Fjords!

Thommas took me on a boat tour of the Lysefjord and Pulpit Rock this afternoon. It's a 3 hour tour (no sign of Gilligan), 2 hours out so they can do multilingual descriptions of the sights and one hour back at speed.

There were quite a lot of summer houses (called huts) on the coast of the Høgsfjord. The Lysefjord was formed by glaciers during the ice ages. During the most recent ice age, about 10,000 years ago, Norway was covered with a layer of ice that was up to 2,000 meters thick.

The waterfall is the Hengjane, 400 meters high. They pull the boat close to the rock wall and use a bucket on a boat hook to catch some water for the tourists to try. Thommas warned me that the lemming population is very high this year so many tiny bodies end up in the streams that lead to the waterfall. We said "nei takk" to the offer.

We also saw Pulpit Rock, an 82'x82' square flat cliff 600 meters above the fjord. I had previously seen an aerial view of the top, it was more impressive to see the hikers sitting on the edge of The Pulpit.

Another highlight was the Vagabond Cave, a tall narrow rock lined inlet they pulled the boat into, totally in shadow, and then played Grieg's Hall of the Mountain King. In Norwegian the title means Trolls, which I prefer to kings.

We saw many houses and farms. One of these days we will drive along the coast road we passed today, to have lunch up near the Pulpit. I also have appointments to see coverlets in both Oslo and Bergen next week and the following week. And there are several museums here in Stavanger I want to see. Best of all is Thommas buying beer for us to enjoy on board. Skål!!