Recently in Norway Category

We visited a goats' cheese factory in Undredal, lunching on pancakes stuffed with tangy, unctuous slices of it, followed by waffles with sour cream and cloudberry jam.

Could we meet the goats (of which there are 300 to 80 people)? Not just then, because they were up in the mountains above the town - they're taken out in April or May and spend the summer up there.

But we were promised we'd catch a glimpse of them as we drove out to our next destination. Indeed we did - and it turned out the goats wanted more than just a glimpse of us...

Undredal is on Aurlandsfjord, and can be reached on the Gudsvangen-Flam ferry - which puts it along the route of the hugely popular Norway in a Nutshell tour.

You'll also find the smallest stave church in Northern Europe here. It has just 40 seats, and is still in use today.

There's a full set of pics and videos from Norway in my travelhub gallery....

Ever wondered why the red buildings in Norway are, well, red?

My guess was visibility, which was wrong, and in fairness was a stupid guess, since white, pink and radiant yellow would be pretty noticeable too.

I'm told it's actually because red paint was the cheapest, and the romantic 'red building in the middle of a fjord' photos we love to look at tend to be of farming or fishing areas where average income is relatively low.

If you were a slightly wealthier farmer, you might have had your outbuildings painted red, and your farmhouse painted white - a more expensive colour that signified wealth.

Even better, some image-conscious families in coastal towns and cities would paint the sea-facing wall white and downgrade to red for the less prominent walls. 

All interesting stuff, I thought - if you're going to think something is beautiful, the next thing you should do is ask how it got that way.

Update: I've posted a full set of images from Norway, plus some photos, in my image gallery on travelhub (Travel Weekly's networking site).

Our group agreed that Skudeneshavn felt rather like a set for some picturesque but rather sinister film - something lurking between the Prisoner and the Wicker Man (I mean all this in a good way...).

A fishing village of a few hundred white wooden houses, it was founded in the 1800s but tantalisingly crops up on maps from the 1500s, for reasons nobody can quite explain.


It's now listed throughout, and its look is preserved by some rigid building regulations:

• The fronts of houses must be predominantly white
• Red, green or blue are allowed around windows or doors
• Modifications - even replacing the old windows - are tightly controlled
  

This doesn't make for a visually dull town - the shape and size of houses varies, and their similar colour scheme means details like a barometer or a pot plant have a keener effect.

Still, unless you're crazy about boats, there is not a tremendous amount going on here, and that's reflected in a lack of hotel product - you'll find only a handful of B&Bs, some cabins for hire and two campsites nearby.

But it repays a casual visit, and has a nice museum featuring a series of traditionally-furnished rooms and a mock-up 'shop' stocked with vintage goods. Look out for the fish-skin shoes.

Of course, the drawback for the casual visitor is Skudeneshavn's relative remoteness from the bigger tourist draws of fjord country - you would probably want to fly to Haugesund, as we did, and stop off here on a short tour of the area before heading north.

Best to start with the facts. Avaldsnes became a seat of power because it's a key point on the Karmsund strait, a narrow and unavoidable channel on the 'Nordvegen' - the coastal shipping route from which Norway's name derives.

Among its most famous rulers are Harald Harfarge (Harald Fairhair), who first unified Norway, and Olaf Tryggvason, who displaced the old gods - Odin, Thor et al - with Christianity. He founded St Olaf's Church, which you'll find just opposite the Nordvegen History Centre.

Hugely important viking country, then. Unfortunately, displays in the history centre's main exhibit aren't translated, so you're left with a rather piecemeal audio guide (English or German) to fill in the gaps.

Be sure to look through the introductory panels in the lobby, which do have translations and will give you much of the need-to-know stuff.

Two great bits follow our tour of the museum.

First, we take the ten-minute walk to the centre's 'viking farm', and enter dark, smoky wooden longhouse for a meal of cured goat with wild garlic leaves, roasted boar with a vegetable stew (no potatoes - we're being vikings, and potatoes haven't been discovered yet) and fruit sweetened with honey.

Second, we take a rigid inflatable from the viking farm to our hotel in Haugesund. On the way I look back at Avaldsnes to see St Olaf's Church disappear behind one of the hulking industrial ships that dominate the Karmsund strait today.

It flips a switch in my head - the past and present, and all the realities of geography and trade that link them, swim into focus. Yes, it's pure chance. But memorable travel moments often are...

The Nordvegen History Centre can organise viking meals for groups - contact them to enquire. Local adventure company Ravnafloke provided our boat trip.