ROHOLDT FJELL PARADIS

 In 2008 Erik and I went for a walk up the mountain that looks like the side of a wave....( In a letter)
Fjell is a mountain and my house is called Fjelly= in the lee of the mountain.

    The many greens of the trees blue-green, grass-green, dark-green, pale-green, green-green, today speeding past on the way to the mountain climb. Down the valley to Kviteseid (Whiteside) with its white granite, then hair-pinning it up the other side to park at the highest point on the road. Then when back home the many greens of the salad, a great pile of it that would shock my mother, as each portion looks like salad fit for a family of four. Such was the Wednesday of the 16th July 2008. 

 

    We started out towards the mountain of Roholdt/ Roholt, just above Vraadal which is situated at the head of the Lake Nisse (Nissedal, the valley of the little Christmas gnomes who help the big Nisse who represents Father Christmas); 10 30 am. As we went we found we had a spring in our stride, the ground was like my parent's bed  underfoot, the soft turf was brown at first then as the grasses closed in on either side it became the palest of cream colours, grasses from former seasons had fallen on it and made a pale striped layer to walk on. 

 

Silently padding along like lions, we came to the wood where the grass beside us turned into bilberries on our right with their shiny little leaves, and on the other side were the newly flowering heather plants that had their little fir-tree like tops and the path itself became orange-brown needles dotted under the fir trees, with tiny fir cones. Later on, tasting the bilberries, I found that they were delicious, with that snert (snaerrrt) in the flavour that only new fruits can have, just like new apples not quite fully ripe, or a sweet wine with that little something else.  

 

Fresh down from the walk/climb of 45%, or more, up the grey-white wall of rock that flows down to the top of the lower hills like the huge tongue of a glacier, from the long crest-of-a-wave-shaped mountain of Roholdt, we were -helt slit ut ((completely) shleet oot/ worn out) saa vi maa slap av(shlapp aav/relax) etter en tur til "paradise." 

 

Completely worn out, after supper I tried to get up from my chair and found it very difficult, we are not sensible enough to go no further when we should stop, and found ourselves up the mountain to the top-at 68 and 82 yrs old. that's madness; the two little children of the German family with four children going the same way, stoically climbed on and having gone up as far as they felt they could, turned back, the two older children couldn't be bothered, so the poor mother had to stay behind with them, just her luck. 

 

So we were up the highest and were quite definitely the oldest. It was a hard climb, we had thought of going along the valley below where there are some idyllic lakes with stone edges, instead of up, but the path took us on and on in its usual adventure-luring manner in the direction of the top, and we just found ourselves going there!! In some places the "path" is a steep, very steep rock face where one's shoes have to walk on their friction alone, heaven help us if it had rained as then it could become very slippery, and going down isn't half as easy as going up! 

 

There on top we sat down balancing our knobbly bottoms on the equally knobbly rocks and mosses, twigs and branches crouched like two birds, tiny in the expanse of sky which was empty above us. Far in the distance, making a frame all round were the blue green hills and mountains sinking into the ancient dream colours of infinity. We sat in the sunshine and watched rain pour grey sheets on Skorve, and on Fjelly-my house, Skorve an old lump, shapeless and unpeopled, being only one of the mountains in the distant view, but the rain luckily didn't come to us, even though we hurried down to avoid it.

 

It is the half way up stage of this walk that resembles "paradise" most, where the water at the skirts of the rock mass, sometimes under them at the edges, starts out like gold, we have discovered GOLD, the gold of more worth than any other kind, which can bring one the greatest contentment. This gold flows on past great nuggets of rocks coloured by the water, then onto the flat rock surfaces, there are so many platforms and cliff forms it meets on its way down, these make the water spread out here as sheets of colour, black mossy dots, orange circles, pink granite, and there as a bubbling, blowing, white spume-patterned, black-shadowed, gurgling, narrow-dashing-snakes of sound stream, only stopping to dance over stones or down unseen underground passages, or to break out onto the smooth surfaces again and swathe smiles of foam on and on in a never ending musical rhythm of wetness. 

 

I am getting muddled in the adjectives here and no wonder as the sight, sound and definitely wonderful perfume of this sight is so particular that it needs the whole dictionary of adjectives to do it justice. (I read in one of my Uncle Philip's letters just now :-

  " ...had lovely fall weather but Winter came with the first snow last week....and the temperature for the last day or two has varied between -20%C & -34%C. On such a day arrives your letter full of the warmth of fall colouring and unconcealed water.........thank you. Interesting thought, did we see all the colours earlier in man's mental development? Maybe I mentioned before about a student of monkeys telling of one that would come out of the jungle onto a high spot, to watch the sunset night after night. I read somewhere that the Greeks only had 3 words for the colours, and interestingly enough managed Storge, Philia, Eros, Agape 4 words for love, that overworked English expression."

   You see it goes in the family this sporadic jump to something else in the middle of a thought!!! 

 

Back on the Roholt mountain I remarked to the German man saying didn't he agree it was like paradise and his reply was "Its better than being in the office" obviously not a man with aesthetic understanding. Something one finds few people possess, an aspect of the Zen philosophy that interests me most.

 

I made a DVD video film of this beck, stream, waterfall, dashing water, with the only music the sound of its path, I couldn't record the sweet smell of the mires and flowers around it as Maud did in the film "Harold and Maud", black humour, did you see that?  Maud had little boxes of perfumes, good and bad ones! I liked that film. The policeman said to Maud. "Can I see your driving licence?" ----as she had dug up a tree that was not liking living in the town centre, to plant it out in the wilds again--- and her answer was. " I don't believe in licences."

 

Back in Flatdal valley where the lake is called Flatsjo the sun was shining again and Skorve's great sweeping walls of rock plunged down to the trees dark velvet green and into the lake in which it mirrors its dramatic visage. There too is the rock that may fall and cause the valley to flood with water, maybe not so dramatically as in the past because of the Hydro electric power-cut-in-the-flow-so to speak; instead of flowing full, the river is partly driven down in underground tunnels below the very mountain to become the water supply to which I have become connected as the last in the valley from the south, others further north have wells.

 

"Bubble bubble toil and trouble" this is fast turning into a witches brew of words muddled in bubbled mêlée, ah me what can I do they come a tumbling out and without a doubt muddle my reader too. 

 

Hope you had a happy time reading and tumbling down with the paradisiacal waters of a place that, to our utter amazement even some of the locals that live at its base do not realise is a "pearl" (what a word uff) of a place they have just there. The Danes would have made a huge noise about its existence and loads of maps and busses would have brought the masses to see it, but as it is, the Tourist office doesn't open until ....later! And the maps do not have any of the many paths we find, even though they have recently become good at putting up signposts- if one knows the name of the place the sign points to! 

 

I am writing this the day afterwards now and have recovered being in good trim basically, but it was a tough tur (walk) alikevel.(just the same).

Love to all mountain lovers from Ann.