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00:01The home of the Vikings was a wild land, and it still is.
00:10Here, Nordic warriors fought, died, and explored.
00:20Their legacy inspires today's adventures.
00:24Now, I walk on the wild side, a spectacular seaside journey from the bustling south, through the fjords, and up to the Arctic North.
00:43This is the coast of the Vikings, as seen by their gods.
00:54The higher you go, the colder it gets.
01:11That makes the frozen mountaintops of Norway a tough place to eke out a living.
01:19Few creatures even try.
01:24But one prefers life with a chill in the air.
01:37Musk oxen climb high.
01:39They're more closely related to mountain goats than cows.
01:48And up here, the wind whips the snow away from the grass and lichen below.
01:53It may look like slim pickings for an animal, that can weigh 800 pounds.
02:00But this is how they've survived for more than 10,000 years.
02:06Hmm.
02:07Hanging in the higher climes can be a good way to avoid predators.
02:25At least, until the big thaw that comes with summer.
02:28At least, until the big thaw that comes with summer.
02:31At least, until the big thaw that comes with summer.
02:35you're in the higher climes.
02:36You're in the higher climes.
02:37It's a physically odd.
02:38Along with summer, the higher climes are almost a chapter.
02:39You have to have the first place in the middle of nghĩa.
02:40You have to have 아니다.
02:41The higher climes have an at-line climes in the middle of yar.
02:45Now, the mountain trails open up.
02:47Now, the mountain trails open up, including one of the most famous in the world.
03:08This path seems barely worn, but every year some 300,000 hikers make this pilgrimage.
03:17Two and a half hours of breathtaking views, but it's the destination that makes this trek so special.
03:38Buck up and face the giddy heights, walk along the edge of sanity, and you're rewarded with a religious experience, at least in name.
03:58This is Pulpit Rock, one of the most famous escarpments on the planet.
04:14Pulpit Rock juts out 100 feet from the side of the fjord, and its sole name because it looks like a church lectern.
04:24The first tourists came here in 1900, and they've been coming ever since.
04:35It's been called the best viewing platform in the world, and it was seen by millions in the climatic scene of the 2018 Mission Impossible movie.
04:50Now, it's more popular than ever.
05:05Visitors cram onto a natural platform less than half the size of a football field.
05:16The drop-down? A dizzying 2,000 feet. 800 feet higher than the Empire State Building.
05:24This is just one special feature in a coastline that commands respect and inspires adventure.
05:36From the capital of Oslo in the south, Norway's coastline heads south-west and then swings north, past Pulpit Rock, and 1,650 miles to Lofoten in the Arctic Circle.
06:01This was the farthest outpost for the Vikings who once ruled this land.
06:09Much of this Viking coastline is dwarfed by steep cliffs.
06:20One creature is at home both above and below these lofty heights.
06:26The white-tailed eagle is one of the largest birds of prey on Earth.
06:46It's specialty? Fishing.
06:55Norway has the highest density of white-tailed eagles in the world.
07:09They need as much as a pound of hood a day, each.
07:18They need as much as a pound of hood a day, each.
07:32It gets competitive.
07:33The younger birds don't have their white-tails yet.
07:42But they still jump in on the action.
07:45It's a good grab.
07:57But waiting in the wings.
08:00A challenger.
08:02The catch goes down.
08:19And the challenger sees it first.
08:25Now, rather than risk a counterattack, he takes it to go.
08:39Eagles on the Viking coast inspire some daredevils.
08:52The humans just need to start a little higher.
08:56A group of hikers climbs to the top of the Kärag cliffs.
09:03And they have no intention of climbing down.
09:07They are on a mission to base jump.
09:11There are 70 or so such athletes in Norway, including world champions.
09:17For them, Kärag is a mecca.
09:21It towers above the surrounding peaks, more than three and a half thousand feet high.
09:27For thrill-seekers like Carlos Montanero Mora, base jumping is the ultimate expression of the Viking spirit.
