The World's Most Scenic Railway Journeys (2019) s01e05 Episode Script
Norway
1
Escape with us on
on an epic 800 miles train voyage.
to the land of the midnight sun.
We'll take you through
Europe's deepest gorges
We'll be stopping at Troll Wall.
It's Europe's highest
vertical mountain ridge.
Forests rich with monsters
You start to understand
Nordic mythology,
your thoughts of trolls.
And to the sea and back.
And you come down here,
absolutely different world.
On a journey that reveals
a dark Nazi past
Germany's plan was to build
what they called
the Arctic mainline.
CROWD CHEERS
And Viking legends.
Ska“. Ska“.!
We'll meet the people who live
and work along this special railway.
Look at the tower,
look at the roof,
look at the dragon heads there.
I think it's rather cool.
Before arriving atone of
the most stunning places on Earth.
The moment you pass
the Arctic circle,
the sky is bluer,
the sea is clearer.
This is what we're waiting for.
This is no ordinary railway journey.
This is one of the most scenic
railway journeys in the world.
Norway.
WHISTLE BLOWS
Our journey begins in Oslo,
Norway's capital.
Its central train station
is the country's busiest.
From here, the line runs all the way
north to Bodo in the Arctic circle.
On the way, we'll take a detour
through the mountains
to the coastal town of Andalsnes.
Chief conductor Hilde will be taking
us to Trondeheim.
She's a busy woman
of very few words.
This is our train.
The EL 18 electric locomotive
departs Oslo for Trondheim at 9.40.
SHE SPEAKS NORWEGIAN
This is the Dovre line,
the first of three railway lines
we'll be exploring,
each with their own
distinctive character and story.
344 miles long, the Dovre line
is nicknamed
"The Trail Of The Trolls".
It quickly leaves
the ugly industrial south behind
and enters Norway's heartland,
its green, lush forests.
I've heard so much about Norway,
and here is Norway,
as beautiful as I've heard of it,
so, er, I'm not surprised, no.
SHE LAUGHS
This is Ilse and Hans.
It's their first time exploring
the country by train.
It's really relaxed, yes.
Yeah, it's very good paced,
nothing too fast, nothing too slow.
You can just see everything,
but yeah, you're not getting bored.
The rumours about the mysterious
landscape and, like Yeah.
It's true, everything.
The railway line clings to the edge
of the country's
biggest lake, Mjosa.
A vast 140 square miles,
it was used by steamboats
to ship timber
from the forests in the north.
Anne Lund is returning home to Bodo
after visiting her grandchildren
in the south.
She makes this trip
five times a year.
I will describe it
as a wonderful journey.
I'm always looking out.
It's like travelling
in a painting or a gallery.
Just looking into a forest,
it's much better than pictures
on the walls.
The Norwegians
cherish their woodland.
As far back as the 1900s,
they decided to map their forests
and replant their trees.
Today, they have triple the wood
they had 100 years ago.
Lillehammer is the next stop,
in about 15 minutes.
A hundred miles north of Oslo,
at the top of Lake Mjosa,
is Lillehammer.
Surrounded by mountains, the town
hosted the 1994 Winter Olympics.
And when the snow melts,
its sprawling forests play host
to avid summertime hikers
like Anette, who's travelled home
to see her folks for the weekend.
I grew up in this area and I walked
since I was a little girl.
I walk off to work,
sorting my mind out and relaxing,
listening to the birds
and the waterfalls.
Anette likes walking solo,
but she's by no means alone.
She's got some childhood friends
for company.
Here we have a typical
Norwegian troll stone
where the trolls
will live underneath.
Different kinds of trolls.
A wart on the nose,
maybe on the side or here,
or trees growing out of the nose.
And a lot of hair.
Some of them are good
and some of them are not
and they can't be seen
in the daylight
because then they get stoned.
Nature is a big part
of the Norwegian history,
it has always been with us.
Not far from Anette
and her trolls friends' hangout
is another reason to get off
the train at Lillehammer.
It smells tart, you know?
It's amazing.
Caroline is a big fan
of old Norwegian buildings,
and it's just as well.
When she's not a tour manager
for a black metal band,
she's a tour manager
at the Maihaugen open air museum.
Sort of smells
like a sort of smoky
Smells a little burnt,
in a way, but in a nice way.
So Yeah, you can still smell it.
It's chock full of original
medieval folk dwellings
that have been collected from around
Norway and transplanted here,
all of them crafted from wood.
You could find trees
everywhere here,
so this was
the biggest resource we had.
Her favourite is this
BOO-year-old church.
This construction
is rather amazing.
This framework, consisting
of the wooden columns
and the joists on top
and in the bottom,
creating a frame
with wooden planks.
No nails, as you can see.
And if you wondered if this
is a nail, no it's not.
It's a piece of wood.
Solid as a rock.
So it's like an ancient
module system, in a way.
It's brilliant, I think.
A bit like today's
Scandi flat-pack furniture.
Impressive, isn't it?
I think it's rather cool.
Look at the tower,
look at the roof,
look at the dragon heads there.
Even though we are Christian
by the time they made this church,
ii makes me think
of the Viking ships.
You can see some resemblance,
can't you?
Look at this.
This is where you could end up
if you worked on Sundays,
if you got pregnant
without being married,
if you didn't respect
the ten commandments,
then you could end up here
as a punishment.
If a soldier raped a woman,
he was given a warning
the first time,
the second time, he needed to pay,
and the third time,
he would end up here.
Now we are going inside the church
to have a peek.
When people came here
in the medieval times,
the women on one side,
the men on the other,
it was really, really dark and
it was cold, there was no healing.
Imagine when it's like
25 degrees outside
and you're standing in church
freezing your butt off.
I'm not really a religious person
but take a look
at this heavenly light.
This is magical.
Next
We'll be travelling along
a gravity-defying railway line
to take you from the mountains
to the sea.
WHISTLE BLOWS
We're 100 miles
into one of the world's
most scenic railway journeys
through Norway.
Our final destination is Bodo,
gateway to miles of national park,
where keen cyclists Hans and Ilse
are planning a holiday.
We are going to Lofoten, which is
an island group close to Bodo,
and we are bringing our bicycles,
so this was the easiest way
to travel to Bodo, actually.
The train now has 95 miles
to travel to the next stop, Dombas.
Here, we'll take the Rauma line
which will take us to the coast.
We're going to change the train
to Andalsnes.
The Rauma line begins
in the mountains,
2,000 feet above sea level,
and carries passengers
77 miles down to the coast.
Per is Norwegian
Going home. My hometown.
But he likes to speak English
with a thick Lancashire accent
learnt from his old friend, Tony.
