I Wished I Was Norwegian ~ Our Epic Norway Trip 2025

I wished I was Norwegian. I thought I was. Growing up, my grandparents lived on the Iowa Minnesota border and we always went to Decorah and celebrated the Nordic Festival. I had Norwegian dolls. Norwegian embroidered wool skirts, We ate lefse. We said uff da. We wore buttons that said “kiss me I’m Norwegian.” At some point in my adult life, my authentic genealogy was revealed to me. Stephens. . . Souhrada. . . Kotrba. Not Norwegian. I did not cry, I thought, I’ll just pretend to be Norwegian. That will have to do. Here in Minnesota you can blend in pretty well. When I serve Christmas dinner on my Porsgrund china, with my Norwegian ornaments looking down upon us from the tree. . I’ll have to live with that deception.

When we got to Norway, we blended in there as well. We had an amazing trip. The five of us, Bill, Sara, Calvin, Mary and Janel met up in Oslo where we ate salmon. A lot of salmon. We ate it outside with blankets at a restaurant called “The Salmon.” We also ate strawberries—some kind of crazy amazing strawberries that were the street food there. We took a ferry to a couple different islands, where real Norwegians were picnicking and beaching. There were all these colorful houses that are now rented out. It was adorable. There was also the ruins of a monastery and we also hiked up to a fortress. Oslo was wonderful, pretty peaceful and not so touristy. We walked a lot and Mary did great on her new legs. Janel did great too, I won’t tell you what birthday she will have next month. . .

The next day we took the train to Geilo. There was some hiking to be done in Geilo, but it was cold and raining. We decided to hike around the fjord there anyway. The weather cleared and we did 7 miles around the Ustedalsfjorden Loop. It was a wet feet hike. Fjords sometimes have marshes at their edges and sometimes they flood and you lose the trail a little bit and you end up using GPS to make sure you make it back around to the town with your 86 year old mother and your daughter who had two broken legs a year ago. You call a taxi when you get to the road. Norwegian taxi drivers are very nice. They don’t mind your soaking wet boots and clothes in their cars. We had a lovely dinner, (salmon) in the Geilo Hotel. Trigger alert for the youngster who may be reading this. . . the only other choice was reindeer. I’m sure it wasn’t Rudolph. For sure. The next morning that same taxi driver picked us up to go up to do a mountain hike that was supposed to be very cool and only two miles to the summit from the trailhead, but alas when we got three quarters of the way there in the taxi, the road was closed and the taxi had to turn around. Norway is like that. Roads close. Come to think of it Minnesota is like that too. Back in town, we had the driver drop us off at the Ustedalsfjorden again and we went the other way to a different loop that was very beautiful and mostly paved so no more boots stuck in bogs for that day. Late that afternoon we got on the train again, stopping in Myrdal and then getting on the famous Flåmsbana train. It was a dream come true for train lover Calvin. It is one of the most scenic routes in the world.

At a midpoint up the mountain the train stops at a waterfall and you can get out, the noise is deafening and it was cold and wet and beautiful. A mystical dancer in a red dress appeared next to the waterfall for a brief time. Norwegian folklore at its finest. Our destination was Flåm. We stayed there for two nights, in a little apartment walking distance from the train station. Flåm was amazing. Touristy, because of the cruise ships, but you don’t have to go too far to get out of that scene—those people stayed pretty close to the ship. In the weeks leading up to the trip I had one big problem. There was a hike I wanted to do, but I didn’t know how to get to the trailhead, which was about a 30-45 minutes drive from Flåm, depending on the tunnels. It’s pre-season, so the buses aren’t running yet and I didn’t want to risk planning the hike and not having a ride, so I pestered the travel company with phone calls and emails and forms filled out. To no avail. One day, five days before the trip my phone lit up and the screen said “Norway” and it was Leif on the other end. I’m not kidding. Leif. A real Norwegian. The owner of the taxi company. He saw on my email that we were from Minnesota and he was an exchange student here in his youth and he was delighted to speak in English with me about Minnesota and also. . . Houston. He worked at a ranch in Houston as well. I brought him two Minnesota dish towels. He took care of us, ensuring us that we had a ride to the trailhead Tuesday morning and God willing, a ride back to the hotel at the end of the trail. That was a crazy story involving tunnel construction and a little white lie the cab driver had to tell to get us through the tunnel. . . something about a broken ankle on a tourist. . . but I have jumped ahead in my hiking story. Spoiler alert, I did not break my ankle.

