June 1, 2009

The Rest of the Week at Skei

We took day tours everyday for the rest of the week while we were at Skei. Wednesday we headed off to take a boat tour of one of the fjords. On or way there we stopped in a small town and met some trolls. Then we headed off and crossed an old wedding bridge. Back in the 1600's they used it to have weddings. At the beginning of the bridge was a rock called a "wedding ring." The middle was carved out and the bride would have to crawl through it before she could be married. If she couldn't fit through they figured she must be pregnant and her head would be cut off! I thought I'd give it a try and the good news is that I made it through. On the boat tour we saw tons of waterfalls (because it had been raining all week). These are "The 7 Sisters Falls". Directly across from them is "The Wooer." Legand has it that the 7 Sisters are all single and the Wooer keeps trying to marry one of them. But they all keep rejecting his proposals so he has turned to alcohol for consolation, hence the bottle in the rock. On the drive back to Skei we took a mountain pass and we got a surprise at the top. Oh how I wish the sun would come out. On Thursday we hiked a couple miles through beautiful landscape to another glacier. It used to be really big, but has shrunk a lot in the past few years due to global warming. I love how the ice in the glaciers appears blue. On Friday we spent the day in the life of Norwegians back in the day. We saw old buildings and churches and learned how the Norwegians survived before modern technology. In a 300 year old church there was a 200 year old mummified codfish hanging from the ceiling. Because the rope he is hanging from is made of natural fibers, it acts like a barrometer and predicts the weather. They just look to see which way it is facing. On the way back to Skei we stopped to look at the fjord pony. They were specially bread to go up and down the mountains of the fjords. They have really sweet manes.