Olden, Norway

Olden is a village of about 700 people at the end of the Nordfjord, the sixth largest fjord in Norway. The area we were in was surrounded by tall mountains, some still covered in snow.

The “town” is Loen and it is very small as well. It has the largest meat packing plant in Norway and almost everyone is employed by it. They not only deal with cows, but also goats, sheep and horse. The roads we drove on were very narrow, with cars that had to pull over so our bus could pass by. There are a lot of “hobby farms”. These are small farms, that basically grow food for themselves. We learned that during the winter the roads often are impassable so the children that live on these farms can’t get to town for school. It appears that almost every small village/town has their own school up until high school.

We drove along Loen Lake which is about 10 kilometers long. It has an average depth of 100 meters (you will have to do the math on these numbers). The water comes from the glacier and is quite cold. There was a small white sand beach.

We were told about 2 tragedies in the area. In 1905 and then in 1936, there were huge rock slides from Mount Ramnefjellet. These rock slides caused waves of almost 72 meters and washed away all the homes and the people living in them. 61 were killed in 1905 and 74 in 1936. Now the people who live in the valley have built higher up the hillsides.

We were able to do a short walk to see the Kjenndal Glacier part of one of the largest inland glaciers in Europe. We stopped along the river to see a waterfall and to see if we could see any salmon going upstream to spawn.

All along the road we traveled were beautiful views of mountains and waterfall after waterfall. The area has summer skiing from May to September with 2 fairly large hotels in the town of Loen.

We next stopped at a small cafe for traditional Norwegian waffles – they look like waffles but are long and thin and you put strawberry jam and cream on them. They were very good.

We next had a 45 minute motored boat ride on the lake. It was still pretty cold even at 1 PM so Bette opted to ride inside. Bob was on the top deck until the wind picked up and the rain started.

This was a tender port, and we had to wait while they repositioned the ship. No explanation why, but maybe because the water was choppy from the wind and rain. It ended up clearing about the time we sailed away.