Unaffjordable
The Airport
“You may find yourself coming to an area that looks like a toll booth,” the attendant at the Europcar rental agency explained. “It is important that you don’t stop. There is no need to stop at these areas. There is a small chip on the windshield of the car and when you pass, it is recorded automatically. It is a tax on the Norwegian people for using the roads and you will be invoiced for this when you return the car.”
“How much should I expect to pay for these tolls?” I ask.
“Oh, it probably won’t be that much. But it costs about $8 just from here to Oslo. So maybe it will cost you about $25 or $30 over the course of your rental period depending on how much you drive.”
“I am planning to drive a long way. I want to go around Kristiansand and as far as Bergen.”
“Well, then it may actually cost you quite a bit. Probably something like $100.”
My eyes grow wide with fear. The rental car on its own is costing more than I have ever paid for a compact and now there will be a mysterious bill on the end of it that I have no way to calculate on my own. “That’s a lot,” I say. “But I have paid as much as $100 for certain experiences and I do inevitably get to see something truly amazing and I trust that this experience will be no exception.”
“If you are going to go as far as those places that you said then yes, you will certainly see something truly beautiful.”
Oslo airport was eerily quiet. Flights were still coming and going but Norway seemed on edge and its people were withdrawn and distant. The car that they gave me was a hybrid and hopefully being able to reduce fuel costs would stem the monetary drain incurred by these tolls that I had just been warned about. There was a 12-volt slot to which I could run my computer, so besides acting as transport, my little rolling fortress could double as an office. The dashboard computer system could read all of the song files from my USB stick so Norway was also about to add a soundscape to its landscape. Everything in Norway is expensive and I was ponying up a small fortune for this experience so I thought that I may as well make the absolute most of it, but my concern with all of the costs, both upfront and hidden, riddled me with crippling anxiety. I headed out nervously from the airport onto the highway south toward Oslo always with money on my mind and obsessing over whether or not I would come to the end of my trip feeling like it was all worth what I paid. After all, how beautiful could a fjord be? The car had a sensor that knew the speed limit and it would beep whenever I went over by 10 kilometres per hour. Besides the tolls knowing where I am, the car is also watching carefully to make sure that I obey the rules. Limits along the roads in Norway change from 60 km/h to 70km/h to 30km/h every hundred metres or so and during my drive the car was beeping at me furiously as I was beset with another cause for paranoia certain that at some point on this adventure I would be issued a ticket for speeding.
Oslo to Søgne
It is mostly farmers’ fields and forests between the airport and the city and if you travel through Oslo without stopping, then traffic gets shuttled underground, beneath the city’s opera house, through a series of tunnels that travel all the way to the far side with various exits along the way that branch off and rise up to the overground. From there, more vast swaths of farmers’ fields sit along one side of the highway and emerging suburbs that front the inner Oslofjord, through which the ferries run to Denmark, line the other all the way to Drammen. It is early November, but a noon pickup means that there are only a few hours of sunlight left for my drive. This far north and the sun does not rise very high above the horizon creating extended periods of twilight that make it difficult to drive.
It has already been a stressful day so I set a small, manageable, driving goal for myself and stop in at a quaint little house owned by an eccentric Polish lady. The house is located in the woods off a dirt road outside of the port town of Horten, called Skoppum. Courtesy of the pandemic I am the first traveller to come along all year and am greeted with exquisite hospitality. It was only a 2-hour drive but it has taken everything out of me and within a few minutes of my arrival, the sun beats a hasty retreat below the horizon. I have been concerned about money all day and so far I have seen nothing, but this was only day one of my ten-day adventure. I reassure myself that the best is yet to come and that Norway’s reputation for awe-inspiring landscapes will not disappoint.