I'm going home
for a couple of days,
just to smell the sea,
the salt sea, fresh air.
I met him 50 years ago here,
and I lived here for three years,
then I lost him for a few years
and then after 43 years,
we met up again
and he's just as crazy
as he ever was.
34 miles along the line is Bjorli.
This mountain village is home
to local historian, Hans Olav.
Well, I grew up just a few
kilometres further south there.
And we come 16 years of age,
not too many jobs,
so we had to leave,
a mere 574 metres above the ocean,
had nothing to eat up there.
And this part gave about 90,000
to America during
the immigration.
The higher you come in Norway,
the more emigrated
to the United States.
And then they start
to build railroad.
It combined the mountains
with the fjords.
The Rauma line
is a feat of engineering
because it runs through
the giant Romsdal Valley,
which has some of
Norway's highest peaks.
Taking 14-and-a-half million
man hours to build,
it was completed in 1924
and ii changed the lives of
farming families like Hans Olav's,
living isolated in the mountains.
Andalsnes was like London for me.
An enormous city, you know?
It's only four houses,
but for me it was enormous.
They had a tailor.
And when you come down
to this famous tailor's,
you feel you had some
ring floats on your body.
I haven't taken this train
since I was a little boy.
That was in the '50s.
50 years later, Hans Olav decides
to take a trip down memory lane.
You know, the train in the '50s,
they had six or seven
sitting in the same room, right?
I remember my mother knitting
like this passenger over here,
and when I was young, the women,
they even did that
when they were walking
between the houses at the farm
and they were knitting and knitting
when they were walking.
The women were making
all the clothes.
Very steep now.
What were they thinking
the first time they came here
and said "We'll take the railroad
down this very steep mountainside"?
I'm quite sure that somebody said
"You're crazy,
you're not able to do that".
What made constructing
this line so challenging
was the steepness of the valley,
so engineers designed
four horseshoe-shaped tunnels
inside a mountain.
We're going for a few minutes
and turning 180 degrees around.
That switch back allows
a gradual ascent.
The train exits the tunnel
facing in the opposite direction.
If you look to your left
in a moment,
you'll see the famous
Kylling Bridge.
It is one of the most spectacular
bridges in Norway.
Even though to the Rauma line
is only 77 miles long,
it has 32 bridges.
Kylling Bridge is the most iconic.
Beautiful, isn't it?
Beautiful.
Construction on the stone bridge
began in 1913
and wasn't finished
until eight years later.
250 feet long and 200 feet high,
it towers over the Rauma river.
Kylling in Norwegian
means "chicken",
and crossing the bridge
isn't for the faint-hearted.
But fortunately, this local
has a head for heights.
HE SPEAKS NORWEGIAN
15 miles from the Kylling Bridge,
the train hits the most dramatic
part of the Romsdal Valley.
We'll be stopping at Trollveggen,
the Troll Wall.
It's Europe's highest
vertical mountain ridge.
The Troll Peaks,
legendary in Norwegian folklore,
loom an awesome 2,000 feet tall,
attracting climbers
from all around the world.
There are always some routes
that have never been
climbed before. Really difficult.
It's the best ones
who are training here.
And some of them
go to Mount Everest.
They are waiting for a mountain
to fall down.
Last year, it moved seven metres,
and during one day, it moved
over one metre here in one day.
It was quite fast.
We're just waiting for it.
It happened on the western coast
of Norway more than 100 years ago.
We are waiting for the worst.
This valley is the birthplace
of mountaineering in Norway.
A lot of people, they think
they were crazy, you know?
And Hans Olav has a personal
connection with one of its pioneers.
The man who was one of the first
to climb this ridge
was the tailor we went
to get our clothes from
when I was a little boy.
And he was so famous,
l felt a little bit good
wearing his clothes.
Arne Renders Heen,
king of the Romsdal Valley,
conquered his first
Troll Peak in 1928
and climbed it
for the last time aged 80.
During The Second World War,
the tailor by day
played a key role
for the Norwegian Resistance,
helping captives escape the Nazis by
leading them through the mountains.
One of his most famous missions
took place in 1944,
when he climbed a Troll Peak to map
the Nazi facilities in the valley.
The Norwegian authorities
were so impressed
they thought Heen
had used an aerial photograph.
After the war, he received
a special thanks from Eisenhower.
So people come all over
from the rest of the world
to try to follow the track
of the pioneers.
I start weeping a little bit,
it brings back the memories.
I was only six, seven years
of age, yes.
At the mouth of the Rauma river
is Andalsnes.
Beautiful.
Population today, 3,000.
Oh, this absolutely new.
You look at a modern building.
Too modern for me!
HE LAUGHS
And coming on the train, for
a farmer's boy, now, that was big.
That was like going on a jumbo jet,
747, and seeing New York.
It is a small distance to go
from the high mountain
and a farmer's son
down to the fjord.
You go into an absolutely
different world.
You're living up there
and on stone and mountain
and you come down here where
everything is growing, everything.
And the building is a museum
and it's in the memory
of this Renders Heen.
It's built in his memory.
I'm a part of that museum myself.
You need some heroes, you know?
You need some heroes.
We continue our journey 120 miles
north to Trondheim,
a major hub in the centre
of the country
and one-time Viking capital.
I have been around the world
and I've never seen
landscape like this.
Look at the landscape.
No wonder you
take the trip many times.
Globe-Hotter Eivind makes certain
he takes this particular line
at least once a year.
It's getting wilder and wilder
the further north
you come, you know?
It's just a fantastic landscape,
actually.
And you never get tired
of watching it.
And it's different from day to day.
It's not far from
your thoughts of trolls and
You can start to understand
the Nordic mythology
with the thunder god Thor
and Odin with one eye
and the warrior kind of philosophy.
The landscape, it confirms
the culture, you know?
The people reflect the landscape,
in a way.
People from the south,
they are not the same
as the people from the north.
It's very hard to get
from one valley to another valley
because the landscape is so harsh.
We are now approaching Trondheim.
The Dovre line takes us to Trondheim
station, gateway to the north.
It's from here that lines shoot off
to some of the country's
most remote destinations
and to neighbouring Sweden.
The city's home to Europe's
northernmost medieval cathedral.
But before Christianity
came to town,
Trondheim was Norway's capital
and a Viking stronghold.
Skol.
Each year, this bunch of Vikings
gets together
to spend a week
celebrating midsummer
and the longest day of the year.
Not to offend anyone in the UK,
but the reason why there's
so many beautiful women in Norway
is that we took all
the beautiful women from the UK
during the Viking period
and we brought them back here,
and hence why we're
so beautiful now.
Well, if you say so.
They try to be
as authentic as possible.