09:36The soul of base jumping is freedom and nature.
09:44Being able to take control of your own life, make your own decisions and try new stuff.
09:53I couldn't imagine myself here 11 years ago, before I started skydiving.
09:58You assess all the time, okay, am I ready for this?
10:04Have I done enough research?
10:13Is this within my skill level?
10:16And if all those answers are yes, then we start walking.
10:21Try to keep a level head, think about this could go wrong, what do I do then?
10:28Have I done everything I can to make this a safe jump?
10:33And if that checklist says yes, then the only step is to jump.
10:41The danger and the risk is always there, no matter what you do, how safe you do it, the risk is always there.
10:49So when I get to the edge, I assess the winds, assess who I'm with, my own inner feeling.
10:56Just do I feel comfortable doing this today?
11:05Right before the exit, you're at your most concentrated and scared, a good balance of both.
11:10I do a count, it kind of sets my mind into what I'm about to do.
11:19Once I count down, it's set in stone, and then it's full focus on what's coming ahead.
11:26You're taking a big risk, but you have done the homework, so in theory it should work.
11:33You ready?
11:34Three, two, one, see ya!
11:40Woohoo!
11:41There's a complete feeling of freedom because you're not attached to anything.
11:46I think you're a good man, buddy.
11:49You ready?
11:51Three, two, one, see ya!
11:56Three, two, one, see ya!
12:06There's a complete feeling of freedom
12:08because you're not attached to anything, literally.
12:11You're falling, you're weightless,
12:14you're unable to focus on anything else
12:17than the present moment.
12:19And that's where the freedom lies.
12:26Two, one, see!
12:29One, two, one, see!
12:31One, two, one, see,
12:32one, see!
12:34One, two, one, see!
12:36One, two, one, see!
12:38One, two, one, see!
12:40One, two, one, see!
12:43Two, one, see!
12:44These adventurers are not alone.
12:49Records kept since 1994
12:53Logged more than 50,000 jumps along the Viking coast
13:05You can plan everything out you can do everything right and still something
13:11No one can guarantee you that this jump will be saved ever
13:16Even the best have died doing what they know and
13:19We have all lost friends. That's that's the randomness and freedom of it that you cannot control it
13:27No matter who you are or what you do
13:32But you have a little moment of okay, I've pulled
13:42Yeah, there it is thank God thank God it's a huge
13:47Relief joy and a new focus now. I have to land
13:54Depending on the suit it's around 30 seconds of flight time before these base jumpers pull their shoes
14:04They get to punch through the clouds like a bird all going well that is
14:10For those who live in Norway such encounters with nature are never far away
14:27Travel 60 miles of the Oslo fjord past 40 or so islands and you reach one of the most remarkable capital cities in the world
14:40Oslo is often labeled one of the most expensive places to live on the planet
14:50But it's also being ranked number one for its quality of life
14:59Fewer than 700,000 people live here yet. It's a world center and the home of the Nobel Peace Prize
15:07It's a bustling city
15:09It's a bustling city, but more than two-thirds of its space is dedicated to waterways and forests
15:18It is therefore a capital and a springboard into nature
15:23From here you can jump into the wide open wilderness of the north or
15:29Or the wide open waters of the coast and get a taste of the adventurous Viking spirit
15:41Not far out of Oslo signs of Norway's rich past
15:46On the banks mounds of dirt hide incredible treasures
15:57This is Borre Mound Cemetery and these piles cover the most extensive collection of Kings graves in Scandinavia
16:09Others nearby watch over the crops
16:11Buried with the royal remains
16:16Archaeologists have found ornaments some buildings and even the first ever excavated timbers of an ancient Viking ship
16:28All of this to accompany Nordic nobles on a sunset journey into Odin's Valhalla
16:34Death for the average Viking came after just 30 or 40 winters
16:46Head out of the Oslo fjord and follow the coast southwest and around for 325 miles
16:55And you find a unique symbol of the Viking past and its incredible violence
17:04Near Norway's southwesterly most point this
17:20Three bronze swords stand 33 feet tall planted into solid granite