The 12 mile hike from Østerbø to Vassbygdi was on my bucket list, but not everybody’s. Janel and Mary opted out. They did their own hikes from Flåm and Mary checked off her own bucket list item. . .seeing these fluffy Highland cows. She also ended up doing her own 12 miles anyway because she hiked to the cows alone and loved them so much she went back and got Janel. We all met up for dinner very late because of that story about the taxi and the tunnel construction. . . but let’s circle back to my hike with Bill and Calvin.

Østerbø to Vassbygdi. Hiking down the mountain next to the Fjord. I’d been studying this hike for six months. You start at Fjellstove, a rugged mountain resort, where you can get a Norwegian breakfast and pack a lunch for the trail. It was early in the season. The owner gave us some advice when we were settling up. She said it’s going to be flooded. It was also 50 degrees and raining. She said the waterfalls will be over the trail but there are ropes. She said, the ropes will seem flimsy, but you can trust them. That was super comforting, I guess. She said it will be very slippery, it was. She said you will have no cell service the last two hours during the steepest descent. I guess we were slow. We did not have cell service the last three hours, which meant we couldn’t call the taxi with our time estimate. We didn’t know then the business about the tunnel construction on the only road from Vassbygdi to Flåm.

The trail was 20 kilometers and the descent was 3937 feet. For reference, going down the Grand Canyon is about 5000 feet. This last stretch of the Aurlansdalen Valley is actually called the Grand Canyon of Norway. It didn’t disappoint. I only fell twice. Hard. It’s like a cold rain forest—the rock are mossy and were of course completely soaked with the rain. We had two highlights, the sheep and the waterfalls. These sheep were NOT safely grazing. They were on the trail between a rock and a hard place as my dad would say. A rock and a hard place and a cliff and a gate in the trail. My dad taught me never to corner an animal with a baby. Even a sweet sheep. Having the sheep between us and the ledge and the rock wall with a gate on one side (have I described this well enough?) was concerning. There was no way for us to get around them. So we moved very slowly and I talked to them about how nice they are and how nice we were and how we were all just going to be nice and we flattened our backs against the upper wall of the cliff and one by one they passed by, even mama and baby and daddy, disappointed that we didn’t open the gate for them.

The views were amazing. Something different around every corner. We were looking down into the fjord from above and gradually getting closer to the water as we hiked down. We were using a flimsy paper map, All Trails GPS, and Apple Maps to navigate. The trail was well marked, and let’s face it there was really only one way to go. . . down. . beside the Fjord. Still, we used the nav to see our pace and make sure we would get down in time, not necessary before dark, because on June 17 in Norway it doesn’t get dark until 11:00 p.m. but because we had a dinner reservation with Janel and Mary and we needed the taxi to know when to pick us up in Vassbygdi at the bus station. The second highlight was the flooded waterfall. Bill went first. I waited until he got all the way across. I went second. It was very scary, no place to put your feet under the rushing water. Zion Narrows was a good prep for this, but here the waterfall was so loud we couldn’t hear each other and it was certainly life threatening to fall down the waterfall. I used both hands on the rope and inched my way from the flooded part to the slippery wooden bridge to the flooded part on the other side. Then came Calvin. As a pianist, Calvin has virtuosic small motor coordination. Large muscle coordination? Not so much, though he is a strong and pretty experienced hiker. I motioned him to use both hands like I did, but he had his trekking poles and his raincoat and his pack and he was dinking around trying to stow the poles while standing on the slippery bridge in the wind. I just about had a heart attack watching this. Of course he made it safely across.