While some Vikings
like hitting the shops,
others prefer to hit the bars.
Have you tried the mead?
No. Try the mead.
Yeah, try the mead.
Ooh, that's nice.
So, this is mead.
It was the closest thing you came
to spirits back in medieval times.
If you want to get really hammered,
mead's your friend.
Good!
ALL LAUGH
And their diet?
Strictly Viking, of course.
lam cooking a goose stew.
It is traditional Viking food
as far as we know.
It's recreated from findings
what have been found
inside people's bellies.
Well, the dog'll have it
even if no one else will.
This motley crew each have their
own unique reasons for being here.
We'll always be Vikings, you know?
You have it already in you,
and if you don't have ii in you,
it's very difficult to find it.
For others, it's less spiritual
and more social.
What attracted me to this
was how people live their lives
and how was their love life,
how was their mating rituals,
how did they drink,
how did they party,
how did they fight,
how did everything work?
Stick around and you'll find out.
The high point of the week
is seeing in summer solstice.
So, welcome.
ALL CHEER
Which is really an excuse
for an all-nighter.
We like to party, and the party
can go on and on and on.
SHE LAUGHS
I'm braiding some flowers
into a circle.
As soon as you have about six pints
then things get a little bit
Well, it's not classy any more.
Norway is intoxicating.
Shit make flower grows.
It will get wilder, just saying.
SHE LAUGHS
Nice.
SHE LAUGHS
ALL CHEER
It's going to be a long night.
In a few stops, we'll be getting off
the train in reindeer country
to meet one of Norway's
indigenous Sami people.
WHISTLE BLOWS
We're in the city of Trondheim
in the middle of Norway.
It's a major rail junction
where the Dovre line from Oslo ends
and the Nordland line begins.
The Nordland line
is Norway's longest
and the only one that crosses
into the Arctic Circle,
travelling through
some of the world's
most beautiful national parks,
bathed in midnight sun.
We're going to Bodo.
The best train on
the Norwegian state railways.
In about four minutes,
we leave from Trondheim.
But first we need to have
the engine driver in the front.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen,
this is the train guard
and I wish you welcome on board
this train to Bodo.
Estimated time in Bodo, 5.32.
Have a nice day, thank you.
This 453-mile long Arctic line
with 293 bridges and 154 tunnels
transports travellers into one of
the most unspoiled parts of Norway.
It's special for the tourists.
They like to drive on this line.
They like to see
out of the windows,
see how much
beautiful country we have,
and it's often the best line
in Norway.
Short stop only
while we're waiting for a signal.
The first slop, just 27 miles north,
is a small terminal
renowned for employing
the station master from hell.
SHE SPEAKS NORWEGIAN
And there's a reason why
she has such a terrible reputation.
We are in Hell station.
It's quite OK. Really.
Very much tourists.
They all are out on the stairs
and taking photograph
of Hell, of the wall.
Tourists pass through
this village each year
just for the photo opportunity.
One time, there was a guy coming
with the train
and he was from England
and then he asked me
if I could take a picture of him
when he stands under the Hell.
"Because," he says, "my ex-wife
told me always to go to Hell"
and now I can show her
I've been there.
After a long career on the railways,
Tove is stuck in Hell.
I've been here 32 years,
so I have enjoyed it.
I can't do anything else,
so I have to do this.
SHE CHUCKLES
But thanks to a recent make-over,
it's not such a bad place to be.
We got a new kitchen,
new living room.
Oh, we have everything.
Microwave
We can cook pizza
or anything in the stove.
We have a washing machine
Now I can relax.
A little bit.
DOOR BEEPS
The train's quiet today, so there's
time for the staff to take stock.
I think I have one of
the best views at work in Norway.
Especially on this line,
the Nordland, it's quite varied.
Working on the Nordland
is 26-year-old Horken's holiday job
when he's not doing teacher training
at Trondheim University.
This is my third summer now,
so I work part time in the cafe,
so I can work here some weekends
or in the summer or vacations.
That's one of the good things
about the job, too,
you meet so many different people.
On the menu today
We've got the Norwegian meatballs,
traditional dish.
Kjottkaker. Meatballs and potatoes.
Yes, it's all right. Good enough.
But some choose to swerve
the meatballs.
Home-made!
HE LAUGHS
It is much better
to take it from home.
Oh, today I have ham and cheese,
brown cheese.
This is brown cheese,
traditional Norwegian cheese.
It's very good on waffles.
The Norwegians have been eating
brown cheese for hundreds of years.
It's made by boiling
milk, cream and whey,
which turns the sugars into caramel,
giving it a sweet, cheesy flavour.
The train is just 125 miles
south of the Arctic circle.
Storforshei. It's the next station.
There is a lot of reindeer
and we have a lot of accidents
with reindeer in this area.
We make a border for the reindeer.
You will see it
on the line here now.
We're now in the indigenous
Sami country.
They're the only people in Norway
legally allowed to own reindeer.
They've herded them across
Arctic Scandinavia,
Finland and Russia
since the Ice Age.
This is Messy and Sven.
Sven is from the film Frozen
and Messy is is messy.
He was Messy from the beginning.
Shilling all over the house,
actually. ll was a mess.
And this is Nils, a young Sami
living near the Nordland line
who's adopted two reindeer calves
because they lost their mother
to a high-speed train.
I don't think they know
that they are reindeers.
Working around the dogs,
helping me with everything.
They come when I call them
by their names.
They're part of the family,
having a good time.
They're building their antlers.
They grow them as big
as they can get,
but the one with the biggest
antlers gets the most ladies.
Nils and his family
have been making a living
the same way for hundreds of years.
We have been here for generations.
His father, his grandfather,
his grand-grandfather
have all been here
working with the reindeers.
When my father was young,
he was walking and skiing
after the reindeers.
Only in the last tens of years,
people have started
to live in houses.
The nomadic way of life,
you always move with the herd
to better grazing lands.
The Sami let their herds roam wild
to graze all year
which makes their meat
a nutritious delicacy.
It isn't enough
reindeer meat in Norway
that we can sell it
to the other countries.
The ones who buy the most
is the local people.
You can't find a more healthy meat
than reindeer meat.
The railway company has started
building a 30-mile long fence
to keep reindeer
off the Nordland line.
Until it's finished,
Nils spends a lot of time
trying to make sure his deer
are nowhere near the tracks.
And if we find some reindeers,
we have to scare them away
or call the railroad company
and ask them to stop
every train that is coming.
But they're so free range,
half the time he doesn't know
where they are.
They're really hard to find.
Either you have to use the dog
to find them
or you have these GPS collars.
l was hoping they could
show me a little bit.