17:27They commemorate a historic and bloody naval battle
17:39In the 9th century several kings faced off against each other in the battle of Hafsfjord and one of them emerged to rule all of Norway
17:48King Harald's rise marked the beginning of Norway as a single king of Norway as a single kingdom
17:55the beginning of Norway as a single kingdom and
18:00Few rulers were as notorious as the king's son and successor
18:05Erik the first blood axe
18:09The blood axe part of his name he earned by murdering five of his brothers
18:15Now one kingdom the country needed a name and they found it in an inland sea just a little farther north up comes in the strait
18:34Most countries are named after the ethnic group or land areas
18:38But Norway is named after this shipping lane a natural protected passage that leads north
18:46It's the north way or
18:49Norway
18:55On its islands kings drowned those accused of witchcraft and wizardry and
19:03In a falseness King hydel made his royal home
19:08Today it's mostly farmland and ruins
19:19But reconstructions of a long house a round house and a boathouse for Viking warships are still here
19:31These Norwegians are part of an archaeological study
19:35Trying to uncover the ways vikings used weapons and tools
19:43As well as how they prepared timber and made buildings and ships
19:51And home their battle skills
19:53All viking men learned to fight and many of the women
20:04And many of the women
20:13Viking power came from these battle skills and the ability to build boats and navigate
20:15And of those
20:16And of those navigation may have been the greatest challenge
20:25Draw a straight line along Norway's sea border and it'll measure one thousand six hundred fifty miles
20:29But when you add in every island bay and fjord the actual coastline is nearly ten times that distance
20:46In this land of natural straits and channels boats are connectors
20:54Through the fjords vessels are dwarfed by cascading waterfalls
20:56And impassable cliffs
21:07That's why the waterways have been used like highways for hundreds of years
21:14That's why the waterways have been used like highways for hundreds of years
21:18Towns like Lisa bottom a quaint harbors and they have long been gateways to an orphan frozen interior
21:35Norway's southernmost glaciers lie in foggy from a national park
21:53And in places the eyes is thirteen hundred feet thick
21:57Around 14 feet of snow falls up here every year
22:07But on a good day this area is an adventure's playground
22:15We have the Sun out right now beautiful day
22:18Next week we can have a rampant blizzard up here and it's almost like it's changing mood
22:23Snorrig imse sturu is a glacier guide
22:27For him the chilled heights and perilous cracks are part of the thrill
22:34It's all about knowing what's going on
22:37You just have to be patient with it you have to work with it you have to try to be nice with it and respect it
22:44The glacier can be a treacherous place
22:47When you have the snow laying on top all of those all of those things are hidden
22:57So you end up really walking over snow bridges which might be very very thin
23:05You don't know you have to read the glacier you have to know what to look for you have to know what you're looking at in the landscape
23:12The reward is the glacier itself
23:18It has a mystique to it, it's nature that is constantly changing
23:22And every single time you are up here there will be some slight changes
23:26So it's that excitement of seeing new stuff all the time and seeing new things pop out, hearing the sounds
23:33And if the sounds atop the glacier fail to impress
23:36Wait till you hear what's going on below
23:48On the surface of Norway's glaciers
23:51The sound fluctuates between eerie silence and icy winds
23:56But down below glacier guide Snorre Gimse Storo
24:09Here's something different
24:26Melting ice streams through the cracks
24:31You can't see it, but you can hear it changing the glacier from the inside out
24:38The ice of course is thousands of years old
24:42But that provost that you're in wasn't similar last year, it wasn't similar last week
24:47You're always seeing something new
24:49While Snorre climbs up and out, the water from melting ice streams in and down
25:00It finally finds fresh air as it leaves the glacier
25:04And feeds the valleys and villages below
25:06The towering fjords in between present their own climbing challenge