I try to get an early start to my day hoping to confine driving to while the sun is out, but the sun doesn’t start to rise until almost 9 am. When it does begin to light the sky it is a slow and dramatic and drawn-out affair. When it gets into the sky it creates a perfect reflection over the water as I keep the car clinging to the roads off the highway closest to the seaside. Any route closest to the sea is the route that will keep beauty affixed to at least one window and I am hedging my bets that keeping off the highway will keep my amount owing for tolls to a minimum. It takes me through quaint little villages of a dozen or so whitewashed homes. Each village has a church whose spire rises above the rest of the buildings and twinkles in the sunlight. Water sneaks in from the north sea cutting small rivulets through the shore into the land creating a million and one streams that flow down from the hills to where the waters meet. Each village has a line of boathouses tucked into the rocks along the shore but it’s cold enough now to keep people off the water and confined to the indoors. At various points, the road approaches near enough to the shore to stare out to the sea revealing scores of tiny unpopulated forested islands. The route along the shore from Oslo to Kristiansand and beyond, the land is low as my journey winds around the ledges of these southern fjords turning what would have been a three-hour journey on the main highway into an eight-hour saga that leaves me exhausted by day’s end. I settle in at a new build in a slowly growing suburb where I am reminded again by the owner that I am the first visitor they have had this year.
Søgne to Tau
It is clear after the first journey that each day of driving will need to be balanced with a day of rest. There are woods to explore and muddy trails through the hills covered in the loosened leaves of autumn to follow at each stop along the way. I would lose the full richness of the experience were I to confine my journey to what I could cover over the concrete from village to village and gas station to gas station. These are old routes through the hills over ancient well-worn rocks in the shade of evergreen trees that the Vikings used to walk. Until oil was discovered off the shore in 1967, Norway was one of the poorest countries in Europe with its communities exclusively accessible by boat or on foot, and each footstep taken beyond the village is along these trails between.
Autumn in Norway is renowned for its rain, but the gods in Valhalla are smiling when I leave Søgne and head up the southwestern coast in the early orange glow of a new day. The fjords are growing taller, but the sun has enough in it yet to climb above them and splash through my windshield reaching its zenith when I arrive at the tallest of them all – Jøssingfjord.
It’s all hairpin turns from the bottom to the top over one of Norway’s largest titanium mines where steam rises from a service ship that has just pulled into the port. A battle was fought here in 1940 in the opening stages of the Second World War. Aggrieved by the Reich’s breach of Norway’s longstanding neutrality, the Altmark Incident which led to the rescue of 300 allied prisoners, was symbolic of Norway’s non-cooperation with fascist aggression and the term jøssing became synonymous with Norwegian patriotism during the era. There is a monument at the top paying tribute to those who, in the shade of this mighty canyon, stood their ground in defiance of tyranny by employing the most effective of battle strategies in turning their backs on evil. They have earned the view.
From Hauge to Egersun the road is high up in the mountains where wind turbines have been installed to harness the breezes that hover on the air, cool and crisp, towering above the crystal blue lakes that do not stir. Massive grey boulders, small smooth and rounded mountains in themselves, undulate in waves along the sides of the road like the backs of marching pachyderms. They are dotted by small patches of green vegetation that finds a way to grow where there is no soil. In spots where the land levels out, the trees are short and have shed their leaves in preparation for a rugged winter. There are small villages of a few dozen people up here, spread kilometres apart, that live off the waters of these mountain lakes and the seaside below along trails that only they know about.
Rounding along the shore heading up to Bryne and the road runs right along the rocky coast. The smell of the sea wafts into the car as the sky begins to cloud over, but the sun refuses to cooperate by starting its descent toward the horizon keeping the beach alight and splashing colour upon the clouds above.
Eventually, the road turns inward plotting a course for Stavanger. Arriving in the city and it is a circuitous route through town to avoid tolls to the Ryfast Tunnel that will shepherd me to the Strand municipality on the far side of where several fjords open to the sea. Officially only open for less than a year by my arrival, the Ryfast tunnel system is the longest and deepest in the world running for a total of almost twenty kilometres distance and reaching almost 300 metres below sea-level underneath the fjord. It recently replaced the ferry route and cost somewhere in the vicinity of $600 million. You can do a lot with deep wells of oil money and as thrilled as I was to take the rollercoaster ride deep to the bottom of the sea, as I emerged from the darkness to the turnoff from the highway heading into the village of Tau I became obsessed with wondering how much of that $600 million I was responsible for covering.
