Hiking in Norway in summer

The long summer evenings of hiking in Norwegian mountains are long gone, winter has settled into Amsterdam with a cold, biting wind that makes it easy to sit inside, research and write on a new book.

Researching and writing in the company of Romantics

Today the Romantics at times have the stigma of being backward looking and not innovative. They are seen as emulating the past in their approaches and techniques as artists. We forget that this was the era where artists showed their personal feelings and inner worlds for the first time, particularly strong emotions like ‘terror and  awe’. Many painters (like Hans Gude, see painting above) sought to give expression to those feelings through painting Nature’s powerful forces; poets (Aasmund Vinje) and composers (Edvard Grieg) immersed themselves in it for their inspiration. And so a gradual change took place. Previously, the Garden of Eden was a medieval place, where all creatures would happily sit together without doing each other any harm; a carefully crafted place and far, far away from the unruly, overgrown, wild and barbaric natural state. In the 19th century precisely this wilderness becomes the attraction.

Famous Norwegian Romantics: Edvard Grieg and Hans Gude

While reading up on the many stories of early hikers into Norway in the 19th century, I come across the story of how Edvard Grieg, the most famous Norwegian composer, came across Gjendine, who was born on a farm in the heart of Jotunheimen and spent her long life there. She had a wonderful voice and was full of songs that Grieg sought to capture in his Norwegian Folk Song series. What better way to accompany the task of writing than by listening to those melodies and looking at those famous paintings of the Romantic age for inspiration.

The first tourists visit Jotunheimen

The steam engine, the power horse of industrialisation, made it possible for people to travel further and so the first hikers into Jotunheimen are indeed known to have come in the 19th century. Initially in Norway, travellers would stay at farms, but soon the Norwegian Trekking Association (DNT) was established. The DNT started to build and buy mountain huts in those places that indeed inspired awe at both the beauty and the beast of Nature’s forces. Not much has changed since the 19th century. We too are drawn to the beauty and forces of these Norwegian landscapes. Hikers today come to the very same, fabulous places to experience for themselves the ‘awe and terror’ the Romantics described so well. Will you make them your own too?

Photo credits:

Hans Gude, Høyfjell, 1846, taken from https://samling.nasjonalmuseet.no/no/object/NG.M.04180

View from Veslesmeden is my own from a hike in the summer of 2018

May 2020: The book is ready to be printed as soon as economic hardship conditions around COVID-19 ease, publication scheduled now for January, 2021