Tysfjorden, Norway
Our eyes search for bright colors and our minds weave emotions around them. Brilliant reds and greens or splashes of yellow are rapidly fixed in our memories, associated with beauty or a very special time. But the subtleties are often missed for we have failed to look any further.
We might glance through a porthole early in the day and say, “It is just too gray, we might as well stay in bed.” All of Norway could possibly have felt that way today for even though the midnight sun shone above, a thick cloudy blanket hid it from our view. The sea was a silver gray and the sky a variegated patchwork of a similar shade. The land was charcoal. Snow lay on linear ledges and filled descending crevasses outlining every irregularity and adding dimensionality. Gradually the broad expanse of Tysfjorden narrowed and we found ourselves slipping along its leg and foot down to the toe of Hellemofjorden. Only when we were close could we see the greens of vegetation on the lower slopes scalloping the edges of polished and sculpted rock. A pair of harbor porpoises rippled the mirror-like surface of the sea and behind us our wake drew a checkerboard pattern as it rebounded from the fjord walls.
Nestled against a glacial moraine the tiny village of Hellemobotn stood, its tidy houses splashes of red, yellow and white. Explorations took us far and wide from our anchorage. Zodiacs looked miniscule against the towering hillsides and yellow kayaks were no more than tiny ants. On shore and in boats shutters clicked capturing the majesty of the land and the tiny details, too. A study could have been made here of the different means that water chose to flow. From high above gentle rivulets trickled against the steep and polished rock their paths apparently affected by contours imperceptible to our eyes. One would normally expect gravity to influence the route keeping the flow on the straight and narrow. But occasionally it seemed to flow sideways or veer off on a bizarre angle. The tide laid bare the shore except for where a rapidly flowing river gushed from the valley above. Inland it flowed gently beneath our feet as we crossed over strategically placed bridges. It would have been impossible to ignore the two waterfalls dominating the valley above and certainly none of us did. Enormous volumes of water flowed from on high crashing hundreds of feet below in a free fall that could possibly rival Niagara Falls before it tumbled in giant steps to the valley floor below. Its neighbor took a more gradual route and cascaded in sheets across a sloping mountain shoulder.
We had occasion to explore just such a sloping shoulder later in the afternoon, but thankfully its surface was sheathed mostly in lichens and occasionally mossy mounds and not lubricated by quantities of flowing water. Near the village of Leiden at the mouth of Tysfjorden, Neolithic peoples looked at these chatter mark scarred slopes as if they were a giant palette whereon they could tell a tale in almost life-sized pictographs.
As we continue north the pewter tones of the Arctic begin to dominate and whitecaps now dance on that mercurial sea.