I had been on the road the entire day and I was craving the simple pleasure of a dram of local akvavit, but to have it I need to head out to Jørpeland to visit the only Vinmonopolet in the area. All of Norway’s beauty was finally on full display for me and she did not disappoint. On the journey, I would happen upon the most beautiful sight that I had seen in my entire life and, if I could, I would stop the car to take a picture. Once satisfied, I would hop back in the car and drive another hundred metres only to be stopped by awe at an even more impressive and expansive view of this amazing place that Norwegians have had the good sense not to spoil with cement and steel and sprawling cities. At some point on the journey, I looked up to the heavens and understood the reason for Slartibartfast’s award, what he means in how fjords give continents a baroque feel, and how unfortunate it is that they are not equatorial enough for Africa. Splendid work you Magrathean genius, you! Beer in a bottle costs the same as a pint with the tax and the tip served in a pub back home, but I feel that I deserve this one indulgence and am prepared to spend some money beyond the budget for something strong and locally made. A half bottle of local akvavit goes for an astonishing $40. My heart sinks when I lay eyes on what I was about to pay for, but I tell myself that I deserve it and, as long as I keep working, that it will be paid off in no time but the memory will live forever. Besides, I had travelled all the way out to Jørpeland just get it and if I didn’t just buy it then the trip will have been for nothing.
A full belly and a tired mind mean that I sleep like a champion with energy enough the next morning to climb the nearby preikestolen. Today the gods refuse to cooperate and cover the land in clouds and mist. It is six kilometres up and six kilometres back, and a $35 fee for parking your car and the privilege to haul your own ass up the whole way. Over rock and moss through the rain and fog as thick as mud, the heavens may alter the experience on any given day but humankind refuses to budge on the price. I am left telling myself to cherish the shape of every stone, the scent of the mountain forest, and the sweat and rain slipping off my brow because we each get one chance to walk these steps in these remote enclaves dotted across the globe. The sun can’t shine every day, nor can it rain every day. What matters is not to turn away from the experience for fear of foul weather or an unfair admission fee.
Tau to Fyllingsdalen
I am barely 20 kilometres on from Stavanger on my way to Bergen when I am introduced to the first of my many ferry trips. Heading north from Norway’s bottom lip and ferry rides become a regular part of life. Six hundred million dollars sunk into sappers and demolitions for a 20-kilometre tunnel with little spared to build a bridge spanning the mere three kilometres from shore to shore between Mortavika and Arsvågen. There is little choice in the matter with no notice of the fee from point to point; no opportunity to weigh the costs and the benefits and design a new strategy. The car and I are loaded on board as a seaman approaches the windshield of the car with his iPhone to take the reading from the decal and the transaction is made. Two dollars? Two hundred dollars? I will discover when it is all said and done. For now, it is time to sit back and bask in the cool crisp autumn air over the sea. From the deck, in the wake of the boat, I can see Norway’s rolling hills on the horizon and the sun scattering sea sparkles in every direction. Shrubs and squat forests rise up along the rocks on the shorelines. A lonely home, accessible only by boat, sits on the slope of a mountain that drops straight down into the sea below as a river of water traces its way down the cliffside.
When the ferry docks on the far side, I escape the highway the first chance I get. The route I have chosen leads me through minuscule seaside villages and thick forests. The GPS decides the optimal path, framed by my conditions and hoping to avoid the tolls and ferries as much as possible, and occasionally I have to travel along dirt tracks through damp rocky marshes or past silent farms and pastures. Occasionally the road intersects with the highway and travels high into the mountains staring out over the water where an oil derrick or an offshore fishery is visible. Sometimes the clouds descend making it impossible to see even a few metres down the road. From time to time the shapes of small islands emerge across the water through the mist. The craggy clefts and billowing wisps of the swiftly shapeshifting clouds move to keep the distant shore hidden but reveal a lone fishing boat drifting in the water. The contrast of various shades of grey become exposed when the shadow of a seagull hovers across the sky and, at times, there is no way to distinguish the sea from the misty sky but for a lone pier floating close to the shore.
