Scandinavia Trip: Glacier, power plant, evening hike

[cjsmith]

*** Wed Sept 25:

Woke up very early and fidgeted. These separate mattresses with separate down covers are absolutely wonderful; not only are they snug and warm, but we don't wake each other up. Took my shower -- this shower was a little challenging, as there was nowhere I could soap up out of the water. While Rob showered, I went downstairs to ask the desk clerk for help making a reservation in the next town, Eidfjord. She was very helpful and actually made the call for me. Thank goodness; we had an outdated number for the hotel, and I never would have understood the new-number recording!

Ate breakfast: white bread with cornmeal and poppy seeds on it, raspberry jam, hard whole-wheat cracker bread with butter on it, Earl Grey tea, orange juice, a spoonful of scrambled eggs, and two small round smooth fried objects which turned out to be meatballs. I skipped the baked beans and told Rob to thank me.

After we brought the car back down to the main-street level and loaded it up, Rob stopped at a small grocery store for hand lotion; then we headed out for Buer, where we hoped to see a glacier. The road up the Buer valley kept getting smaller as we drove. Eventually it dead-ended at a house with sheep in the yard, next to a small gravel parking lot with a very, very closed kiosk. From there we could see the glacier at the head of the valley, but we obviously couldn't reach it. Signs warned not to go without a local guide as walking near or on the glacier is dangerous. Another sign indicated that reaching the glacier was two hours on foot. As we drove back down I looked at the map: Buarbreen (Buer Glacier -- no I don't know why the spelling of Buer changes to Buar) is just a tiny finger of the enormous Folgefonn (hmm, two words for glacier, both short, interesting language).

Soon we were on our way northward on E13 out of Odda. We stopped alongside the road to take pictures of the fjord. When the water is calm and glassy, and the reflections of the houses and mountains are visible, it looks like a perfect jigsaw-puzzle picture. I'm hoping to send one of mine to be made into a puzzle, if it's good enough.

At one turnoff (Tyssedal?) we found a really weird glass monument contained in a spiral maze. From the outside, the spiral looked like a Dirac function done in grass. Climbing up the outside edge, we saw a flagstone path at the nadir, winding its way to the center. I took the low road and Rob took the high road. In the middle was a sort of monolith made of granite on one side and glass -- many many plates of glass, greenish when seen on edge -- on the other. Best I could guess at the label, it was in honor of glass workers. Not sure.

We stopped briefly at some kind of industrial museum. It looked closed, so we parked and looked at the informational posters. Huge hydroelectric plant, apparently. Then Rob discovered the museum was actually open! We spent a couple of hours there. A friendly woman showed us a 30-minute slide show in English, about the history of industry and specifically hydroelectric power in this area. The most beautiful waterfall in all of Europe used to be on this spot; now it runs down pipes into the giant turbines. After the slide show, we had a short break to look at the displays inside the building. One item we saw was a tabletop phone dating from something like 1918, made by "L. Ericsson". I guess Ericsson goes way back in telecom! Then our guide took us on a short, private guided tour of the power plant. It is no longer in service today. Built almost at the turn of the century, with more and more enormous generators added throughout the years to a final total of fifteen, it was decommissioned in the 1980-1990 time frame, and is now being restored as a museum. The replacement, with only one or two much more efficient generators, is not visible: it's inside the mountain. These Norwegians are really good at digging into mountains!

Our guide was born in Odda and remembers the time when their power was 25Hz. Many of the early generators at this plant were 25Hz; converters to 50Hz were later added so that power company bigwigs could run their European- or American-imported appliances in their Odda homes. But the rest of Odda ran on 25. Visitors would remark that the lights flickered. Our guide, used to it, wouldn't really see what her visitors were saying. (The power plant was later changed to mainly-50, converters-to-25, when it joined the national power grid.) She also told us that the glaciers looked unusually dirty this fall due to the very warm summer; all the snow cover is gone, and we are seeing older ice.

On the way back out, we saw four tunnels deep into the rock on the opposite side of the fjord. Odda's zinc factory, producing some significant percentage of the world's zinc, once dumped their waste directly into the fjord. But their waste is full of heavy metals and the fjord was becoming polluted. The solution was these tunnels. The waste is buried inside the mountain, covered by concrete as if it were radioactive. The hope is that one day, if it becomes feasible and useful, this waste could be recovered for its metal.

We also walked past the tunnel-entrance to the newer power plant and yet another tunnel-entrance, this one to a fish farm! Our guide told us that trout are raised in there. The water is heated above fjord-glacier-runoff temperatures by waste water from one of the plants (chemical plant?). The water is clean, just warm; the plant needs to dump heat. These fish are raised for local food.

From Tyssedal, on our guide's recommendation, we drove 20 minutes or so up the valley to the dam across Ringedalsvatten (Ringe Valley Lake). This dam was built as part of the turn-of-the-century power plant project, and is made entirely of stone, hewn by local labor. It's huge and impressive. At the top, the initials "RB", for the owner of the company at the time, stand out in the rock. Walking across the dam, we noticed an oddity: on the upstream side there is a sprinkler system keeping the face and part of the lip of the dam wet. I have no idea why. I took the opportunity to use a bush behind the dam, while taking a picture of the sprinkler. Across the lake from me were some canoes. Apparently this is an enjoyable recreation area.

