{"id":89644,"date":"2015-09-09T15:20:19","date_gmt":"2015-09-09T19:20:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=89644"},"modified":"2015-09-09T17:12:51","modified_gmt":"2015-09-09T21:12:51","slug":"on-the-fjords","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/09\/09\/on-the-fjords\/","title":{"rendered":"On the Fjords"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Fritz Grebe, Blick in den sommerlichen Hardanger Fjord<\/i>, 1881.<\/p><\/div>\n

About an hour into the boat ride, I went below deck to buy two cups of hot chocolate. It was chilly and I hadn\u2019t dressed warmly enough, but I didn\u2019t want to miss anything.<\/p>\n

The fjord was unearthly beautiful. It felt counterproductive in every way to try to capture anything with a camera\u2014scale, color, grandeur\u2014or impose yourself on the landscape, although admittedly, no one else on the deck seemed to feel this way.\u00a0There was a view from the cabin, too, of course, but it wasn\u2019t quite the same.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

When I tried to pay for my cocoa, we found\u2014the steward and I\u2014that the system had gone offline, which sometimes happens. The steward was a tall man with a very thin face and wire-rimmed spectacles. I told him I would fetch some cash, but he said, \u201cThere is no rush. Take your drink now, and then pay me before the end of the trip.\u201d I thanked him and carried the paper cups of hot chocolate to the upper deck, where I gave one to my new husband.<\/p>\n

I was eager not to forget the payment, though. Once, my new husband tried to go down and pay him, but the steward wasn\u2019t there. We went down again some time later, together, and gave him the 170 kroner we owed. We asked him: How deep is the fjord? What are these stone walls for? Grazing? No\u2014the animals grazed in the mountains; the grass had provided their winter feed, back when people lived along the fjords year-round.<\/p>\n

We would have gone right back on the deck, but the steward came out from behind the counter to talk to us some more. He told us about the hardscrabble lives of the people who had lived in these small towns: harsh terrain, rough soil, the occasional root vegetable. No roads or trains\u2014although there had been far more boat traffic. He pointed to a small gathering of buildings\u2014the remains of a village, he said, where people had lived to be very old\u2014over a hundred\u2014maybe due to the quality of their drinking water.<\/p>\n

He told us about a village that had been made a UNESCO<\/small> heritage site. The inhabitants wanted the protection status revoked so they could renovate their homes as they pleased. But still, it had been good for tourism and some younger people were coming back.<\/p>\n

We could see the sublime landscape sliding past outside the window. We sat down; the steward sank to his haunches beside us.<\/p>\n

Now, of course, he continued, it was mostly summer people here, if they came at all. But here\u2014and he pointed again at the far-off edge of land\u2014here one couple still lived, the last holdouts from a onetime community.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are what you would call \u2026 special people,\u201d he said, tapping his head. Did that mean they were intellectually disabled? No, he said, that was not what he meant. \u201cThey are just very simple,\u201d he said. \u201cThey can only live this life. They have always been there, and they married when they were seventeen. If you put them in a city, or even a bigger town, they could not live.\u201d<\/p>\n

The couple acted as caretakers for summer peoples\u2019 homes. They fished. And once a week, this boat dropped off mail, and the crew checked on them. Once, the steward said, the man had not come down as usual to meet them. They blew the horn, and still he didn\u2019t come. They disembarked, he and the captain, and climbed the slope up to the couples\u2019 house. And the man was there, very caught up in a football match.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow old are they?\u201d we asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cForty, perhaps,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Outside, our fellow passengers were clustering together under red fleece blankets. Some had proper cameras, although most of them were using iPads or phones.<\/p>\n

And what about him? Was he from nearby? No, from farther north. His village, he said, was small, too. \u201cForty-six, when the captain and I are not there,\u201d he said. The youngest resident is six; the eldest, ninety-five. The ninety-five-year-old has a ninety-one-year-old wife. She has dementia, but her husband insists on caring for her himself. The problem is that she\u2019s quick and limber, and when she gets out, she is hard to catch. \u201cEven for younger people,\u201d he said. \u201cBecause she was a farmer\u2019s wife, she is fast and she knows the trails. I could not catch her. She runs up to the pasture of the farm where they lived; she thinks it is always summer.\u201d<\/p>\n

This town, he said, was near the North Pole. \u201cI like to tell children that I can see the hairs of Santa Claus\u2019s butt,\u201d he said. He made this crossing four times a day. \u201cAnd now we are here,\u201d he said, as we pulled in.<\/p>\n

Sadie Stein is contributing editor of <\/em>The Paris Review, and the <\/em>Daily\u2019s correspondent.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

About an hour into the boat ride, I went below deck to buy two cups of hot chocolate. It was chilly and I hadn\u2019t dressed warmly enough, but I didn\u2019t want to miss anything. The fjord was unearthly beautiful. It felt counterproductive in every way to try to capture anything with a camera\u2014scale, color, grandeur\u2014or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":178,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13115],"tags":[19387,14521,6122,19388,16390,10438,123,19389],"class_list":["post-89644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-our-daily-correspondent","tag-fjords","tag-landscapes","tag-norway","tag-scenery","tag-ships","tag-storytelling","tag-travel","tag-village-life"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nOn the Fjords<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Sadie Stein on her travels in Norway.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/09\/09\/on-the-fjords\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"On the Fjords by Sadie Stein\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"September 9, 2015 \u2013 About an hour into the boat ride, I went below deck to buy two cups of hot chocolate. 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