The last one was updated
five hours ago.
They've cheated the GPS.
Time to try a different bit
of surveillance.
I use the drone as often as I can.
It's just easier
to look over a bigger area.
I couldn't see anything.
The good news
is Ni | s's 3,000 reindeer
are nowhere near the train tracks.
The bad news is
he has no idea where they are.
I'm not worried today.
If I can't find any reindeer
in the next month,
I will be a little bit
more worried.
Retired teacher Peter French has
been all over the world by train,
it's his favourite way to travel.
Stunning the whole way.
It's mile after mile
of fantastic scenery.
Mountains and water
Fantastic valleys punctuated
by wonderful Norwegian buildings
You're actually
On a long journey,
you're spending hours
looking at scenery the whole time
and you can't hardly
keep up with it.
You get a few tunnels, mind you.
You do get a few tunnels, but
Annoyingly, they come along
just when you're trying
to take a picture.
The train is approaching Mosjoen,
a stretch of the Nordland line
with a dark history.
When Norway was occupied
in World War Two,
the Nazis pushed the line
from Mosjoen forward
55 miles to Mo i Rana.
You can say it's a kind of remains
after the enemy.
This is a German austerity
steam locomotive
that came to Norway during the war,
and this is the last remaining
example out of 74 that came here.
The Nazis needed to mass
produce trains cheaply
to aid their war effort.
The result? The DRB Class 52,
1,600 horsepower.
This specific one was actually made
for hill climbing,
not running fast.
Low-drivered slogging machines
that could pull a decent load
up the hills in this country.
The whole concept,
strip down everything
that actually wasn't necessary.
That way they got man hours down,
6,000 per engine.
They saved a lot of materials,
especially bronze
and copper and such,
which was scarce in Germany
at that time.
And they were actually built
to go to the Eastern Front
and not return.
All the way to Nordvik.
The Germans' plan was to build what
they called the Arctic mainline
to Murmansk in what is
today Russia.
And that would have been
some project.
Building a railway this far north
had proved too difficult
for the locals.
But the Nazis had something
the Norwegians didn't.
Forced labour.
Basically, it was prisoners of war,
convicts, in slave labour camps.
A lot of them perished,
a lot of them.
It's always puzzled me.
Why don't you feed your slaves?
25,000 men were put to work
building the railway
and the huge loss of life
led Norwegians
to later call it "Blodbahn",
the blood line.
When the war ended, northern Norway
inherited a bitter
but invaluable legacy.
We didn't have to build new steam.
Even in Britain, you built new
steam up to 1960, but we didn't.
We didn't have to,
because of these massive engines.
They ran until 1970. That was
the end of steam in Norway.
But as it proved,
they were durable machines.
They are rumoured to be around
500 still in existence
in strategic research in Russia.
I think that was the boys' stuff
of dreams when I was growing up,
when everybody wanted to be
an engine driver.
Today, engine drivers,
they have nine months of school
and then they're out
driving by themselves.
In steam days in Norway,
you could easily go as a fireman
for 12 to 15 years
before you were allowed to drive.
It's a craft, to run and fire
a steam locomotive.
We're getting closer
to our final destination,
Bodo, land of the midnight sun,
where we will experience
some of the country's
most stunning national park.
WHISTLE BLOWS
Welcome to the Arctic.
We're now passing
the Arctic Circle.
The train is now 680 metres
above the sea level.
We're 66 degrees north,
passing through
the Saltfjellet mountain range,
where the land of
the midnight sun begins.
Our final destination
is Bodo on the coast,
which leads to some of
the most beautiful
national parks in the world.
This diesel locomotive is charging
along the Arctic Nordland line
into one of the remotest parts of
an already
sparsely-populated country.
This is just on a different level
altogether.
If you come here for a holiday,
you don't get crowded out
with people
and you get to see the views
and you haven't got
all the tourists in your way.
This is well worth exploring,
the northern part.
I mean, it's exceeded our
expectations,
because we thought
it'd be quite good,
but it's spectacular scenery,
and it's like, miles after mile.
30 miles south
of the end of the line
is a village,
population 1,500.
It's quite open and rugged
and it's like it's opening
its arms to you saying
"Welcome home, buddy.
We missed you."
This is a small place, Valnesfjord,
mostly famous
for its delicious carrots.
Because of the climate,
there are very little insects,
very little sickness.
The good people of Valnesfjord are
pretty pleased with their carrots.
And as they only see an hour of
daylight in midwinter,
it's no wonder they spend
a lot of time celebrating
something that helps them
see in the dark.
Valnesfjord was featured
on a Norwegian news show
when an effigy resembling
a carrot mysteriously sprung up
on a roundabout overnight,
pulling the village
firmly on the map.
But it's possible their passion
had turned into fixation
by the time they launched
their carrot-themed thermals.
Local photographer Rune Nilsen
has made a career
from this landscape
since he arrived 23 years ago.
The moment you pass
the Arctic Circle,
the sky is bluer,
the sea is clearer,
the sun sparkles even more.
But this is just for starters.
Leaving the carrot village behind,
the train continues
towards its final destination.
There are long stretches where
the train goes along the fjord,
literally six feel from the ocean,
so you can almost hear the waves.
The railroad is integrated
into the nature, into the terrain.
On behalf the crew,
thank you for travelling with us.
ANNOUNCEMENT IN NORWEGIAN
The train's scheduled platform
And here we are,
at the end of the line.
Bodo, the gateway to unrivalled,
endless Arctic beauty.
And a five minute walk and
you are straight into the woods.
It's dramatic. You've got this
vast ocean, these steep mountains.
An Alpine sea landscape,
because the mountains round here
come straight up from the ocean.
That makes this coast
something special.
As always, it's the light that
gives character to this landscape.
It can be flat, boring,
half an hour later
it explodes colour and contrast.
You can photograph
the same mountain 200 times
and have 200 distinctly
different pictures.
Here, each summer,
for six entire weeks,
the sun never dips
below the horizon.
The best light, around midnight,
and you've got this golden flair,
golden quality to the light.
Because photography is kind of
writing with light,
you're trying to tell a story,
and you have
to understand the light,
you have to let it grasp
the landscape
and you have to be there.
Good light comes
with the tempo of a snail
and it evaporates
like lightning, it's gone.
This is what we're waiting for
during winter.
When the snow gales
chase you through the streets
like an angry polar bear
snapping at your ankles
and you slam the door shut,
you light a fire,
brew a cup of tea
and you dream of this.
This is the end goal.
And now, finally, we're here.
We have travelled 800 miles
from Oslo, via the western coast,
through the forests and mountains,
to here, the Arctic wilderness.
A truly awe-inspiring
railway journey.