Rob really likes the Norwegian custom of providing bathrooms, free of charge, at roadside stops. At one such stop I got a good photo of Rob gazing thoughtfully across the fjord as the wind played with his hair. Across the highway, two very small horses grazed on the hillside. These are apparently a particular breed of pony specific to Norway.

Farther along E13 northward, we saw a beautiful waterfall on the left side, flowing underneath the road and into the fjord on our right. We later discovered this falls, LAtefossen, is on local postcards. I spent some time climbing down under the road bridge in the hopes of getting a good photo. I was feeling guilty that Rob couldn't see where I had gone, and when I found him he said he'd been taking pictures of me climbing around under there. :-)

In some of the towns along the mouth of Odda's fjord, S0rfjorden, there is a thriving fruit farming industry. Small unattended stands in tiny roadside pull-outs sell apples and plums on the buyer's honor.

We pulled into the town of Eidfjord and saw our hotel -- wow! luxury. It's a beautiful white building directly overlooking the water. We checked in and chatted with the desk clerk. Turns out she lived in LA for seven years! She married an American man, and the small family moved back here because it was important to her that the children grow up here. The first winter was apparently very hard on her husband, who had never really dealt with snow. After that friendly conversation, we asked the room rate and she gave us a discount! (NOK 1250 down to NOK 1045. Wow.)

Our room has a magnetic stripe card key with an unusual twist: one end is inserted to unlock the door, and the other end will lock it! We found another use for the card key, too: the room lights will not work unless the card key is inserted in a master switch by the door. Fortunately, this was labeled with the word "Card" lit from behind. Even a confused tourist can figure that one out.

For the first time this trip, our bathroom has a tub. It appears to have been a retrofit, because one-half of a drain is visible on the floor at the edge of the tub. The original floor with the rest of the drain is probably undisturbed under there.

With several possible things to see, we decided first to drive up a tiny winding road to Hj0lmo, where we could hike to see Valurfossen. We were thankful there was no oncoming traffic on the road. We definitely would have had to back up to a fat spot. At times there was barely room for our car! Twice, we passed sheep on the road. They are wary of cars, but remarkably calm if the driver is slow enough.

Rob eyeballed the map and figured it was about 2km to the waterfall. At the top of the road were several signs to towns: Viveli, Hedlo. Each had a trail-marking symbol. Our trail, most of the way to Viveli, was marked with a T. We donned hiking boots and set off, wondering all the while at the people who would live back here.

After a half hour or so we passed a house all by itself, showing little sign of occupation. It had grass on its roof. It sat in the middle of springy, spongy ground that brought the word "tundra" to my mind (despite the fact that I have no idea what tundra should be like). I have heard that very spongy ground means permafrost is close to the surface. I can believe that of this place. The ground cover is low and tenacious, the soil is rich and feels like walking on a mattress, and for some of the hike we were up above any possibility of trees. We also passed a lovely waterfall, clearly too close to the trailhead to be Valurfossen.

After we had hiked an hour, we had not reached Valurfossen, although we had just passed a trail-marker indicating Valurfossen one way and Viveli another. We could hear the falls, we think, but we knew it would be dark soon and we wanted to drive that road with some light. We turned back.

We saw some goats wandering loose, with bells on, eating whatever the land offered. On the way back down the road, we passed the sheep again. Rob slowed down enough that one of them stood adjacent to the driver's side door. He rolled the window down and stuck his hand out to say hi. The sheep promptly let out a "Baaa!" and ran away.

Back in town, we brought our luggage up to the room and turned on the heat before heading out to the corner store for food. I got a cheeseburger. It had seasoned salt on it and came with shredded lettuce, Thousand Island dressing, and corn. Remembering that my burger-with-everything-on-it in Denmark included corn and salad dressing, I shoveled all that stuff onto this burger. It was quite good. After the meal, someone new was working the counter, and I was very proud of the fact that she didn't speak English to me even after I tried a few words in Norwegian -- "takk" (thank you) and "ha det" (see ya later).

When we got back up to the room, the heat hadn't done anything. We had to call the desk for help. At least this time, the solution was simple: we hadn't found the ON switch.

We spent the rest of the evening working out a rough plan for the rest of the trip. The car should be returned Thursday, meaning we should be in Oslo -- or preferably a couple hundred kilometers east, perhaps at the Swedish border -- Wednesday night. That puts us in Otta (not Odda, Otta) or at the VERY worst Andalsnes, inland of &lesund, on Tuesday night. With the ever-shrinking roads and the number of ferry crossings, that was worrisome. We're also not sure how many small towns have rooms available this late in the season. But we got a rough idea. Th Fl&m, Fr S0gndal, Older or Stryn some time over the weekend, Eidsdal Sunday or Monday, Andalsnes or south of that on Tuesday.

Then I spent a lot of time writing this. It's now 11:20 and Rob is itching for bed.