Saturday, June 07, 2025

Day 6 - A Viking Village, Nærøyfjord, Flåm & Myrdal Train Ride

maybe I have yet to venture out
see the places that I hear about
planes and trains and cars
That You Are - Hozier & Bedouine

Day 6 was the day that I was going to see a fjord. Booked a day trip for this and I wasn't really paying attention to what the whole day would be like, I just knew there would be a fjord cruise and a train ride. The day turned out to be a bit more than that. From Bergen, we first made a small stop in Voss. There's nothing much to do on our short stop, it's basically a stop to get out of the bus a bit. I walked to see the lake in front of us which Google told me is called Vangsvatnet.

After Voss, we're told we're going to go to a Viking village. I totally didn't recall this was part of the trip, so this whole visit was a bit of a surprise to me. The Viking village we're visiting is called Njardarheimr and it's like a recreation of what a Viking village used to look like. We had about 20-minute guided tour led by a staff who's dressed in Viking attire. She was explaining things about the Viking way of life, showing us the Viking boat, the houses, weapons, the chief hall in which there's another older man playing the role of chief, sitting on the main seat watching us as the lady was explaining things to us. This part was the one that kinda mind-boggled me a bit. They try to keep things authentic so things are done like before in Viking times and staff dress like Vikings. It's almost like cosplay and cosplay is something I couldn't really wrap my head around, but then I think they must have fun doing all these and it beats getting stressed and miserable in an office job, so their jobs are most probably better in some way. After the staff's explanation, we're given time to explore on our own. Below are some pictures from the village. The houses contain different things inside them and they even have sheep there.

During our time to self-explore we could do things like touch the sword, shield, and also try our hand at archery and axe throwing. Now, I'm shy in doing these kinda thing in a way a young child might be fearful about being asked to sing in front of the class - truth be told maybe I'm not shy, I just haven't gotten over that dread you had when your teacher called you to do something in front of the class as a child - but I saw people were doing archery and I thought why not. In each round, there were 3 people doing it at the same time and we all had 3 arrows to shoot. The staff taught us how to do it and so I tried. The target was big and I missed all three, shooting above the target - I was like what the ... but then I thought why should you be surprised, you see the pictures you take, your aim is bad, many of times your horizon is not even straight. That being said, I like archery a lot and I wished I could do more, but I was really embarrassed and there were other people waiting. Though I failed miserably, I did feel kinda good for trying it out because again I'm shy about this kinda thing, so me putting myself out there was really good, so much so that I decided let's try throwing axe now. For axe throwing, only one person could try at one time. Again the target was big and you had three tries. You needed to collect the axe after each throw. Again, none of my throw landed. After my second try, the staff said try moving forward a bit, well it didn't help. I have to say, as much as I said it's good of me for putting myself out there, there's still embarrassessment on my part for putting myself out there that I tended to rush in doing these that I didn't just stop and put more thoughts into it. I'm not using this as an excuse for my poor performance though, because I may well be still suck even after I put more thought into it. By the way, this was the staff at the axe throwing. See what I mean when I said they're in Viking attire.

For more pictures from the Viking village, go here. After the village, it was a short walk to where we're going to get on the boat for the Nærøyfjord cruise. It wasn't a long wait to get on the boat. The boat was big and inside it was actually pretty fancy, the seating was really nice but most people spent it outside, especially because we had such a good weather. I wanted to get to the top deck but it was full of people so I went to the lower deck which had less people and allowed me to stand comfortably and look ahead. Even before we started the view was pretty great.

Except for the short time I went inside to get some snack, I spent all the time outside. I like the cruise a whole lot. Before the trip, I wondered if I was going to find this boring, but I really love cruising a fjord. Sometimes there's waterfalls (there's always waterfalls), but whatever it was, I just love the view, the high cliffs on the left and right, the stillness of the water that formed a perfect reflection of what's above the surface (see one of the picture below, it's so awesome). The boat ride was very smooth too. It's quite amazing that this boat was electric. Now I have to say, I had a blue sky day, I don't know how I would like it when it's drizzling and dreary and cold, though as mentioned the inside of the boat is nice so perhaps it would still be a great ride.

For more pictures from Nærøyfjord, go here. The boat made one stop before Flåm where it ended and our guide was making sure none of us get off on that stop. I don't know if locals use this boat as their transport. I saw quite a number of tourists with their bags or lugagges. I am amazed at these tourists, these days I'm pretty lazy in dragging my luggage here and there which does limit the places that I could explore and no, the more I travel do not cause me to pack less. In Flåm, we had a few time to spend before taking our train to Myrdal. I just walked around a bit, got ice cream and sat down watching people getting on the boat for the ride back to the other direction.

On the train from Flåm to Myrdal, we got the whole compartment for our group. I managed to get a window seat, but the wrong side :( the other side had nicer view. When one of the person from my group started to stand on my window, I took it that I could also stand on their window on the other side to take photo too. Here's some of the view.

At one point, the train stopped for awhile by Kjosfossen waterfall and we all got out to see it. The guide said during summer, there would be a lady dancing by the waterfall. Sounds weird, but I googled it and saw pictures of it. I have to say, there's something to be admired about these people doing weird things for fun :D

The train stopped at Myrdal where we changed to a different train (more modern) for the ride back to Voss. I like this train ride better because in Myrdal there's still snow covering everything and the landscape was just so different, very beautiful.

Back in Voss, we took the bus back to Bergen. It was a good day, really good. Saw and experienced wonderful things. For more pictures from the Flåm and Myrdal train ride, go here.

:) eKa @ 12:07:00 PM •