25:23But no need for crampons here
25:25The Flom railway cuts through this landscape and climbs 2,840 feet in only 12 miles
25:44That makes it one of the steepest railway climbs on the planet
25:48And it's been ranked the number one railway experience in the world
26:02Since 1940
26:04The train from Flom has taken passengers
26:07Past free-flowing rivers
26:09Up mountains
26:11And by bursting cascades
26:18It's perfect habitat for one of Norway's more elusive inhabitants
26:35The Eurasian otter is built for the Viking coast
26:40Its double-layered coat has a coarse outer fur
26:44It's waterproof to protect it from the cold
26:56And it's just as content by salt water as it is by fresh
27:03As long as it can still find a stream now and then to down a drink and wash
27:08Its dense bones help it sink into streams
27:13Where it can hold its breath for up to four minutes
27:18Enough time to snack some lunch
27:21To snack some lunch
27:33And when otters are not hunting
27:36Its playtime
27:51Illegal trapping and killing
27:52Along with pollution and net entanglements have put otters on the near-threatened list
28:08But they can still be seen by those who take to the water quietly
28:13This fjord in central Norway dwarves kayakers
28:16This fjord in central Norway dwarves kayakers
28:17They call this a paddler's paradise
28:21This fjord in central Norway dwarves kayakers
28:28They call this a paddler's paradise
28:33This fjord in central Norway dwarves kayakers.
28:44They call this a paddler's paradise.
28:51Ervin Mejia liked it so much during his vacation in 2005 that he stayed on and now guides others.
29:01I came, I fell in love with the place and I just decided to stay.
29:11It was just too much to absorb all at once.
29:14Extreme landscape, very nice people, just a beautiful place.
29:22Some of the views that we get to see around here are not only dramatic but sometimes going
29:27into another world.
29:33Coming into the fjords you are stepping back in time and as you're coming in it just narrows
29:41down a little bit and then you actually realize how small you really are because the sheer
29:49walls around you are, it seems like they're closing in on you.
29:56By definition a fjord is a long deep inlet surrounded by cliffs.
30:04This one is 10 miles long.
30:09At its narrowest it's only a few hundred yards across.
30:14The walls plunge another 1700 feet beneath the sea and rise up 4600 feet.
30:31trek up above and you soon find farmland.
30:37The majority of vikings were farmers.
30:41They made the most of the land around them.
30:44You're starting off a hike where it starts off somewhat steep, not so steep and then it starts
30:51turning into sheer steepness, still hikable without having to climb.
31:00And then all of a sudden you just are rewarded with this just wonderful view.
31:05It's almost like a dream.
31:19This dream can also be a nightmare for travelers in a hurry.
31:27All builders must get creative to overcome fjords, peaks, islands and a maze of waterways.
31:37So just a little farther north they built a modern marvel that's been called Norway's greatest
31:43construction of the 20th century.
31:50This is Norway's world famous Atlantic Ocean Road.
32:03It's only five miles long but it took six years to build.
32:10It winds and arches like a great serpent across 12 bridges and juts out over the ocean.
32:19So close that on a windy day cars get hit by sea spray.
32:28That's not a problem for another bridge about 350 miles further up the coast.
32:35This one sits 135 feet above the sea.
32:41It's famous for what dances beneath.
32:48The swirling twirling pirouettes below are from one of the world's strongest currents.
32:56It rips through this strait in Salzdärmen, forming mighty whirlpools 30 feet across.
33:05It's been clocked at a speed of 23 miles an hour, nearly as fast as a galloping horse.
33:21But for the most spectacular water flows in Norway, you don't look down, you look up.
33:40Water courses through the veins of the Viking coast.
33:45It shapes the land in spectacular ways.
33:51These glaciers began their carving out of Norway's fjords and deep valleys about 20,000 years ago.
34:01Now rain, ice and snow melt are finishing the job.
34:16Some waterfalls plummet more than 2,500 feet.
34:24Ten of the world's tallest 30 waterfalls are in Norway.
34:33Some may look like a trickle compared to the towering cliffs around them.