You couldn't get
more Norway than this.
Escape with us on
on an epic 800 miles train voyage.
to the land of the midnight sun.
We'll take you through
Europe's deepest gorges
We'll be stopping at Troll Wall.
It's Europe's highest
vertical mountain ridge.
Forests rich with monsters
You start to understand
Nordic mythology,
your thoughts of trolls.
And to the sea and back.
And you come down here,
absolutely different world.
On a journey that reveals
a dark Nazi past
Germany's plan was to build
what they called
the Arctic mainline.
CROWD CHEERS
And Viking legends.
Ska“. Ska“.!
We'll meet the people who live
and work along this special railway.
Look at the tower,
look at the roof,
look at the dragon heads there.
I think it's rather cool.
Before arriving atone of
the most stunning places on Earth.
The moment you pass
the Arctic circle,
the sky is bluer,
the sea is clearer.
This is what we're waiting for.
This is no ordinary railway journey.
This is one of the most scenic
railway journeys in the world.
Norway.
WHISTLE BLOWS
Our journey begins in Oslo,
Norway's capital.
Its central train station
is the country's busiest.
From here, the line runs all the way
north to Bodo in the Arctic circle.
On the way, we'll take a detour
through the mountains
to the coastal town of Andalsnes.
Chief conductor Hilde will be taking
us to Trondeheim.
She's a busy woman
of very few words.
This is our train.
The EL 18 electric locomotive
departs Oslo for Trondheim at 9.40.
SHE SPEAKS NORWEGIAN
This is the Dovre line,
the first of three railway lines
we'll be exploring,
each with their own
distinctive character and story.
344 miles long, the Dovre line
is nicknamed
"The Trail Of The Trolls".
It quickly leaves
the ugly industrial south behind
and enters Norway's heartland,
its green, lush forests.
I've heard so much about Norway,
and here is Norway,
as beautiful as I've heard of it,
so, er, I'm not surprised, no.
SHE LAUGHS
This is Ilse and Hans.
It's their first time exploring
the country by train.
It's really relaxed, yes.
Yeah, it's very good paced,
nothing too fast, nothing too slow.
You can just see everything,
but yeah, you're not getting bored.
The rumours about the mysterious
landscape and, like Yeah.
It's true, everything.
The railway line clings to the edge
of the country's
biggest lake, Mjosa.
A vast 140 square miles,
it was used by steamboats
to ship timber
from the forests in the north.
Anne Lund is returning home to Bodo
after visiting her grandchildren
in the south.
She makes this trip
five times a year.
I will describe it
as a wonderful journey.
I'm always looking out.
It's like travelling
in a painting or a gallery.
Just looking into a forest,
it's much better than pictures
on the walls.
The Norwegians
cherish their woodland.
As far back as the 1900s,
they decided to map their forests
and replant their trees.
Today, they have triple the wood
they had 100 years ago.
Lillehammer is the next stop,
in about 15 minutes.
A hundred miles north of Oslo,
at the top of Lake Mjosa,
is Lillehammer.
Surrounded by mountains, the town
hosted the 1994 Winter Olympics.
And when the snow melts,
its sprawling forests play host
to avid summertime hikers
like Anette, who's travelled home
to see her folks for the weekend.
I grew up in this area and I walked
since I was a little girl.
I walk off to work,
sorting my mind out and relaxing,
listening to the birds
and the waterfalls.
Anette likes walking solo,
but she's by no means alone.
She's got some childhood friends
for company.
Here we have a typical
Norwegian troll stone
where the trolls
will live underneath.
Different kinds of trolls.
A wart on the nose,
maybe on the side or here,
or trees growing out of the nose.
And a lot of hair.
Some of them are good
and some of them are not
and they can't be seen
in the daylight
because then they get stoned.
Nature is a big part
of the Norwegian history,
it has always been with us.
Not far from Anette
and her trolls friends' hangout
is another reason to get off
the train at Lillehammer.
It smells tart, you know?
It's amazing.
Caroline is a big fan
of old Norwegian buildings,
and it's just as well.
When she's not a tour manager
for a black metal band,
she's a tour manager
at the Maihaugen open air museum.
Sort of smells
like a sort of smoky
Smells a little burnt,
in a way, but in a nice way.
So Yeah, you can still smell it.
It's chock full of original
medieval folk dwellings
that have been collected from around
Norway and transplanted here,
all of them crafted from wood.
You could find trees
everywhere here,
so this was
the biggest resource we had.
Her favourite is this
BOO-year-old church.
This construction
is rather amazing.
This framework, consisting
of the wooden columns
and the joists on top
and in the bottom,
creating a frame
with wooden planks.
No nails, as you can see.
And if you wondered if this
is a nail, no it's not.
It's a piece of wood.
Solid as a rock.
So it's like an ancient
module system, in a way.
It's brilliant, I think.
A bit like today's
Scandi flat-pack furniture.
Impressive, isn't it?
I think it's rather cool.
Look at the tower,
look at the roof,
look at the dragon heads there.
Even though we are Christian
by the time they made this church,
ii makes me think
of the Viking ships.
You can see some resemblance,
can't you?
Look at this.
This is where you could end up
if you worked on Sundays,
if you got pregnant
without being married,
if you didn't respect
the ten commandments,
then you could end up here
as a punishment.
If a soldier raped a woman,
he was given a warning
the first time,
the second time, he needed to pay,
and the third time,
he would end up here.
Now we are going inside the church
to have a peek.
When people came here
in the medieval times,
the women on one side,
the men on the other,
it was really, really dark and
it was cold, there was no healing.
Imagine when it's like
25 degrees outside
and you're standing in church
freezing your butt off.
I'm not really a religious person
but take a look
at this heavenly light.
This is magical.
Next
We'll be travelling along
a gravity-defying railway line
to take you from the mountains
to the sea.
WHISTLE BLOWS
We're 100 miles
into one of the world's
most scenic railway journeys
through Norway.
Our final destination is Bodo,
gateway to miles of national park,
where keen cyclists Hans and Ilse
are planning a holiday.
We are going to Lofoten, which is
an island group close to Bodo,
and we are bringing our bicycles,
so this was the easiest way
to travel to Bodo, actually.
The train now has 95 miles
to travel to the next stop, Dombas.
Here, we'll take the Rauma line
which will take us to the coast.
We're going to change the train
to Andalsnes.
The Rauma line begins
in the mountains,
2,000 feet above sea level,
and carries passengers
77 miles down to the coast.
Per is Norwegian
Going home. My hometown.
But he likes to speak English
with a thick Lancashire accent
learnt from his old friend, Tony.
I'm going home
for a couple of days,
just to smell the sea,
the salt sea, fresh air.
