Flam

This is Flam, Norway.  Flam is on a fjord that branches off Norway’s longest fjord.  This fjord branch flows through Aurland, Vik, and Laerdal and is an 18 mile long branch.  Because they can, I guess, Flam attracts cruise ship traffic.  Flam is a small village of only 350 people but they get as many as 15,000 cruise ship tourists a day and about 500,000 cruisers a year.  We arrived in Flam by bus on the E16 highway.       

Flam started as a village in 1340.  Flam, the name, is derived in Old Norse to mean “plain, flat piece of land” or “a plain between steep mountains”.  It’s still a small village and easily walkable.  I am not sure what the cruise tourists do here all day.

You can see a photo of the harbor in the first photo.  I took the first photo from our hotel to give myself some elevation for the photo.

We stayed in the Fretheim Hotel which was quite nice.  You can see Vicky by the front door.  The hotel is a refurbished manor house from the 1800s.  It has certainly been upgraded since and it was really a nice place to stay.

We went down to the other end of town to visit a farmer.  You can see the other end of town in the third photo.  The river did not seem to be running very high when we were there.

You can see the sheep farm that we visited in the fourth photo.  Our guide and this farmer told us that farmers have a difficult time making a living by farming in Norway.  But what a beautiful place to live and work!

Our guide said that most farmers have to do other jobs to generate enough income to make ends meet.  Farmers might process trees, fish, rent out rooms, generate power, or do jobs in town.  

On a side note, several of our tour members told this farmer that they were from Minnesota and that they knew farmers in Minnesota who came from Flam.  The farmer was aware of this and he told us that today, there are thousands more Flam farmers living in Minnesota than in Flam.

The last photo is the farm wife and she is with her three motherless babies, for which she provides their motherly care.  The family was very nice and we enjoyed our visit very much.