" Roughing-it " in Norway
THE guide-books are quite right : there is no more discomfort about visiting Norway than there is about visiting our own Lakes or Highlands. Yet my title was chosen deliberately. Europe is beconiing so standardized that you will find running water (h. and c.) in almost every bedroom, a cinema in every village, motor cars or funiculars to take you easily to every beauty spot. In fact, it is really unnecessary to see the beauty spots at all, for there will surely be picture postcards of them in the hall of your hotel. So when one finds something original and exclusive about a country, it is worth telling the world about it.
All Scandinavia, but especially Norway, welcomes the traveller whose only luggage is what he or she can carry in a knapsack. In this, Northern Europe and some parts of America are peculiar. " Hitch-hiking " is a recognized amusement in the United States. Even Colonel Lindbergh hitch-'planed up from Mexico to vote for Mr. Hoover. And all over Norway you may see stalwart boys and girls, sunburnt, carefree, well-content, travelling with little impedimenta
beyond the proverbial toothbrush. They stop at the best hotels, too, and the best hotels welcome them.
Take the Iris, for instance, at Olden, on the famous Nord- fjord. The Iris is run by a rich American artist, I believe, who divides his time between this beautiful place and Paris. His pictures adorn the walls of the hotel. All sorts of distin- guished people come to see them. One sees 'elderly gourmets there (for the cooking is quite first class), and ambassadors, authors, bishops and so on . . . But also the " foot-sloggers " of both sexes are there:with appetites that only long days in Norwegian air can give.
The ordinary traveller can find all the comfort he (or she) requires in Norway—excellent roads for motoring, and good, clean hotels, with the best milk and the best coffee imaginable (the coffee is freshly roasted every day, everywhere)—but he can also find comfort as a tramp, and if part of his holiday is to consist of being quit for a time of worldly possessions (more people every year—young and middle-aged—are finding that there is fun in it) then Norway is certainly the place for it.
But a word of warning is necessary. If you want to cover any extent of country, you must plan ahead, for the con- nexions of 'bus and boat and train are often confusing in this mountainous and fjord-riven country. Only if you intend staying in one place need no particular arrangements be made : I stayed at Loen for a whole month last year in sublime contentment, just looking at the colours of the fjord, sky, lake and mountains. If you want to see more than one fjord, however, my advice is to confide your wishes to a travel agency, who will work out all kinds of itineraries, frog Lindesnes to the North Cape.
The best way to go is by air to Malmo, I believe, but I have no personal experience of that route. The ' Leda ' and the ' Jupiter,' sailing from the Tyne Commission Quay, at Newcastle, every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday afternoon, are excellent sea-worthy craft (they have to be, to face the North Sea), and even if they do smell slightly of fish oil, the cabins are comfortable, and the fare sustaining. Twenty-two hours of open sea is not a very serious hardship in any case, compared to the idyllic days to be spent on the delightful little coasting steamers which thread their way through the calm and hyaline waters of the fjords. Bergen is a jolly old town, and I can thoroughly recommend the Norge Hotel, and the trip up the mountain by funicular, On the Bergen-Oslo railway line there are several good hotels in the magnificent scenery of the highlands of Central Norway. and it is a journey one may safely recommend, even to the most blasé traveller. I stayed at the Victoria Hotel in Oslo, which is not the newest caravanserai of the capital, but one of the most friendly places I have ever visited, and blessed with a good chef. I wish there was room to tell of the charm of Oslo, and the heights of Holmkollen, and the bathing Places of the neighbourhood. But my space is small. And I have said nothing about salmon and sea trout I
F. Y.-B.
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