I met him 50 years ago here,
and I lived here for three years,
then I lost him for a few years
and then after 43 years,
we met up again
and he's just as crazy
as he ever was.
34 miles along the line is Bjorli.
This mountain village is home
to local historian, Hans Olav.
Well, I grew up just a few
kilometres further south there.
And we come 16 years of age,
not too many jobs,
so we had to leave,
a mere 574 metres above the ocean,
had nothing to eat up there.
And this part gave about 90,000
to America during
the immigration.
The higher you come in Norway,
the more emigrated
to the United States.
And then they start
to build railroad.
It combined the mountains
with the fjords.
The Rauma line
is a feat of engineering
because it runs through
the giant Romsdal Valley,
which has some of
Norway's highest peaks.
Taking 14-and-a-half million
man hours to build,
it was completed in 1924
and ii changed the lives of
farming families like Hans Olav's,
living isolated in the mountains.
Andalsnes was like London for me.
An enormous city, you know?
It's only four houses,
but for me it was enormous.
They had a tailor.
And when you come down
to this famous tailor's,
you feel you had some
ring floats on your body.
I haven't taken this train
since I was a little boy.
That was in the '50s.
50 years later, Hans Olav decides
to take a trip down memory lane.
You know, the train in the '50s,
they had six or seven
sitting in the same room, right?
I remember my mother knitting
like this passenger over here,
and when I was young, the women,
they even did that
when they were walking
between the houses at the farm
and they were knitting and knitting
when they were walking.
The women were making
all the clothes.
Very steep now.
What were they thinking
the first time they came here
and said "We'll take the railroad
down this very steep mountainside"?
I'm quite sure that somebody said
"You're crazy,
you're not able to do that".
What made constructing
this line so challenging
was the steepness of the valley,
so engineers designed
four horseshoe-shaped tunnels
inside a mountain.
We're going for a few minutes
and turning 180 degrees around.
That switch back allows
a gradual ascent.
The train exits the tunnel
facing in the opposite direction.
If you look to your left
in a moment,
you'll see the famous
Kylling Bridge.
It is one of the most spectacular
bridges in Norway.
Even though to the Rauma line
is only 77 miles long,
it has 32 bridges.
Kylling Bridge is the most iconic.
Beautiful, isn't it?
Beautiful.
Construction on the stone bridge
began in 1913
and wasn't finished
until eight years later.
250 feet long and 200 feet high,
it towers over the Rauma river.
Kylling in Norwegian
means "chicken",
and crossing the bridge
isn't for the faint-hearted.
But fortunately, this local
has a head for heights.
HE SPEAKS NORWEGIAN
15 miles from the Kylling Bridge,
the train hits the most dramatic
part of the Romsdal Valley.
We'll be stopping at Trollveggen,
the Troll Wall.
It's Europe's highest
vertical mountain ridge.
The Troll Peaks,
legendary in Norwegian folklore,
loom an awesome 2,000 feet tall,
attracting climbers
from all around the world.
There are always some routes
that have never been
climbed before. Really difficult.
It's the best ones
who are training here.
And some of them
go to Mount Everest.
They are waiting for a mountain
to fall down.
Last year, it moved seven metres,
and during one day, it moved
over one metre here in one day.
It was quite fast.
We're just waiting for it.
It happened on the western coast
of Norway more than 100 years ago.
We are waiting for the worst.
This valley is the birthplace
of mountaineering in Norway.
A lot of people, they think
they were crazy, you know?
And Hans Olav has a personal
connection with one of its pioneers.
The man who was one of the first
to climb this ridge
was the tailor we went
to get our clothes from
when I was a little boy.
And he was so famous,
l felt a little bit good
wearing his clothes.
Arne Renders Heen,
king of the Romsdal Valley,
conquered his first
Troll Peak in 1928
and climbed it
for the last time aged 80.
During The Second World War,
the tailor by day
played a key role
for the Norwegian Resistance,
helping captives escape the Nazis by
leading them through the mountains.
One of his most famous missions
took place in 1944,
when he climbed a Troll Peak to map
the Nazi facilities in the valley.
The Norwegian authorities
were so impressed
they thought Heen
had used an aerial photograph.
After the war, he received
a special thanks from Eisenhower.
So people come all over
from the rest of the world
to try to follow the track
of the pioneers.
I start weeping a little bit,
it brings back the memories.
I was only six, seven years
of age, yes.
At the mouth of the Rauma river
is Andalsnes.
Beautiful.
Population today, 3,000.
Oh, this absolutely new.
You look at a modern building.
Too modern for me!
HE LAUGHS
And coming on the train, for
a farmer's boy, now, that was big.
That was like going on a jumbo jet,
747, and seeing New York.
It is a small distance to go
from the high mountain
and a farmer's son
down to the fjord.
You go into an absolutely
different world.
You're living up there
and on stone and mountain
and you come down here where
everything is growing, everything.
And the building is a museum
and it's in the memory
of this Renders Heen.
It's built in his memory.
I'm a part of that museum myself.
You need some heroes, you know?
You need some heroes.
We continue our journey 120 miles
north to Trondheim,
a major hub in the centre
of the country
and one-time Viking capital.
I have been around the world
and I've never seen
landscape like this.
Look at the landscape.
No wonder you
take the trip many times.
Globe-Hotter Eivind makes certain
he takes this particular line
at least once a year.
It's getting wilder and wilder
the further north
you come, you know?
It's just a fantastic landscape,
actually.
And you never get tired
of watching it.
And it's different from day to day.
It's not far from
your thoughts of trolls and
You can start to understand
the Nordic mythology
with the thunder god Thor
and Odin with one eye
and the warrior kind of philosophy.
The landscape, it confirms
the culture, you know?
The people reflect the landscape,
in a way.
People from the south,
they are not the same
as the people from the north.
It's very hard to get
from one valley to another valley
because the landscape is so harsh.
We are now approaching Trondheim.
The Dovre line takes us to Trondheim
station, gateway to the north.
It's from here that lines shoot off
to some of the country's
most remote destinations
and to neighbouring Sweden.
The city's home to Europe's
northernmost medieval cathedral.
But before Christianity
came to town,
Trondheim was Norway's capital
and a Viking stronghold.
Skol.
Each year, this bunch of Vikings
gets together
to spend a week
celebrating midsummer
and the longest day of the year.
Not to offend anyone in the UK,
but the reason why there's
so many beautiful women in Norway
is that we took all
the beautiful women from the UK
during the Viking period
and we brought them back here,
and hence why we're
so beautiful now.
Well, if you say so.
They try to be
as authentic as possible.