Compared to the rest of Europe and the world, Norway has barely suffered a sniffle of the coronavirus. But on the continent, a second wave has begun and Norway has seen a small uptick in its numbers as well. The most affected region is Bergen – the largest city on the west coast. It is a few kilometres walking from the Fyllingsdalen suburb to the city where even on a Monday most of the shops are closed and the streets are deserted. Those who do venture out steer clear of other pedestrians and few linger in open spaces rushing in and out of shops collecting what they need and moving on. The city moves slow and the fear is palpable. The locals see the heightened caution as unsettling but effective. I stop in at the train station and trains are still running across the country but all international routes in and out have been postponed. My research reveals that long-distance buses are also running, but the only routes between Norway and Sweden still operating run through Oslo with all of the northern routes shut down indefinitely. It’s too early to start heading back to Oslo, but a circuit up to the North to Trondheim will certainly take me over my ten-day rental period. Bergen is my crucial junction point and a decision needs to be made.
Being able to go anywhere at any time has always been my most effective weapon against inflated travel costs. Without a home and with time on my hands I can suss out every available route or seize on any sale. I decide I will notify the rental agency that I will be returning the car four days later than expected and will head up along the coast to Trondheim. I obsess about the cost of this adventure and repeat to myself that I can make them up with savings in more affordable destinations later on. But now the pressure is on to leave no stone unturned and suck the marrow out of this adventure and eventually leave Norway without a need to ever return.
Bergen to Molde
The distance around the coast from Bergen to Trondheim and back to Oslo through the interior is near double what I have just driven over the last 7 days so there is no time allotted for dawdling. Driving north and the distance between major centres is so great that my route to Molde needs to be broken up, but it is difficult to find available accommodations along the way. Ferries are a foregone conclusion, but I remind myself to stay off the highway and I should be fine. I am wrestling with having made this decision to keep the car for 4 extras days knowing that it will definitely be more expensive than the sale price that I seized on previously. What could it cost? Sixty dollars, seventy dollars per day?
It is more fjords floating in the shining sea, foggy woodlands and small farms, and part of me hates myself for feeling like I have seen it all before. More tunnels through the mountains and more shimmering mountain lakes more beautiful than I have ever seen and am likely to ever see again. I have a customer support call pending with Revolut. I have a balance owing because I made a transaction for $300 at a petrol station. I scream fraud. I had paid for gasoline but my total had come to more like 300 krone, not $300! I stop the car to take a photo of the majestic scenery around me while trying to be mindful and take a moment also to just breathe.
I need to pee and find a small mountain rest stop. A Westphalia is parked nearby and a young man is organizing materials in his hauler. He works in construction and wonders what a Canadian is doing in Norway in these times. We keep our distance. He likes the idea that I just travel and thinks to himself that if he can get out of the construction game that that is something that he would like to do. He tells me about a road trip he took from Norway to southern Spain and mentions that he would like to drive across North America someday. I tell him that I have done it and that it would be worth his while. We chat for a quarter of an hour or so and no other cars pass along the highway in that time. We share an understanding nod between travellers and move on. I spend the next hundred kilometres reflecting on the fact that that was the first native Norwegian who had bothered to say more than a few words to me. Since arriving, I had had great conversations with many people at all of my stops, but none of them were locals. There was the Polish lady back in Skoppum who swore that the pandemic was a Chinese conspiracy or the German man whom I stayed with in Søgne. I had a great conversation with some Kurds who owned a pizza shop in Fyllingsdalen and the folks running the house where I was staying were Afghani, and I had an interesting conversation with a man who was one of the leading distributors of animal furs in the world, but he was a Swede.
