Hellesylt

Typical! While I ate a few crisps last night as we listened to some music & had a chunter, I lost a filling from one of my teeth. So far this morning has been spent trying to get through to the dentist. Clearly everyone has been having tooth problems over the weekend. I finally got an appointment for a week on Thursday. It’s just as well there’s no pain. They did say if it got worse I was to ring & they’d try to get me in earlier, or if there’s a cancellation they will ring me.

Still back to our holiday. The other place we got off the ship was Hellesylt. It is only a small village. Nonetheless we spent a pleasant hour or so there.

The first unmissable delight was the waterfall cascading down into the fjord. It dominates the village, even though it is less full than usual due to this long period of heat & dryness – Norway’s been suffering too, even if Bergen seems to be the exception!

The falls at Hellesylt

Nearby I was surprised to see a hotel with a bar called the “Sherlock Holmes Pub”. Do they think this waterfall is akin to the famous Reichenbach Falls? The drop of the fall at the village end was not as big as that portrayed in Victorian drawings of the death of the famous detective. (I’ve never actually visited the Reichenbach Falls to know the reality.) Maybe there are some more falls higher up the river that have greater drops.

Sherlock Holmes Pub, Hellesylt

Much of our time was spent at the Peer Gynt Gallery. This displayed a collection of 3D wood panels depicting the scenes from the Peer Gynt story. The wood sculptor was Oddvin Parr, a local man.  It took him 13 years to complete the 11 wood carvings. They are huge & very impressive. He used local villagers as models for the figures in carvings. Locals can still recognise one another in them.  There was a commentary in English, giving the story of the carvings and of Peer Gynt.

Peer Gynt with his dying mother

Afterwards, on ship we attended a lecture on Grieg’s music starting with Peer Gynt. We couldn’t help thinking how much more useful it would have been if we’d had the lecture before we stopped at Hellesylt rather than after. Many people would have been interested in seeing Parr’s wood carving but were unaware the gallery even existed. It might even have been better on the day spent crossing the North Sea to Norway as one of the trips at Bergen was to Grieg’s nearby lakeside house “Troldhaugen”. Needless to say it was too late to go back. We were certainly very impressed the gallery.

The other feature of Hellelsylt was the white painted wooden church. We would have liked to have gone to see it but the hill looked too steep for the Fox to push me up. We just admired it from a distance.

Hellesylt church upon the hill

Back to the ship at Hellesylt