July 4–14, 2023

We drove uneventfully to LAX and boarded the flight to Copenhagen, joined by the Khannas, our dear old friends. The flight itself was routine; my campaign to sleep through it, waged to preempt jet lag, was routed entirely.

Then came Bergen, where our adventure acquired its permanent prefix: mis. The flight from Copenhagen landed forty-five minutes late, vaporizing our connection to Tromsø. What followed was a masterclass in institutional arrogance. The airline and airport staff — generously supported by taxpayers, travelers, and tourists — have cultivated a culture in which gratitude flows backward and the customer experience has been reduced to a slur. We lost our luggage, missed our connection, and watched employees treat our misery as a spectator sport. One agent, fortified by the small power of his post, came close to open assault on travelers who had no cards left to play; Dinesh, wiser than the moment deserved, walked away from the provocation after my gentle urging. I have spent forty years at bedsides where kindness is the last currency that matters. I know what it looks like when the empowered turn on the powerless, and I saw it in that terminal. We had long harbored a nearly divine respect for Norwegian hospitality. We stood corrected.

A taxi driver named Yacub fleeced us on the way to an unplanned night in Bergen, where we paid — again — for a flight to Tromsø. For the record, the breakfast at Hotel Norge was a delight. The restrooms at the fish-market restaurants, however, carried a stench that made rotting fish smell like roses.

July 5 — Tromsø and Senja

A propeller plane carried us through Arctic skies on a laborious two-and-a-half-hour flight, and we landed in Tromsø sleep-deprived, jet-lagged, and disillusioned about the purported Norwegian decency. Then we met Earl. Our driver for the next few days, a thoroughly pleasant gentleman, Earl single-handedly renewed our faith and unfurled before us the jewel that Senja is on this planet. We wandered from fjord to fjord, took easy walks, and gorged on views of endless beauty — gray peaks wearing scarves of cloud, water the color of polished pewter.

Our hotel, Hamn i Senja, was an upgrade on a regular cabin, though the toilets carried the repulsive odor of the potties on the trail to Mt. Whitney. The twin beds were a third the size of a typical American twin, but comparisons lose significance when sleep-deprived, jet-lagged, elderly bodies, staring into relentless twenty-four-hour sun, can do all but fume. Just kidding — insomnia won that battle, hands down. It is not an ordinary day that has sunlight running circles around the clock.

July 6 — Senja

We woke as sleep-hungry zombies and toured the fjords and salmon farms of Senja. An attempt on Segla was aborted in the planning stages — a summit for another lifetime — and we consoled ourselves decadently with delicious Thai food in Finnsnes before heading back to Hamn for drinks and dinner.

July 7–8 — Bergen, redeemed

An uneventful flight returned us to Bergen — the city, this time, not the airport — and we checked into Opus XVI. After ceremonial cheers we walked the old town, dined at the hotel, and I stole away for a quick evening hike up Fløyen, the top of Bergen. The next morning, after a relaxed breakfast, I went up again with Dinesh; at the summit, the resident goats lounged among the tourists with the unhurried confidence of landowners. Dinner at an Indian restaurant, ice cream at Olivia’s, and Bergen was forgiven. Mostly.

July 9 — Loen

Our new driver, Agnis, all of twenty-five, picked us up for the scenic drive to Loen — a delightful fellow, energetic and knowledgeable beyond his years. We checked into Hotel Alexandra, its windows full of fjord. The Skylift hauled us up a nearly vertical kilometer of cliff to a platform where the valley floor fell away beneath our feet and Lovatnet glowed turquoise below, and we had dinner at the restaurant overlooking that majesty. Back at the hotel we had to request fans — Norway, it turns out, does not believe in heat, and therefore not in cooling either.

July 10 — Geiranger

Agnis took us across to Geirangerfjord, reputedly the prettiest fjord in the world, and the reputation is not marketing. From the overlook the fjord lay far below like a ribbon of blue-green glass, the Seven Sisters spilling down the far wall in silver threads, ferries reduced to toys. We took to the water by boat, small beneath walls of rock a thousand meters high, then drove back past snowfields and a high mountain lake so still it seemed painted. By evening, my party had reached what can only be called scenic overload and began agitating, without shame, for a metropolis.

July 11 — Flåm

Agnis delivered us to Flåm. I did a small scenic hike up the valley — a waterfall came braiding down the cliff as if the mountain had sprung a magnificent leak — and then I forced a boat ride upon my reluctant co-travelers. Zipped into neon survival suits and goggles, dressed like a highway crew that had lost its highway, we flew down the Nærøyfjord between cliffs that closed overhead like cathedral walls. The fjords of Flåm are breathlessly pretty, and even the reluctant were quietly converted.

July 12 — To Oslo

An early ride on the Flåm Railway lifted us out of the valley past waterfalls and switchbacks, and we changed to the Oslo train. The ride was beautiful; my party, by now fjord-proofed, was serenely uninterested. We reached Oslo after three into mildly tempestuous weather that cleared promptly, and the party grew appreciably animated in the pretty environs of a proper city. A stroll to the castle, a small detour home, and then the Eight Bar atop the Grand Hotel, our abode for the final two days. Dinner at the hotel restaurant.

July 13 — Oslo

A taxi to Vigeland Sculpture Park after breakfast — hundreds of granite and bronze figures wrestling, embracing, raging, aging — followed by a city stroll to admire the local houses and a tram ride back. A drink at the Eight Bar, then Indian food that shall remain uncelebrated.

July 14 — Home

An early breakfast, sweet goodbyes, and our sojourn concluded. Back to the airport and the mundane.

Just kidding. Hell was waiting to be unleashed all over again.

The flight from Copenhagen left an hour late, making the Chicago connection tenuous, and Chicago answered with delays of its own — thirty minutes, then hours. Seated at last, we were abruptly rushed off the plane for “severe weather” and commanded to seek “shelter,” though no one ever specified where this shelter might be; only the fear was amplified, loudly and repeatedly, while directions were withheld. The severe weather failed to meet the meteorologists’ exalted expectations, we re-boarded, and ten hours beyond schedule I stood at a carousel waiting for luggage that had been quietly rerouted to another flight — attended, with fail-safe consistency, by the rude indifference of the unconcerned.

Air travel connects the world and has somehow become its least human experience. The contrast was the true lesson of the trip: a landscape of overwhelming grace, bracketed on both ends by institutions that have forgotten what grace is. In medicine I have learned that kindness costs nothing and is worth everything, especially when offered by the strong to the stranded. Norway’s fjords needed no such instruction — they were generous without being asked. Long after the boarding passes are recycled, that is what remains: pewter water, silver waterfalls, the sun refusing to set, and Earl and Agnis, who reminded us that a country’s beauty is ultimately vouched for by its kind.