Gitta, with whom I stayed when I arrived in Eikefjord, was Dutch and she said that Norwegians would rent out their house to travellers but were unlikely to open their homes. Eikefjord is a small town, of about a thousand people, tucked into the base of a mountain and sitting along the water of a small bay. Within hours of my arrival, Gitta said that some of the locals were calling wondering who it was that had come to her home. I was the first visitor to roll through town and stay with her in the last year so my presence in this tiny hamlet was noticed immediately. “Norwegians are very suspicious people,” she said. “And they don’t trust. It isn’t that they are upset. They just always want to know what is going on. They live in these very small communities and when something changes, even a small change, they notice”. Has history and the remoteness of their communities made them suspicious of outsiders? Is there something about the Norwegian temperament that makes them inherently cautious? Has the pandemic rendered an otherwise joyous and festive people into a fearful society unable to face each other? Perhaps the wounds of Utøya have never fully healed?
The roads in and out of Eikefjord rise and fall and twist and turn through and around mountain tunnels from ferry dock to ferry dock. Six kilometres through a tunnel down a sharp slope and even in low gear I have to tap the brake to avoid going over the speed limit and the car beeping at me to slow down. There are a million and one features along the highway to look at and sudden speed changes and bumps approaching and leaving small towns. Occasionally, I need to pull over to the side of the road to address the projects that are rendering on my computer sitting on the passenger seat. It is not immune to sharp curves in the road and there are times when I have to take a hand off the wheel to catch it from suddenly falling off the seat. Changes in weather happen often and suddenly. The sun, high enough to position itself in the gap of a mountain pass can burst through the windshield and blind you one minute and the next minute the rain can fall so hard that it turns all about you into a blurry grey sheet.
On a thirty-minute ferry ride, I step out of the car to stretch my legs and explore the deck. A man sitting at a table in the cafeteria mutters some words to me in Norwegian and I have to apologize for not understanding him.
“Are you tired?” he asks.
“No,” I responded suspiciously. “I’m fine.”
“Because you were driving like a maniac,” he says.
“We were following you the whole way to the ferry and we were terrified,” the woman he is sitting with adds.
It is the first time anyone has spoken up to criticize my driving for being reckless and it puts me at a loss for words. I apologize and explain that I am not from Norway and don’t know the roads, what is around every corner, or how best to drive them. At that stage, I had been on the road out of Eikefjord for over 2 hours, mostly on small roads off the main highways, and had only seen a handful of other motorists in either direction let alone anyone with the inclination to pass me for their own safety. Mistaken identity or not, I could not get past what they thought they might accomplish by criticizing my driving. I could not change the slopes or snakiness of Norway’s roads, nor my inclination to drive them slow and safely, especially when I have a robot car whistling and wagging its finger at me every time I stray even a few kilometres per hour over the posted limit. The result was me spending the remainder of my drive to Molde stewing and questioning every detail about the positions of my hands on the wheel to every tap of the accelerator and the brake pedal.
The town of Molde is built between a fjord and the sea and taking in the view from the panorama along the Varden trail above the city makes it difficult to stay angry for too long. Nature shows off her full splendour as the sunbeams through every happy cloud and shimmers a radiant silver along the water. The wind blows in on the top of the mountain and I remind myself that my lifestyle might disagree with many and my driving might disagree with even more, but Nature and I understand each other. There are no regrets about anything and no thoughts about rental or fuel or housing costs. In those moments alone on Varden looking down on Molde and at the fjords across the water I remember what it is all for.
Bergen to Molde
The distance around the coast from Bergen to Trondheim and back to Oslo through the interior is near double what I have just driven over the last 7 days so there is no time allotted for dawdling. Driving north and the distance between major centres is so great that my route to Molde needs to be broken up, but it is difficult to find available accommodations along the way. Ferries are a foregone conclusion, but I remind myself to stay off the highway and I should be fine. I am wrestling with having made this decision to keep the car for 4 extras days knowing that it will definitely be more expensive than the sale price that I seized on previously. What could it cost? Sixty dollars, seventy dollars per day?
