Though I initially came to Norway to visit relatives — three of my grandparents grew up there — nature is the real draw here, even for those with family ties. It’s a land of intense beauty, with famously steep mountains and deep fjords carved out and shaped by an ancient ice age. Traveling through fjord country, I find myself spending lots of time sitting on porches at Victorian-era hotels, mesmerized by the Norwegian mountains.
Rather than jagged, they’re bald and splotchy, with snowfields on top and characteristic cliffs plunging into inky water. There’s something poetic about summer evenings on a fjord. The world is bathed in a warm, mellow, and steady light that hardly changes.
The persistent call of gulls and the lazy gulping of small boats taking on little waves provide a relaxing soundtrack. Sometimes I’ll stroll through a village, enjoying the sight of blond cherubs running barefoot through the stalled twilight. Cobbled lanes lead past shiplap houses to sheer cliffs.
Half the sky is taken up by the black rock of a mountain. It’s a glorious setting, but the tourist season in fjord country is short — just July and early August. In the summer, restaurants and hotels need to scramble like chipmunks to survive the winter.
Wondering how that affects the job scene, I notice that most of the employees are seasonal. On the front line are eager Norwegian kids visiting home for the summer. In the back, hard-working immigrants cook and clean.
Local hoteliers and r.