We got to Vasbygdi at 6:00 p.m. or 18:00 as they say. We called Leif and he said he would send someone right away. We were cold and wet. Our feet had been wet for eight hours. We sat outside the closed restaurant at the bus stop and NO cars went by. None. No taxi came. An hour into this I called Leif. There’s a problem he said. They are doing construction on the tunnel between Vassbygdi and Flåm. They won’t let any cars through for two hours. The taxi driver couldn’t get to us. I got a little colder at that news, but luckily I had stowed my mom’s down jacket in my pack and we had bought last minute too expensive Norwegian mittens at the cruise line gift store in Flåm the night before. Alas, it’s good to have Norwegian friends. I guess Leif told the police that tourists were stuck on the other side of the tunnel and there may have been a little story about an injury and next thing you know that cab driver showed up and drove us just a little too fast for comfort (I was needing a doctor after all) back down the mountain and back through the tunnel with the construction going on. We were only an hour late for dinner and Mary’s own Norwegian friend (she made a friend changing our reservation six times) was holding the table for us. Don’t you love waltzing into the fancy salmon restaurant with muddy boots and wet hair? It was very good salmon. Some of us may have had a burger instead of salmon. No one had reindeer. Rudolph was safe. We slept well in Flåm.

Wednesday morning we did the sauna/fjord plunge experience. It was amazing. Janel opted out. I don’t know why. . . who wouldn’t want to sit in a 150 degree sauna and then plunge into the freezing cold fjord? I didn’t think I would like it but I loved it! It was so invigorating. And great for the bruises I earned the day before. It was a floating sauna right there on the water. It was Mary’s idea and I’m so glad we did this.

This was a packed day. We all had special things we wanted to do and we made it happen. From 10:00-1:00 we went on a guided kayak trip. We suited up with all their gear which took a bit of time and then we kayaked along the side of the fjord. It was so beautiful. We went pretty far, our guide was very good. We went by waterfalls and also these amazing goats. There were two of us in each kayak, Calvin and Mary, me and Janel, and Bill got placed with the dad from another group. The kayaks were fancier than our Minnesota ones. You did the steering with your feet. That took some getting used to. I have to say, I think our guide got caught a little off guard when the wind picked up and we were paddling back to Flåm against the wind and the current and it was really hard. We were all picking little landmarks to paddle to, to break up the trip back. My arms were noodles. We beat the rain, that was good.

I guess you could say we did everything you could do with fjords. We hiked, plunged, kayaked, and finally boated all the way to Bergen on the pathways of water. The boat left for Bergen around 3:00. We barely had time to eat and check out the Flåmbana Museum and gift store. In a different time I might have bought the Flåmsbana electric train. I’ll save that for another generation, The boat ride took five hours and it was raining the whole time and so beautiful. That boat driver really knew his way through that maze of mountains and water.

We had two days in Bergen. We went to Troldhaugen. It was so inspiring seeing Grieg’s home where he lived with his wife and where he composed, with a view of the fjord. They made a concert hall, and when you are at the concert, you are looking out the window past the piano on stage to the little hut where Grieg composed. Beyond that is the ocean. We saw a very fine pianist perform. I bought a couple scores and we toured the house and saw his burial place, in a rock cliff. It’s moving to see the environments where artists lived and worked. Like Giverny. And Mozart’s home. They become real, as though we were only reading about them in books and hearing the music and we only had some faith that their actual person existed. Did I mention it was raining.

Our final day in Bergen we mostly shopped. Those little Norwegian ornaments were calling my name. They want to immigrate to Minnesota. And there may have been a Norwegian sweater or two procured. And we actually had something different for dinner. —fish and chips. Dasher and Dancer lived to see another day. And we rode a funicular and walked around the city a lot.

We started the journey home. We almost missed our train from Bergen to Oslo because right when we were getting a taxi from the hotel to the train station a rock concert was getting out, some silly American singer. . . and there was a total traffic jam. Did I mention it was raining? We got our taxis in the nick of time and got checked into our sleeper car for the overnight journey. What a shame to sleep with that scenery going by. It was a magical feeling to be on a train going across Norway on the eve of the summer solstice —it never really got dark out. But I did sleep and I slept well. We woke up in Oslo and made our way to our flight home.

We love traveling. Our kids love traveling and they appreciate it. Calvin wrote a journal entry even longer than this blog. We are all grateful we got to go and go together. If you haven’t been, I hope you get to go. And this Christmas when I’m wearing my new Norwegian sweater I can continue the dream that I was a real Norwegian.

P.S. I might add even more photos when Bill gets his 20 rolls of film developed.