Sunday morning July 15 was rainy with low clouds. Tenders were idling in the water below our big ship. Passengers were lined up on a lower deck, sleepily waiting to disembark for the first time since we set sail from Copenhagen. It was just after 7 am. In the distance we could see a small dock, a few buildings, and a foaming spot where a river emptied into the fjord.
Flaam is a hamlet at the very end of a small arm of a larger arm of one of the largest fjords in Norway. About 200 or so folks live there year-round. But the town is visited by several hundred thousand tourists on cruise ships like ours every summer. The first ships started arriving here in the late 19th century, principally to carry English anglers to fish the river. And so there I was, clambering into the tender for the short ride to shore, to meet my guide, Dag, for a half-day of fishing for salmon and sea trout.
I met Dag at the one hotel in town. I'd arranged all this via internet with a guide service. I'd sent my money to this hotel and had been told to meet the guide there. This did seem a little sketchy, but Dag was there as promised with waders and gear. We started by deciding I should try manhandling a 2 handed "Spey" fly fishing rod. This mother was at least 12' long, and heavy. I was skeptical, but figured Dag was a guide for a good reason.
We fished for about 4 hours on 2 stretches of the river that I had rented for a half-day from the farmers who own the fishing rights. Dag explained that there are no public fishing rivers. Feuds have begun and raged for years over who in the family inherits the fishing rights to these rivers. You time on these "beats" is managed closely, and Dag made sure we were off as soon as our time had expired, although there were no other fisherpeople hanging about waiting for us to exit. Very orderly people, these Norwegians.
That's a picture of me, throwing a cast into the river. I did that a lot, and I'd like to say I caught a monster salmon that nearly pulled me into the river. But I didn't. I did catch three small fish, one about the size of a goldfish, the others about 3" and 6" respectively. The last one put up a bit of a fight, but with my enormous rod it wasn't much of a contest. We stood by various spots in the river, saw a large sea trout that disdained my lure as it floated by, watched a salmon lazily inspect it and then veer off, waved at the passengers in the tourist trains that were carrying them further up the valley, and spoke to other cruisers as they hiked by along the road. I guess I was the only one on the ship to look into this activity, since quite a few of the walkers inquired excitedly and talked to Dag. One woman asked me not to talk about the fishing back on the ship "or my husband will kill me, and then himself, for not planning to do this."
After fishing Dag drove me way up the mountain looming over the river. "I will give you some views that none of the other passengers will see." He was right. We twisted and turned on a dirt road, switchbacking every 100 yards or so. There was a farm at the top of the road, owned by a man with 6 daughters, none of whom wanted the farm when he was ready to retire. This is apparently a common dilemma, with daughters or sons. It is so hard to make a living from these farms and there are so many options now for people that hanging onto a small plot on the side of a forbidding mountain way up a small fjord holds little appeal. Dag pointed out a meadow visible across the valley. He said that a farmer on this side owned it and would cultivate the hay and bring it back across the river and up this road to provide fodder for his goats and sheep. He said that this has been the practice for generations in the fjords. Farmers need multiple plots and pastures in order to be able to cultivate enough hay and fodder to survive. In the old days they would haul it up from the valley on their backs, one load at a time.
We stood at the side of the road and watched the train chug into the valley and along the tracks before turning back to town. The ship cast off at around 2 pm heading back out the fjords in the rain for our next port of call.
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