34:39But others fan out, as legend says, like cascading locks of hair.
34:46All this flowing water carves the landscape.
35:02Until...
35:05Every winter, when nature turns off the tap.
35:09And everything grinds to a halt.
35:28Vikings quickly learn how hard the winters here can be.
35:32But there's one place where the water never freezes.
35:46When the snow caresses the sea in far north Lofoten, it's time to go fishing.
35:53Winter brings a great migration of cod to Norway.
36:07And anglers head out in traditional fishing boats called a shark.
36:17Cod are bottom dwellers.
36:19And here, they hang out on the continental shelf.
36:26Right now, they've just spawned with the females laying between 20 and 30 million eggs each.
36:35The time is right for sports fishermen to strike.
36:43It's hard, cold work.
36:45Done with rub and reel.
36:47But the rewards are usually worth the effort.
36:53In this case, a cod weighing nearly 30 pounds.
36:59commercial boats are here too.
37:26here too, using long lines that stretch out for miles.
37:36Big cob eat one thing, other fish.
37:40So these commercial lines are baited with mackerel, herring, and squid.
37:49Dragged through a crowd of cob, the bait is irresistible.
38:01Cod from Lofoten has its own name, referred to the world over as skrei, and they catch nearly
38:11half a million tons of skrei every year.
38:23Back on shore, the fresh meat is sent to markets in the United States and Europe.
38:33But the real genius is what they do with the heads and tails.
38:44Fishermen in Norway's far north use their arctic climate as a free form of freeze drying.
38:52Giant drying racks for fish have been used since the Viking days.
38:58They hang the fish up for three or four months, and the cold, dry air does the rest.
39:07The result is stockfish that will last without refrigeration.
39:15For nearly a thousand years, stockfish has been a major Norwegian export.
39:21It helped build the nation.
39:40It's Cobb that allowed the Vikings to settle and stay in Lofoten.
39:48It was their northernmost outpost.
39:56The stunning cliffs and seaside fishing villages, all caked in snow, mask one of Lofoten's best-kept secrets.
40:07The water is relatively warm.
40:10Despite these islands being in the Arctic circle, the Gulf Stream keeps the ocean here well above freezing.
40:24The towns of the Lofoten Islands support around 24,000 people.
40:35They must still deal with winter on the roads, and they do it with modern machinery.
40:46It can be hazardous work during mid-winter when Lofoten has a full month of night.
40:56But their work in this part of the Viking coast may still be illuminated by spectacular displays of the northern lights.
41:11Aurora Borealis, the dazzling green shimmer of the northern lights, is created by charged particles from the sun.
41:24They are drawn to the poles by the Earth's magnetic field, and now they collide with gas particles in our upper atmosphere.
41:38It's all happening 60 miles up, making a great spectacle for those on Earth and in space.
41:47Some say the Vikings believed the lights were the armor of the Valkyrie Virgin warriors, who escorted the dead from the battlefield to the heavens.
42:12It's all happening.
42:13It's all happening.
42:18Beneath these northern lights is where the Vikings of Lofoten built some of their most impressive dwellings.
42:27Giant long houses.
42:31This life-sized replica of a long house in Borg is nearly 300 feet long.
42:37Giant long houses.
42:44Norway's most formidable chieftain lived here.
42:50The area's natural resources made him a powerful leader, and there was no one to the north to compete.
42:58No Vikings settled further into the Arctic than this.
43:07It was the end of the road.
43:13And eventually, the Viking way of life itself ended.
43:19Christianity replaced the war-loving gods of Norway.
43:26And slowly, the Vikings moved from raiding and fighting to farming and fishing.
43:33The last of the Viking monarchs was killed in a raid in England in the year 1066.
43:42What remains now are symbols of the Viking past.
43:47A rugged coastline, wild inhabitants, and an irrepressible spirit of adventure.
43:56The Vikings may be gone, but the incredible Viking coast will honor them forever.
44:07You
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