The Fjords i 



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to visit are those of which I have already spoken, lying 

 on either side of Bergen, — the Hardanger and Sogne 

 Fjords, — the one some sixty miles' sail to the south, the 

 mouth of the other more than a hundred miles to 

 the north. These are the two longest fjords of Norway ; 

 the Hardanger is sixty-eight miles long, the Sogne 

 a hundred and six miles. In either case a day's steam 

 from Bergen suffices to take one into either fjord. From 

 Bergen to Eide, for example, well at the back of the 

 Hardanger, is a matter of some twelve hours ; to Odde, 

 the extreme point of the same fjord, about twenty-one 

 hours. You can get from Bergen to Vadheim, one of 

 the first stopping-places in the Sogne, in eight or ten 

 hours; to Lserdalsoren or Aardal, the stations at the end, 

 it takes about twenty hours. But the times of the 

 steamers vary immensely, according to their class and 

 to the number of places at which they stop en route. 

 Each fjord has its own characteristics. The Hardanger 

 has wide reaches enclosed by hills, high, indeed, but well 

 clothed with vegetation, and, as a rule, sloping towards 

 the water in the way I have already described. The 

 branches of the Sogne are much the narrower, — the sides 

 of them the most precipitous and bare. Sometimes these 

 lesser branches are enclosed by walls so towering and 

 close that they seem to shut out all sunlight, and, 

 in fact, there are places on which for a very large por- 

 tion of the year the sun never shines. Each of these 

 smaller branches of the fjord is the continuation of a 

 valley, narrow or broad according to the breadth of the 

 estuary ; and as down each valley of Norway runs 

 a stream, these narrower fjords at any rate seem at first 

 glance quite to answer to the common idea of a firth or 



