Counting Sheep in Skjolden

I like to find a unique experience or iconic location in each cruise port visited so similar destinations don't bleed together in my memories. For Skjolden, that landmark appeared as soon as the ship pulled up to the dock.

Next to the pier, sheep moseyed across the green hillside below a red farmhouse and barn.  The rural scene is a far cry from industrial ports on the fringe of a city where large ships often port.

Had we still been in bed, we could have literally counted sheep looking through our balcony glass doors to go back to sleep.

But we were wide awake, bundled up warmly against the brisk morning and anxious to go ashore to explore beautiful Norway.

The village of Skjolden has a population of 200, so 3400 passengers on Sky Princess dwarfed their numbers despite being the only ship visiting.  Even if every resident was a taxi driver, there wouldn't have been enough cars to drive all of the passengers around.

While some cruisers had secured shore excursions in advance, Julie and I had read long before boarding the cruise that waterfalls could be found alongside the road within a couple miles of the village.

Indeed, we found several towering waterfalls by simply following the two-lane road leading out of town.

For scale, please note that I am standing to the right side of the stream a few hundred yards in front of the waterfall.  It would be easy to not notice me there in the picture.

We had actually been sailing past waterfalls for hours, having entered the world's longest navigable fjord well before going to bed on our second full day at sea..

Sognefjord is 126 miles long, and at the very end is Skjolden, our first port of call in Norway.

According to the Princess Patter, Sognefjord was an important trade route for Vikings 1200 years ago, when Skjolden was part of the small kingdom of Sygnafylki.

I could visualize the village ruled by the brutal but visionary alpha-male Ragnar Lothbrok of Vikings TV fame being situated in a similar location.  While the show is historic fiction, Ragnar is believed to be a real historic figure.

Unfortunately, the cultural presentations on board barely mentioned Vikings or other historical figures from the region like Leif Ericson, instead covering only tangentially related subjects like the voyages of Christopher Columbus and Marco Polo, which while interesting would have been more suitable for cruises almost anywhere else in the world.

The historian scheduled her talk about Vikings for the following cruise, apparently because she was on the full 21-day cruise that would return to Norway.  It would have been better for those on that longer voyage to have been exposed twice to Vikings lore than for our sailing to miss out entirely on what I would call an essential part of the picture.

This is where I would normally do my own research, following bread crumbs of information shared by the onboard historian, but there really were none.  I decided to just skip trying to do intensive research from scratch, just going with what I already knew, essentially.

A big problem is that in Viking sagas, it is impossible to separate true history from legend after centuries of time have blurred stories were first shared as oral traditions to illiterate people.

Suffice it to say that in the PBS series Vikings --- which I would say falls into Viking Saga traditions in this blurring of fact and fiction --- Ragnar's brother Rollo seems destined to be a weak link but turns out to be a mythic hero himself, so it is a nice character arc.

The most probable scenario of history, however, is that not only were Ragnar and Rollo not brothers, but they were probably not related and in fact never met. 

The real Rollo, however, did by strength claim a huge swath of territory and a royal title by invading France.  He was the first Duke of Normandy. making the most of the land he was granted. He was the great-great-great-grandfather of William the Conqueror, who brought Norman rule to England.

Queen Victoria of England was purportedly a distant relative, and her nine children went on to marry royalty in other countries around Europe so that in the 19th Century, we might say the Vikings, if not specifically Rollo, were the ancestors of most European royalty.  World War I began as something of an ego battle between royal cousins over who had the greatest military might.

In any case, our highly entertaining port guide Julio informed a full Princess Theater and anyone who watched his presentation on TV live or in reruns about the potential to walk to waterfalls, so with few alternatives for those who had not locked in a shore excursion, we knew that as the day warmed, the road to the waterfalls might become crowded.

Because we got an early start, the hordes did not appear on the roads until after we were well on our way back to the ship.

The small village was filled with Princess guests when we briefly stopped there on our way back to the ship.  To be clear, this village is much smaller than the fictional Kattegat from the TV series Vikings.

After a late lunch, we were ready for an afternoon nap, but little lambs on the hillside were not nearly so lethargic as we felt after our long waterfalls hike.

They raced back and forth playfully.

I must confess that it had turned out to be a gorgeous sunny afternoon, so we took advantage of the relative warmth to head up to the sun deck and stretch out on lounge chairs with ocean views instead of counting sheep to fall asleep in the room.

Or did we do both?

You don't have to be constantly on the run to enjoy a port day.

As the pictures and videos attest, however, the waterfalls and other scenery were lovely and well worth the long walk, which turned out to cover more miles than we expected.

According to Julie's iPhone, we walked almost 10 miles altogether, and throughout that time we were either approaching waterfalls and arriving at waterfalls.

Cruising from Skjolden through Norway's longest fjord over the course of a long evening of daylight was also a treat, reminiscent of river cruising on the Rhine or Danube as we passed lovely hillsides and villages, but of course much different with waterfalls and farms instead of castles and vineyards.

Something of interest to many people considering a trip to Norway and Iceland are the Northern Lights.

A couple of days earlier, when Sky Princess began cruising from England toward Norway, the Captain had come over the public speakers to say that in the event of sighting Northern Lights, he would make a ship-wide announcement, including within our stateroom.

He apologized in advance if we were rudely awakened, but I assume everyone was happy to know we wouldn't miss Aurora Borealis should it appear.

No, that wouldn't be likely at our latitude, because we would approach but not enter the Arctic Region 20 degrees from the Magnetic North Pole.  However, within the last year, temporary geomagnetic storms have made Northern Lights visible in Montana and other states that are well south of where we cruised in Norway.  

Perhaps a bigger issue is that the Northern Lights are most visible against a dark night sky, and we only had about four hours of darkness per night.  The sun set about 11:30 PM and rose again around 3:30 AM.

It became the norm for us to go to bed for the night while it was still light outside, despite attending live music events around the ship until 11 PM.  Fortunately, we had thick curtains closed in front of our balcony sliding glass doors, so we weren't awakened by sunrise light.

If seeing the Northern Lights is high on your bucket list, take a cruise in winter rather than between spring and summer, and take a cruise that goes further north, such as on one of Viking's In Search of Northern Lights itineraries.

While we hoped to get lucky, we weren't terribly disappointed when Aurora Borealis did not put on a show for us.  It's important to set expectations realistically when traveling but be prepared to be pleasantly surprised.  Having that announcement by the Captain allowed us to sleep soundly, knowing if the unlikely Northern Lights appeared, we would be awakened to see them.

You don't need Northern Lights to love Norway.  Cruising through the Fjords of Norway on long evenings of spring through fall is a real treat in its own right.

More of Julie's Photos

5:30 AM, Cruising Toward Skjolden

More of Wes's Photos

More Videos