It took six hours for the Silver Dawn to sail from the North Sea down the fjord leading to the village of Flåm. And Flåm is very much a tourist village. It has a definite Disney / Epcot Norway feel.
I started my tour with a visit to a nearby “viking village”. To get there our bus drove thru two mountain tunnels, one almost 20 km long. Having those Black Sea oil platforms have allowed Norway to drill many tunnels to connect their fjord-separated towns.
The reconstructed village is sited at the end of a great landscape.
We had an hour tour with background given by a local guide. He had an interesting take on why the natives drove out the vikings from North America. The vikings traveled with cheese and the natives were likely lactose intolerant. However, the village had axe throwing and archery! I was better at the archery.
Afterwards we boarded a ferry that returned us to the cruise ship. It was a two-hour fjord-a-thon. Just stunning.
After the disappointment of the northern lights, I feel like a got a bit of my camera-mojo back.