It is more fjords floating in the shining sea, foggy woodlands and small farms, and part of me hates myself for feeling like I have seen it all before. More tunnels through the mountains and more shimmering mountain lakes more beautiful than I have ever seen and am likely to ever see again. I have a customer support call pending with Revolut. I have a balance owing because I made a transaction for $300 at a petrol station. I scream fraud. I had paid for gasoline but my total had come to more like 300 krone, not $300! I stop the car to take a photo of the majestic scenery around me while trying to be mindful and take a moment also to just breathe.
I need to pee and find a small mountain rest stop. A Westphalia is parked nearby and a young man is organizing materials in his hauler. He works in construction and wonders what a Canadian is doing in Norway in these times. We keep our distance. He likes the idea that I just travel and thinks to himself that if he can get out of the construction game that that is something that he would like to do. He tells me about a road trip he took from Norway to southern Spain and mentions that he would like to drive across North America someday. I tell him that I have done it and that it would be worth his while. We chat for a quarter of an hour or so and no other cars pass along the highway in that time. We share an understanding nod between travellers and move on. I spend the next hundred kilometres reflecting on the fact that that was the first native Norwegian who had bothered to say more than a few words to me. Since arriving, I had had great conversations with many people at all of my stops, but none of them were locals. There was the Polish lady back in Skoppum who swore that the pandemic was a Chinese conspiracy or the German man whom I stayed with in Søgne. I had a great conversation with some Kurds who owned a pizza shop in Fyllingsdalen and the folks running the house where I was staying were Afghani, and I had an interesting conversation with a man who was one of the leading distributors of animal furs in the world, but he was a Swede.
Gitta, with whom I stayed when I arrived in Eikefjord, was Dutch and she said that Norwegians would rent out their house to travellers but were unlikely to open their homes. Eikefjord is a small town, of about a thousand people, tucked into the base of a mountain and sitting along the water of a small bay. Within hours of my arrival, Gitta said that some of the locals were calling wondering who it was that had come to her home. I was the first visitor to roll through town and stay with her in the last year so my presence in this tiny hamlet was noticed immediately. “Norwegians are very suspicious people,” she said. “And they don’t trust. It isn’t that they are upset. They just always want to know what is going on. They live in these very small communities and when something changes, even a small change, they notice”. Has history and the remoteness of their communities made them suspicious of outsiders? Is there something about the Norwegian temperament that makes them inherently cautious? Has the pandemic rendered an otherwise joyous and festive people into a fearful society unable to face each other? Perhaps the wounds of Utøya have never fully healed?
The roads in and out of Eikefjord rise and fall and twist and turn through and around mountain tunnels from ferry dock to ferry dock. Six kilometres through a tunnel down a sharp slope and even in low gear I have to tap the brake to avoid going over the speed limit and the car beeping at me to slow down. There are a million and one features along the highway to look at and sudden speed changes and bumps approaching and leaving small towns. Occasionally, I need to pull over to the side of the road to address the projects that are rendering on my computer sitting on the passenger seat. It is not immune to sharp curves in the road and there are times when I have to take a hand off the wheel to catch it from suddenly falling off the seat. Changes in weather happen often and suddenly. The sun, high enough to position itself in the gap of a mountain pass can burst through the windshield and blind you one minute and the next minute the rain can fall so hard that it turns all about you into a blurry grey sheet.
On a thirty-minute ferry ride, I step out of the car to stretch my legs and explore the deck. A man sitting at a table in the cafeteria mutters some words to me in Norwegian and I have to apologize for not understanding him.
“Are you tired?” he asks.
“No,” I responded suspiciously. “I’m fine.”
“Because you were driving like a maniac,” he says.
“We were following you the whole way to the ferry and we were terrified,” the woman he is sitting with adds.
It is the first time anyone has spoken up to criticize my driving for being reckless and it puts me at a loss for words. I apologize and explain that I am not from Norway and don’t know the roads, what is around every corner, or how best to drive them. At that stage, I had been on the road out of Eikefjord for over 2 hours, mostly on small roads off the main highways, and had only seen a handful of other motorists in either direction let alone anyone with the inclination to pass me for their own safety. Mistaken identity or not, I could not get past what they thought they might accomplish by criticizing my driving. I could not change the slopes or snakiness of Norway’s roads, nor my inclination to drive them slow and safely, especially when I have a robot car whistling and wagging its finger at me every time I stray even a few kilometres per hour over the posted limit. The result was me spending the remainder of my drive to Molde stewing and questioning every detail about the positions of my hands on the wheel to every tap of the accelerator and the brake pedal.
