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ADVENTURES IN NORWAY Great Railway Journeys: What makes a great
railway journey? A train with comfortable spaces, big, clean windows, a personable,
attentive crew, and an identity of its own. Amenities like a dining car with picture
windows, cut flowers, and a chef with a stove instead of an attendant with a microwave.
Spectacular, ever-changing scenery incorporating challenging railroad engineering.
Departing with anticipation from one interesting place. Arriving exhilarated and refreshed
in another. STATION STOP: HARDANGERVIDDA
Both terminal cities are
rich destinations. Oslo is Norway’s capital, of course. Protected at the head of the
great bay called the Oslo Fjord, the city easily qualifies as the most important
habitation in Norway: governmental headquarters, home of the royal family, the
country’s most important shipping center, seat of advanced education, and national
commercial headquarters. Although more than 900 years old, Its broad, NIGHT SKATING ON THE SQUARE, OSLO, NORWAY Bergen appears the antithesis of Oslo. Its core, built on steep hills rising from several fingers of its expansive, westward looking harbor, looks like old San Francisco or Wellington, New Zealand. The buildings are of wooden clapboard construction, often painted in surprising, bright pastels, and rarely exceeding four stories. The skyline is dominated by wooded hillsides, church steeples, warehouses, fo’c’s’les, funnels, flagpoles, and masts. Harborside you might expect to see the crew of the Pequod setting in for supplies on a whaling cruise, or Roald Amundsen’s expedition returning from a pole. Bergen looks west, away from the harsh Norwegian interior that isolates from the rest of Scandinavia. Bergen has one importance—seaport on the North Sea. Forest products go out. Fish come in. Coastal steamers by the dozens take on and discharge here. It’s likely the Vikings knew Bergen harbor well. Certainly the associated medieval traders called the Hanseatic League did. Scotland seems as close as Scandinavia at dockside. Indeed, the Bergen train station is the closest railhead to Scotland’s Shetland Islands. And Bergen has great trains.
HARBORSIDE, BERGEN, NORWAY Modern, sturdy, high-tech equipment makes the run seem easy. The electric engines resemble some of the diesels that operate on the isolated White Pass & Yukon in Canada and Alaska, and no doubt the common geographic conditions of the two lines results in the similarity. Though well-equipped, the red trains of the Bergen line were not luxury land cruisers like the Orient Express. Most of the consist is second class coaches, with one or two first class coaches, a café-diner (with kitchen!), and a special first class/lounge combine on the rear. All first class passengers receive complimentary coffee/tea and newspapers. Extra-fare first class passengers ride in the spacious lounge with 2-and-1 seating, some swivel captain’s chairs, glass picture windows, complimentary fruit, lap-top work tables and power, plus a free meal (without beverage) in the diner.
On a recent trip, we opted for the extra-fare opulence of the first-class lounge, and had the half-car all to ourselves. The crossing was made all the more spectacular because we had the freedom to dash from window to window to soak in the scenery. Along the way we watched as skiers boarded and departed the train at tiny outposts on the treeless, snow covered plateau. In this land of no roads and few habitations, the train is for many the only way in or out. The few stations along this highest rail line in Scandinavia serve as trading posts and communications centers for the hardy souls who come to this paradise for cross country skiing in winter and for hiking in summer. Despite the desolate beauty of the region, there was rarely a moment when someone’s family hideaway—usually not more than a tin-roofed shack set among the boulders—was not in sight. This country captures the imagination of the Norwegian folk, probably the most dedicated outsdoors adventurers to be found in the West. Life—rudimentary and rugged—in such surroundings is for many Norwegians an idealized state, combining freedom and athleticism in ways that are both innocent and isolationist. A two-hour hike in snowshoes from the nearest rail station might bring you to your family cabin. Fours hours later you might have it dug out of the drift you found it in. Two more four-hour round-trips on snowshoes will bring in enough supplies to support life subsistently in this wild place. No electricity. No hot water. No automatic heat. But then, no bosses, no traffic, no pollution, no TV. Paradise!
DINNER IN THE DINER, WATCHING THE WORLD GO BY The glint of the setting sun off a mirror lake blinded me awake. Houses. Factories. Roads. A school. Oslo’s coming. Then, in a half-hour or so, a plunge into darkness for the last ten minutes. Emergence underground at Oslo Central. Escalators, crowds, noise, stairs, smells, luggage, traffic. The Anti-paradise! More information about travel to Norway and throughout Scandinavia. |
One of those few train rides to earn the adjective "great" is that between 
tree-lined
avenues, grand architecture in neo-classical and rococco revival styles, and prosperous
harbor give Oslo the appearance of a young, thoroughly modern city. Properly, as a
Scandinavian capital, Oslo looks south toward Denmark and Sweden. It is tied as easily
with its sister capitals, Stockholm and Copenhagen, as with any other Norwegian city of
size, and with greater ease to Denmark and Norway than to the distant Norwegian interior
and the far north above the Arctic Circle.
There are four or five
departures for Oslo daily from Bergen. One is a night train, offering sleeper service on
the 8-hour overnight run to the capital—ideal for businessmen, but absent of some of
Scandinavia’s best mountain scenery. During the long days of summer, all of the
daytime trains traverse the route in daylight. In high winter, none of the trains makes
the crossing without experiencing some portion of the line in darkness.
PARADISE, NORWEGIAN STYLE
Using the punch card security keys we were issued, we locked our belongings in the lounge
and walked forward three cars to the diner for lunch on the eastern slope of the
Hardangervidda. We plummeted through the forest while dining on beef stroganoff and pork
and red cabbage. The endless blur of snow-heavy Norwegian firs was as entertaining as the
Aussie Shiraz we drank with lunch. After a very jovial 90 minutes in the diner, we
retired to a very civilized naptime in the lounge.