Destinations

“Gausta proud and calm as a crowned bride, forest and mountains on both sides, The moon clear and flowing like a waterfall, the air fresh and pure, the valley green with grass and trees, full of flowers in the field. And then on the top Rjukan in his thundering majesty”.

– Unknown writer about the mighty Rjukan Waterfalls

“But the purpose ask the people, the meaning, the goal? There is no purpose, there is no goal. Mountaineering is meaningless as life itself – therefore its magic can never die”.

 
– Peter Wessel Zapffe, Norwegian author and philosopher (1899-1990)

“Never have I seen so bright colors! The white drifts in the blue mountains and green as juicy as green. In luminous spots and rays mirrors the image of the quiet fjord. This is an image of a fairy tale fantasy; this must be the place where the princess was mesmerized”.

– Pictorial artist Theodor Kittelsen about Lofoten, 1890

“It all seems like a fairytale – the ugly gale, still blowing black in the straits of the west, down from the shod covered island, where peaceful fjords of silence, with the midnight sun and clear sky and sharp peaks, not a breath of air, and the white mountains and glaciers mirror the glossy surface of the fjord”.

– Fridtjof Nansen, Norwegian polar explorer

“Yes, here it is! Here is the limitless. The endless. Here under this high heaven, going over these silent white surfaces, like slow waves receding outwards from my eye, steady and monotonous, in all directions, going somewhere far away, where they meet heaven itself, here in Nirvana”.

– Painter Christian Krogh about his visit at Finse, 1st January, 1913

“In autumn, when Manshausen swarmed like an anthill with working people, at night enlightened, sometimes moonlight, and hundreds of lanterns, and up to 10,000 barrels of herring were salted. In winter, when there was so clogged with boats and ships in both straits, that one could almost go from one to the the other, and the store full of people”.

– Grocer Jacob Norman about life on Manshausen, 1923

“They say, it’s just rocks and snow, but wait until the daybreak up there! Then floods the silver over valleys and glaciers, and gold over graying tops. They say this country is poor and ugly, but watch it when the day falls. The flames of purple so delicious and pompous in the Emperor’s own halls”.

– The poet Theodor Caspari in “Greetings to Jotunheimen”, 1928