The town of Molde is built between a fjord and the sea and taking in the view from the panorama along the Varden trail above the city makes it difficult to stay angry for too long. Nature shows off her full splendour as the sunbeams through every happy cloud and shimmers a radiant silver along the water. The wind blows in on the top of the mountain and I remind myself that my lifestyle might disagree with many and my driving might disagree with even more, but Nature and I understand each other. There are no regrets about anything and no thoughts about rental or fuel or housing costs. In those moments alone on Varden looking down on Molde and at the fjords across the water I remember what it is all for.
Trondheim and Lillehammer
Trondheim, the old Viking city of Nidaros, is Norway’s third-largest metropolis but is easy to walk and feels like a small town. It has charming cobbled streets and old bridges with colourful buildings that line the river and one of Scandinavia’s oldest and most impressive cathedrals. It is as charming as anywhere to stop and stay a while, but the fjords and the mountains and the countryside are the real draws. I am done with ferries and, on the route back to Oslo, now have to travel through the mountains of Norway’s interior.
A plume of smoke rises from a rust-coloured farmhouse on the sloping green hills below snowy peaks. Rising higher and the mountain road touches the clouds and the trees grow less tall as the verdant grasses of the lowlands give way to the mossy green rocks of the hilltops. The rain comes and goes turning to light snow if the altitude is high enough. Old wooden cabins dot the hills overlooking small lakes that perfectly reflect every blade of grass and every cloud in the sky.
I pull into Lillehammer not long past noon with the hours counting down. I cannot afford to return the car any later and face more fees or penalties. It is cold and rainy and the sky will not be lit for much longer. It is a quaint little mountain town with a raging river flowing down from the mountainside that cuts right through the centre where it dumps into the north end of a long mountain lake. The museum at Maihaugen is closed because of the pandemic but the park is open. It’s rickety wood farmhouses and pasture land designed to evoke in the imagination a Norway from once upon a time. The village is mostly a one-road town whose reputation still hinges on it having once hosted the Winter Olympics. There has been no tourism for many months. Theatres and restaurants are closed. Few people are outside but for some determined canvassing agents raising money for children’s charities. With the solstice approaching, minutes of daylight are being lost each day and by 3 pm my thoughts are already on the final leg of the drive back to Oslo airport.
There is no paperwork to concern myself with at the Europcar office. “We will email you the relevant invoices in a couple of days once the inspection is done,” the attendant says. Every fjord, every mountain lake, every stunning hillside is behind me now and there is no excitement or anticipation of the unknown laid out before me. All I have now are memories and photos and the dreaded invoices to come.
I step nervously onto the train headed back to the Oslo city centre grappling with this potentially having been the only time I will step foot in this land during my lifetime. I dream about a time in one of many possible futures where vast sums of money are more available to me and I can relive it all without the burden of concerning myself with costs because trivial things like that are a drop in the bucket weighed against my net worth. I prepare my spirit as best I can to move on and reassure myself that I did everything right. Case numbers of the virus are rising sharply around the world as countries begin to impose stringent new lockdown measures and I begin to worry that I might not be able to leave Norway – but Sweden never closes.
Days later, sitting at a desk in a dimly lit room in Karlstad, an affable pussy cat sits on my lap as I work away on the last of my projects for the year. My cell phone buzzes with the alert of a new email with the subject line: Europcar Invoice 101400592483. I open it but refuse to look at the pdf attachment with the details of what I owe. The amount will be added to my credit card and withdrawn automatically from my account. It is better to concentrate on the work in front of me because that is how it will all get paid for. Keep moving forward and carry your memories with you.
Days later, having moved on to Stockholm, I receive another invoice from Europcar for yet additional charges. I don’t open it because I don’t want to know. Money is their business, experience is mine.