While some Vikings
like hitting the shops,
others prefer to hit the bars.
Have you tried the mead?
No. Try the mead.
Yeah, try the mead.
Ooh, that's nice.
So, this is mead.
It was the closest thing you came
to spirits back in medieval times.
If you want to get really hammered,
mead's your friend.
Good!
ALL LAUGH
And their diet?
Strictly Viking, of course.
lam cooking a goose stew.
It is traditional Viking food
as far as we know.
It's recreated from findings
what have been found
inside people's bellies.
Well, the dog'll have it
even if no one else will.
This motley crew each have their
own unique reasons for being here.
We'll always be Vikings, you know?
You have it already in you,
and if you don't have ii in you,
it's very difficult to find it.
For others, it's less spiritual
and more social.
What attracted me to this
was how people live their lives
and how was their love life,
how was their mating rituals,
how did they drink,
how did they party,
how did they fight,
how did everything work?
Stick around and you'll find out.
The high point of the week
is seeing in summer solstice.
So, welcome.
ALL CHEER
Which is really an excuse
for an all-nighter.
We like to party, and the party
can go on and on and on.
SHE LAUGHS
I'm braiding some flowers
into a circle.
As soon as you have about six pints
then things get a little bit
Well, it's not classy any more.
Norway is intoxicating.
Shit make flower grows.
It will get wilder, just saying.
SHE LAUGHS
Nice.
SHE LAUGHS
ALL CHEER
It's going to be a long night.
In a few stops, we'll be getting off
the train in reindeer country
to meet one of Norway's
indigenous Sami people.
WHISTLE BLOWS
We're in the city of Trondheim
in the middle of Norway.
It's a major rail junction
where the Dovre line from Oslo ends
and the Nordland line begins.
The Nordland line
is Norway's longest
and the only one that crosses
into the Arctic Circle,
travelling through
some of the world's
most beautiful national parks,
bathed in midnight sun.
We're going to Bodo.
The best train on
the Norwegian state railways.
In about four minutes,
we leave from Trondheim.
But first we need to have
the engine driver in the front.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen,
this is the train guard
and I wish you welcome on board
this train to Bodo.
Estimated time in Bodo, 5.32.
Have a nice day, thank you.
This 453-mile long Arctic line
with 293 bridges and 154 tunnels
transports travellers into one of
the most unspoiled parts of Norway.
It's special for the tourists.
They like to drive on this line.
They like to see
out of the windows,
see how much
beautiful country we have,
and it's often the best line
in Norway.
Short stop only
while we're waiting for a signal.
The first slop, just 27 miles north,
is a small terminal
renowned for employing
the station master from hell.
SHE SPEAKS NORWEGIAN
And there's a reason why
she has such a terrible reputation.
We are in Hell station.
It's quite OK. Really.
Very much tourists.
They all are out on the stairs
and taking photograph
of Hell, of the wall.
Tourists pass through
this village each year
just for the photo opportunity.
One time, there was a guy coming
with the train
and he was from England
and then he asked me
if I could take a picture of him
when he stands under the Hell.
"Because," he says, "my ex-wife
told me always to go to Hell"
and now I can show her
I've been there.
After a long career on the railways,
Tove is stuck in Hell.
I've been here 32 years,
so I have enjoyed it.
I can't do anything else,
so I have to do this.
SHE CHUCKLES
But thanks to a recent make-over,
it's not such a bad place to be.
We got a new kitchen,
new living room.
Oh, we have everything.
Microwave
We can cook pizza
or anything in the stove.
We have a washing machine
Now I can relax.
A little bit.
DOOR BEEPS
The train's quiet today, so there's
time for the staff to take stock.
I think I have one of
the best views at work in Norway.
Especially on this line,
the Nordland, it's quite varied.
Working on the Nordland
is 26-year-old Horken's holiday job
when he's not doing teacher training
at Trondheim University.
This is my third summer now,
so I work part time in the cafe,
so I can work here some weekends
or in the summer or vacations.
That's one of the good things
about the job, too,
you meet so many different people.
On the menu today
We've got the Norwegian meatballs,
traditional dish.
Kjottkaker. Meatballs and potatoes.
Yes, it's all right. Good enough.
But some choose to swerve
the meatballs.
Home-made!
HE LAUGHS
It is much better
to take it from home.
Oh, today I have ham and cheese,
brown cheese.
This is brown cheese,
traditional Norwegian cheese.
It's very good on waffles.
The Norwegians have been eating
brown cheese for hundreds of years.
It's made by boiling
milk, cream and whey,
which turns the sugars into caramel,
giving it a sweet, cheesy flavour.
The train is just 125 miles
south of the Arctic circle.
Storforshei. It's the next station.
There is a lot of reindeer
and we have a lot of accidents
with reindeer in this area.
We make a border for the reindeer.
You will see it
on the line here now.
We're now in the indigenous
Sami country.
They're the only people in Norway
legally allowed to own reindeer.
They've herded them across
Arctic Scandinavia,
Finland and Russia
since the Ice Age.
This is Messy and Sven.
Sven is from the film Frozen
and Messy is is messy.
He was Messy from the beginning.
Shilling all over the house,
actually. ll was a mess.
And this is Nils, a young Sami
living near the Nordland line
who's adopted two reindeer calves
because they lost their mother
to a high-speed train.
I don't think they know
that they are reindeers.
Working around the dogs,
helping me with everything.
They come when I call them
by their names.
They're part of the family,
having a good time.
They're building their antlers.
They grow them as big
as they can get,
but the one with the biggest
antlers gets the most ladies.
Nils and his family
have been making a living
the same way for hundreds of years.
We have been here for generations.
His father, his grandfather,
his grand-grandfather
have all been here
working with the reindeers.
When my father was young,
he was walking and skiing
after the reindeers.
Only in the last tens of years,
people have started
to live in houses.
The nomadic way of life,
you always move with the herd
to better grazing lands.
The Sami let their herds roam wild
to graze all year
which makes their meat
a nutritious delicacy.
It isn't enough
reindeer meat in Norway
that we can sell it
to the other countries.
The ones who buy the most
is the local people.
You can't find a more healthy meat
than reindeer meat.
The railway company has started
building a 30-mile long fence
to keep reindeer
off the Nordland line.
Until it's finished,
Nils spends a lot of time
trying to make sure his deer
are nowhere near the tracks.
And if we find some reindeers,
we have to scare them away
or call the railroad company
and ask them to stop
every train that is coming.
But they're so free range,
half the time he doesn't know
where they are.
They're really hard to find.
Either you have to use the dog
to find them
or you have these GPS collars.
l was hoping they could
show me a little bit.
The last one was updated
five hours ago.
They've cheated the GPS.
