Day 11 - Eidfjord

Yet again, we were the only people staying at our B&B. Which was convenient because we got to pick what time we had breakfast. You'd think they expected us to be gluttons for as much food as they laid out for us, but it was all so tasty that we ended up putting a pretty good dent in it. I never actually asked, but I'm pretty sure that they made most of the stuff (bread, granola, etc) themselves. It was promising to be a beautiful day, so we were excited to get out and enjoy the weather. We had looked into doing a guided kayak trip, but they were all sold out.


As it turned out, the hosts of the B&B had a canoe which they told us we were free to use. It even had a handy little trailer so we could pull it across the street to the lake rather than having to carry it. While it wasn't quite the same as canoeing in the fjords would have been, canoeing in a lake formed by the glaciers is still pretty amazing. The rock face was very steep and very sheer, up close you could see the rock continuing on into the water. One thing I found consistently overwhelming about the fjords is how deep the water is. Many of the fjords reach depths of 4000 feet or more.




In some places, the water running down the rock face has left dramatic stripes.




The lake wasn't terribly long, it took maybe an hour and a half to canoe across. It was pretty convenient that the other side of the lake was right next to the Hæreid Viking mounds that we had attempted to tour the previous day. Given the much improved weather, it seemed a perfect opportunity to check it out more extensively.

The plateau is a very interesting geographic feature - right on the path of a fjord, this one stretch of land somehow was left flat, yet still high above the water. (I'm sure there's a perfectly good reason for that, but I'm not exactly an expert on the various effects of glaciers.) About half of the plateau is open farmland and half is forested. I imagine in Viking times, they kept the whole expanse cleared, especially if they were using parts of it as a graveyard.




I had a relatively helpful little booklet purchased from the tourist office that gave details about the various mounds, and some of the artifacts that have been discovered in the area. Of the 450 or so remaining mounds, only a small handful have been excavated. I find it particularly intriguing to think that there may be startling information about the Vikings laying just below the surface. Many of the mounds are barely noticeable after hundreds of years of erosion and human influence. That's another thing that amazes me - such a rich historic site and there's essentially no maintenance.







We spent a good bit of the afternoon hiking around the top of the plateau. We had a nice lunch of bread, sausage and cheese sitting in amongst the last remnants of an ancient graveyard. As the afternoon wore on, some clouds started rolling over the mountains. Even having grown up in the mountains, I've never seen weather move quite like it does in the fjords. The clouds almost seem to be coming out of the peaks rather than over them. We decided to head back rather than spend another afternoon slogging through the rain.




Back at the B&B, we sat outside for a bit and enjoyed the last of the sun. Then we took another walk through the little village. We had pancakes again for dinner, before playing a couple more games of Scrabble.