A Ferry into Hardangervidda

The other day I posted a photo on Instagram saying how sometimes walking around here I feel like I’m inside a beautiful painting.

Well, this blog post is basically just an extended version of that post, because on this particular journey into Hardangervidda I totally went all Oprah, turning to every mountain and hill “You could be a painting! And you could be a painting! And you could be a painting!”

I don’t know, maybe I’ve seen too many oil paintings of this landscape, or maybe Hardangervidda really is just a little unreal in its beauty.

Last week my parents and grandmother visited and we did something we have been talking about for ages but never actually done: we took a ferry into M?svatn, a nearby lake that cuts into Hardangervidda, the largest plateau of its kind in Europe. So like, the views weren’t the worst.

It’s almost a little frustrating living nearby so much beautiful nature, because it definitely makes me want to drop everything and just frolic through the mountains for, oh I don’t know, the rest of my life? Work, who needs that?

The lakeside is dotted with colorful cottages and even a few farms – only accessible by boat in the summer until the lake freezes again and you can drive on it.

We sailed into a raincloud as we approached Mogen, which should have been annoying but somehow just made the landscape look even more magical to me.

We had lunch at Mogen Turisthytta, the coziest mountain lodge which serves as a base for a lot of hikers heading up onto Hardangervidda. I would love to take a week to hike between the tourist cabins spread throughout the plateau, but this time we only had a day to explore, so we just walked around Mogen.

So I don’t really have more of a point to this blog post than to say, oh hey, Norway is really pretty.

Don’t you think?