Sorry for the late post; I’m still in post-jet-lag-zombie phase. In honor of my ability to barely construct a coherent sentence, I’m going to give you what you probably really want anyway…PICTURES! Is Scandinavia the most beautiful place on Earth? Quite possibly, folks. Quite possibly.

Blues houses on the water amid fall foliage

The fall colors in Sweden were gorgeous! This is Djurgården island in Stockholm.

 

The spires of the Nordisk museum against a cloudy sky in fall foliage

The Nordisk Museum–fascinating displays inside about Swedish cultural history, in an extravagantly decorated building.

 

Viking Ship Museum, a longship takes up most of the room.

Of course in Oslo, we went to visit these. Very imposing! This is a longship pleasure craft from the 9th century (possibly built earlier). Two women were buried in it in 834AD.

Me standing on a rock overlooking a fjord. The ground is covered in orange leaves.

In Norway, we spent most of our time driving. TheScott took this picture of me overlooking a fjord. So glorious out there!

 

A river running through mountains with fall foliage and low hanging clouds.

I think driving is a fabulous way to see Norway! I spent an insane amount of time hanging out the car window snapping things as we passed. My record was hanging out the window in -7C temps!

 

There are waterfalls EVERYWHERE. Most of them are small, like this one, but occasionally we’d see a serious cascade just, you know, by the side of the road!

 

Orange and yellow clouds reflect the sunset over a valley with a shallow river running through it.

Sunsets and sunrises were truly magnificent.

 

A tiny village nestled between rocky mountains and a lake. The lake reflects the town and the peaks.

The view from a gas station we stopped at. Um yeah. A gas station. A shocking number of them had views we took pictures of. Then again, we took over 5000 photos, so…

 

White capped river bouncing over rocks by a moss-and-bare-tree lined bank.

Most of the water was perfectly still. When we found this bout of rapids we had to stop and take pictures!

 

White capped mountains. I'm in a red hat and black sweater pointing at them from the side of the road.

We had all kinds of crazy one day-including the only time I had to try holding a conversation in Norwegian when the hotel we thought we’d stay in was closed for the season and we had to drive over mountains to get to a new one. However, this also happened!

and

Cloudcover over a low mountain. Perfectly still water. A small motorboat is dwarfed by the scenery. Blue and red shed-like buildings to the far left.

Over and over again we kept saying…”This is someone’s backyard.”

 

More mountains. A sliver of waterfall carves down the near one. The road goes forward then curves to the right.

If you go to Norway, do yourself a serious favor and travel by car.

 

Tide pool among the gray and orange-brown rocks.

I admit we were somewhat underwhelmed by the Atlantic Highway (atlanterhavsvegen). We joked that because it looks nothing like the rest of fjord and mountain Norway, the locals probably thought it was more amazing than we did! But the coast did have its interesting points, too.

 

A low sun bleaches out the sky. Snow capped mountains in the background, a tree covered in the mid-ground. A still lake, and rocky outcroppings in the fore with light snow.

Snow! (Not much…yet. But I still got excited!)

And I’ll close with those for now! More next week? Including our hunt for the Northern Lights! What’s the coolest trip you’ve ever taken?