DATE: 15 May 2023
LOCATION: Rogaland, Norway
The morning started out with a bang. Literally. The three of us were woken up without warning when our tent started shaking as if there was an earthquake beneath our feet. The ensuing screaming in Norwegian calmed my initial fears about a natural disaster, but didn’t make me feel much better about the situation. The three of us spoke a combined four words in Norwegian: Vi snakker ikke norsk (We don’t speak Norwegian). I managed to remember the phrase and yell it back through the nylon fabric, opaque with our rain fly on top of the tent to protect against condensation. He was nice enough to switch to English and screamed, “No camp here! Leave now! Leave!”
The three of us looked at each other quickly and began apologizing profusely through the tent walls as we haphazardly threw our belongings in our backpacks. Jonas, Isaiah, and I had been on the road for about a week as of this early wake up call. Hitchhiking and camping up from central Denmark had brought us through dense forest, tranquil lakes, and finally across the North Sea by ferry and into the Land of the Midnight Sun. The previous night, we had caught a ride with Linda, a pleasant construction worker who drove us over an hour north to the soundtrack of Rihanna. A lot of Rihanna. It was dusk by the time she dropped us off and we surveyed the always stunning landscape of Rogaland.
We were in the village of Bue, around thirty kilometers from our destination, the incomparable Frafjordheiane natural reserve. Thanks to the loose wild camping laws in Norway, we thought that finding accommodation would be the easiest part of our journey. Walking along the shoulder of the E39 highway, we found a patch of flat grass overlooking a crystalline lake. We set up the tent, refilled our water from the lake (no filter needed in Norway!), and settled in for the night.
Fast forward to only a few hours later. It wasn’t even six in the morning and we were being screamed at by what we guessed was an eight foot tall Viking with a Medieval sword. When I finally unzipped the tent and peered out into the field, there was no Viking to be found. In fact, there was no one in any direction, only a flock of sheep that studied us with beady eyes. The field was flat and it didn’t seem possible that someone could have disappeared that quickly, but we were more concerned with packing all of our belongings and running back to the highway to think about it too much. In the morning light, it was obvious that our patch of grass was a piece of cultivated farmland, one of the few regulations outlined in the allemannsretten (“the right to roam”).
Ten minutes later we were back in action on the E39, thumbs out and laughing about the absurdity of what had just happened. How had he disappeared that quickly? We concluded that it must have been a troll; what an appropriate welcome to Norway. Just ten minutes later, we were piled in the back of a sedan discussing the benefits of cold exposure with a psychologist as she drove us into Ålgård. A quick stop into the REMA 1000 gave us a chance to get more supplies, a marker for our cardboard signs (given to us for free by the cashier), and mini Norwegian flags to stick out of the back of our backpacks. As their independence day was approaching, the flags turned out to be one of the best purchases of the trip.
From Ålgård, a wildlife photographer picked us up and drove us along the winding roads that cut their way in between dramatic glacial mountains. My flag only lasted five minutes, splintering against the side of the car when I tried to fit my backpack into a hole half its size. For the rest of the trip, it hung limply in the wind while the other’s flew triumphantly. He regaled us with stories about camping for days on end to spot and photograph wild wolves in Finland, and waved us goodbye where the road split thirty minutes later.
Upon arriving in Dirdal, the nearest town to the trailhead we had found months earlier, we realized that we were on the precipice of the highlight of our trip. The landscape was breathtaking, a rushing river flowed past endless sheep pastures and well-maintained farm houses, all backed by the awe-inspiring granite peaks. When a bus rolled by and stopped a few meters in front of us, we excitedly jumped in and told her all about our plans to hike between Frafjord and the fjord-side town of Flørli. She turned to us and said “You cannot do that now. There is too much snow and ice and it is unsafe to be up on the mountains. It is impossible”
We were speechless. Had we come all this way to be foiled at the last moment? As we drove on through a tunnel, the three of us silently wondered what we were going to do.
Read about what happened next by clicking here.
For more of my travels, click here.
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