Flam Part 2: Railway trip (Sunday)

May 24, 2026

This afternoon a Railway trip from Flam to Aurland and a little beyond.

Deb loves maps!

Dave found a Reindeer. (I’m okay with this kind of nature.)

Deb liked the beautiful flowers around this house.

And there were shoes! Aurland is the originator of the penny loafer. Inspired by the moccasins of the indigenous people, the shoe eventually morphed into a more structured design. A strip of leather was placed across the top that could hold a coin for emergencies, if the wearer needed to make a phone call or something. They neglected to get a patent however, so the citizens in Aurland may be the only ones telling this history. (And they were closed on Sunday so we couldn’t shop!🤯)

Then we stopped at this hotel (in a town I can’t remember) for waffles with Raspberries and whipped cream!

A stop for pictures at this waterfall (some in previous post also) and we saw this woman singing in the mist. She is a legendary Norwegian Hudra named Nora. Here’s the scoop:

Female trolls are called Hudras. They have lost their soul. They need one to get to heaven, and they can accomplish this by marrying a young man. The Hudra can change their form to a beautiful woman and can then attract young males to marry so that they can reclaim their soul. The one problem is that they have a cow‘s tail that does not go away when they change their form. Our guide suggested that if any of the men meet a beautiful woman in Norway, they might want to pat them on the backside to see if they still have a cow‘s tail, just in case. (Most of the men on the tour declined to take that advice.)

Now about the male trolls. One legend is that in the Pagan period Vikings believed that giants were the cause of all troubles (your crop doesn’t grow, your girlfriend broke up with you: giants are to blame). Once the Christians moved in they could no longer blame the giants because they were pagan. They needed a new scapegoat — that’s where the trolls come in. Trolls typically have four fingers and toes, a long, pointy nose, they could have more than one or many eyes and could have more than one head. Today they are regarded as positive and much cuter. The sun apparently will turn them to stone so they hide under bridges and in the forest, so they’re not bad, just shy.