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The beginning of our three-week trip in the fjord region was at Aurland, just up the road from the more well-known Flam and its famous railway. It was the perfect place to start our trek, giving us a wonderful introduction to fjord countryside. We started our stay by hiking the amazing Aurlandsdalen trail, a challenging but marvelous walk from Østerbø over Bjørnestigen to Vassbygdi. The 20-kilometer path traverses through a fantastic valley that is sometimes referred to as the Grand Canyon of Norway. The path ascends more than 1000 meters over Bjørnestigen before dropping steeply into a narrow canyon. There are a number of traditional hillside farms along the route, many abandoned, but one that is used as a teaching station by the agricultural school in Aurland. We enjoyed the warm sun and the beautiful skies, but the warm temperatures resulted in record-high water flows for the many streams along the way, making them difficult to cross and even dangerous in a couple of instances. But we completed the walk safely, enjoying a very full and long day on this beautiful trail.

We also made visits to the Nærøyfjord, a UNESCO World Heritage site. Naeroyfjord is a narrow arm of the Songfefjord, with steep sides and snow-capped mountain tops. At 17 km long, it narrows to only 250 meters in one place. We stopped in the fjord village of Undredal, home of the best brown goat cheese in the world and Norway's smallest stave church. It is a plain, simple one-nave church that dates from 1147 CE, making it one of the oldest preserved stave churches in Norway. Stave churches are usually richly decorated with wood carvings, especially the doorways, which are typically filled from top to bottom with carvings that resemble tendrils of vine, with winding stems and serrated leaves. It is believed that this tradition of rich ornamentation goes back to the Viking age, when dragons were frequently carved into the wooden ships. In any case, there is very little apparent connection with Christian traditions in most of the carvings.

Leaving Aurland, we drove the Aurlandsfjellet National Tourist Route, which uses a series of hairpin curves to rise sharply from the flord to the mountains. Just before reaching the top, the view point “Stegasteinen” provides an expansive view of the Aurland fjord. Further on, the road was flanked by snow walls nearly two meters high in one place as it passed through snow-covered high mountain tundra. Ice-covered lakes lined the road at a few spots, where the ice was slowly pulling back to expose the clear water.