Time to try a different bit
of surveillance.
I use the drone as often as I can.
It's just easier
to look over a bigger area.
I couldn't see anything.
The good news
is Ni | s's 3,000 reindeer
are nowhere near the train tracks.
The bad news is
he has no idea where they are.
I'm not worried today.
If I can't find any reindeer
in the next month,
I will be a little bit
more worried.
Retired teacher Peter French has
been all over the world by train,
it's his favourite way to travel.
Stunning the whole way.
It's mile after mile
of fantastic scenery.
Mountains and water
Fantastic valleys punctuated
by wonderful Norwegian buildings
You're actually
On a long journey,
you're spending hours
looking at scenery the whole time
and you can't hardly
keep up with it.
You get a few tunnels, mind you.
You do get a few tunnels, but
Annoyingly, they come along
just when you're trying
to take a picture.
The train is approaching Mosjoen,
a stretch of the Nordland line
with a dark history.
When Norway was occupied
in World War Two,
the Nazis pushed the line
from Mosjoen forward
55 miles to Mo i Rana.
You can say it's a kind of remains
after the enemy.
This is a German austerity
steam locomotive
that came to Norway during the war,
and this is the last remaining
example out of 74 that came here.
The Nazis needed to mass
produce trains cheaply
to aid their war effort.
The result? The DRB Class 52,
1,600 horsepower.
This specific one was actually made
for hill climbing,
not running fast.
Low-drivered slogging machines
that could pull a decent load
up the hills in this country.
The whole concept,
strip down everything
that actually wasn't necessary.
That way they got man hours down,
6,000 per engine.
They saved a lot of materials,
especially bronze
and copper and such,
which was scarce in Germany
at that time.
And they were actually built
to go to the Eastern Front
and not return.
All the way to Nordvik.
The Germans' plan was to build what
they called the Arctic mainline
to Murmansk in what is
today Russia.
And that would have been
some project.
Building a railway this far north
had proved too difficult
for the locals.
But the Nazis had something
the Norwegians didn't.
Forced labour.
Basically, it was prisoners of war,
convicts, in slave labour camps.
A lot of them perished,
a lot of them.
It's always puzzled me.
Why don't you feed your slaves?
25,000 men were put to work
building the railway
and the huge loss of life
led Norwegians
to later call it "Blodbahn",
the blood line.
When the war ended, northern Norway
inherited a bitter
but invaluable legacy.
We didn't have to build new steam.
Even in Britain, you built new
steam up to 1960, but we didn't.
We didn't have to,
because of these massive engines.
They ran until 1970. That was
the end of steam in Norway.
But as it proved,
they were durable machines.
They are rumoured to be around
500 still in existence
in strategic research in Russia.
I think that was the boys' stuff
of dreams when I was growing up,
when everybody wanted to be
an engine driver.
Today, engine drivers,
they have nine months of school
and then they're out
driving by themselves.
In steam days in Norway,
you could easily go as a fireman
for 12 to 15 years
before you were allowed to drive.
It's a craft, to run and fire
a steam locomotive.
We're getting closer
to our final destination,
Bodo, land of the midnight sun,
where we will experience
some of the country's
most stunning national park.
WHISTLE BLOWS
Welcome to the Arctic.
We're now passing
the Arctic Circle.
The train is now 680 metres
above the sea level.
We're 66 degrees north,
passing through
the Saltfjellet mountain range,
where the land of
the midnight sun begins.
Our final destination
is Bodo on the coast,
which leads to some of
the most beautiful
national parks in the world.
This diesel locomotive is charging
along the Arctic Nordland line
into one of the remotest parts of
an already
sparsely-populated country.
This is just on a different level
altogether.
If you come here for a holiday,
you don't get crowded out
with people
and you get to see the views
and you haven't got
all the tourists in your way.
This is well worth exploring,
the northern part.
I mean, it's exceeded our
expectations,
because we thought
it'd be quite good,
but it's spectacular scenery,
and it's like, miles after mile.
30 miles south
of the end of the line
is a village,
population 1,500.
It's quite open and rugged
and it's like it's opening
its arms to you saying
"Welcome home, buddy.
We missed you."
This is a small place, Valnesfjord,
mostly famous
for its delicious carrots.
Because of the climate,
there are very little insects,
very little sickness.
The good people of Valnesfjord are
pretty pleased with their carrots.
And as they only see an hour of
daylight in midwinter,
it's no wonder they spend
a lot of time celebrating
something that helps them
see in the dark.
Valnesfjord was featured
on a Norwegian news show
when an effigy resembling
a carrot mysteriously sprung up
on a roundabout overnight,
pulling the village
firmly on the map.
But it's possible their passion
had turned into fixation
by the time they launched
their carrot-themed thermals.
Local photographer Rune Nilsen
has made a career
from this landscape
since he arrived 23 years ago.
The moment you pass
the Arctic Circle,
the sky is bluer,
the sea is clearer,
the sun sparkles even more.
But this is just for starters.
Leaving the carrot village behind,
the train continues
towards its final destination.
There are long stretches where
the train goes along the fjord,
literally six feel from the ocean,
so you can almost hear the waves.
The railroad is integrated
into the nature, into the terrain.
On behalf the crew,
thank you for travelling with us.
ANNOUNCEMENT IN NORWEGIAN
The train's scheduled platform
And here we are,
at the end of the line.
Bodo, the gateway to unrivalled,
endless Arctic beauty.
And a five minute walk and
you are straight into the woods.
It's dramatic. You've got this
vast ocean, these steep mountains.
An Alpine sea landscape,
because the mountains round here
come straight up from the ocean.
That makes this coast
something special.
As always, it's the light that
gives character to this landscape.
It can be flat, boring,
half an hour later
it explodes colour and contrast.
You can photograph
the same mountain 200 times
and have 200 distinctly
different pictures.
Here, each summer,
for six entire weeks,
the sun never dips
below the horizon.
The best light, around midnight,
and you've got this golden flair,
golden quality to the light.
Because photography is kind of
writing with light,
you're trying to tell a story,
and you have
to understand the light,
you have to let it grasp
the landscape
and you have to be there.
Good light comes
with the tempo of a snail
and it evaporates
like lightning, it's gone.
This is what we're waiting for
during winter.
When the snow gales
chase you through the streets
like an angry polar bear
snapping at your ankles
and you slam the door shut,
you light a fire,
brew a cup of tea
and you dream of this.
This is the end goal.
And now, finally, we're here.
We have travelled 800 miles
from Oslo, via the western coast,
through the forests and mountains,
to here, the Arctic wilderness.
A truly awe-inspiring
railway journey.
You couldn't get
more Norway than this.