or to the neat, tiny farmhouses perched like pre-
carious Monopoly pieces in the few spots where
precipice flattens into clearing?
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2019 AFAR 113NORWAYNordskotOsloÅlesundSWEDENFINLANDA summer stay on the private
island of Manshausen, near
Nordskot, offers sunset views at
2 a.m., above, and fresh rhubarb
from the garden, right.