Skip to playerSkip to main content
Terra.Anatolia
  • 4 hours ago
Transcript
00:00...and it still is.
00:05Here, Nordic warriors fold.
00:10Died.
00:12And explored.
00:15Their legacy inspires today's adventurers.
00:20Now, a walk on the wild side.
00:24A spectacular seaside journey
00:27from the bustling south.
00:30Through the fjords.
00:32And up to the Arctic North.
00:39This is the coast of the Vikings.
00:42As seen...
00:45...by their gods.
01:00The higher you go, the colder it gets.
01:06That makes the frozen mountaintops of Norway a tough place to eke out a living.
01:14Few creatures even try.
01:16But one prefers life with a chill in the air.
01:32Musk oxen climb high.
01:33They're more closely related to mountain goats than cows.
01:43And up here, the wind whips the snow away from the grass and lichen below.
01:48It may look like slim pickings for an animal that can weigh eight hundred pounds.
01:57But this is how they've survived for more than ten thousand years.
02:01Hanging in the higher climes can be a good way to avoid predators.
02:19To avoid predators.
02:23At least until the big thaw that comes with summer.
02:27The island is falling apart from the mountain.
02:28Now, the mountain trails open up.
02:33Now, the mountain trails open up, including one of the most famous in the world.
03:03This path seems barely worn, but every year some 300,000 hikers make this pilgrimage.
03:11Two and a half hours of breathtaking views, but it's the destination that makes this trek so special.
03:33Buck up and face the giddy heights.
03:43Walk along the edge of sanity, and you're rewarded with a religious experience, at least in name.
03:56This is Pulpit Rock, one of the most famous escarpments on the planet.
04:09Pulpit Rock juts out 100 feet from the side of the fjord, and its sole name because it looks like a church lectern.
04:19The first tourists came here in 1900, and they've been coming ever since.
04:30It's been called the best viewing platform in the world.
04:38And it was seen by millions in the climatic scene of the 2018 Mission Impossible movie.
04:47Now, it's more popular than ever.
05:00Visitors cram onto a natural platform less than half the size of a football field.
05:11The 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.
05:31From the capital of Oslo in the south, Norway's coastline heads southwest and then swings north, past Pulpit Rock, and 1,650 miles to Lofoten in the Arctic Circle.
05:56This was the farthest outpost for the Vikings who once ruled this land.
06:03Much of this Viking coastline is dwarfed by steep cliffs.
06:16One creature is at home both above and below these lofty heights.
06:21The white-tailed eagle is one of the largest birds of prey on Earth.
06:40It's specialty? Fishing.
06:47Norway has the highest density of white-tailed eagles in the world.
07:03They need as much as a pound of food a day, each.
07:10They need as much as a pound of food a day, each.
07:26Each.
07:32It gets competitive.
07:34The younger birds don't have their white-tails yet.
07:38But they still jump in on the action.
07:40On the action.
07:51It's a good ground.
07:53But waiting in the wings.
07:56A challenger.
07:57The catch goes down.
08:14And the challenger sees it first.
08:19Now, rather than risk a counterattack, he takes it to go.
08:43Eagles on the Viking coast inspire some daredevils.
08:46The humans just need to start a little higher.
08:53A group of hikers climbs to the top of the Kjærag cliffs.
08:58And they have no intention of climbing down.
09:02They're on a mission to base jump.
09:05There are 70 or so such athletes in Norway, including world champions.
09:11For them, Kjærag is a mecca.
09:16It towers above the surrounding peaks, more than three and a half thousand feet high.
09:22For thrill-seekers like Carlos Montanero Mora, base jumping is the ultimate expression of the Viking spirit.
09:30The soul of base jumping is freedom and nature.
09:38Being able to take control of your own life, make your own decisions and try new stuff.
09:44I couldn't imagine myself here 11 years ago, before I started Skydiving.
09:56You assess all the time, okay, am I ready for this?
10:00Have I done enough research?
10:02Is this within my skill level?
10:11And if all those answers are yes, then we start walking.
10:16Try to keep a level head, think about this could go wrong, what do I do then?
10:21Have I done everything I can to make this a safe jump?
10:28And if that checklist says yes, then the only step is to jump.
10:35The danger and the risk is always there.
10:37No matter what you do, how safe you do it, the risk is always there.
10:40So when I get to the edge, I assess the winds, assess who I'm with, my own inner feeling, just do I feel comfortable doing this today?
11:00Right before the exit, you're at your most concentrated and scared, a good balance of both.
11:05I do a count, it kind of sets my mind into what I'm about to do.
11:14Once I count down, it's set in stone, and then it's full focus on what's coming ahead.
11:21You're taking a big risk, but you have done the homework, so in theory it should work.
11:35Very good, my boy.
11:44You ready?
11:50Three, two, one, see ya!
11:53There's a complete feeling of freedom because you're not attached to anything, literally.
12:06You're falling, you're weightless, you're unable to focus on anything else than the present moment, and that's where the freedom lies.
12:15That's where the freedom lies.
12:17Come on!
12:18Come on!
12:19Go!
12:20Go!
12:21Go!
12:22Look!
12:23Go!
12:24Go!
12:25Go!
12:26Go!
12:27Go!
12:28Go!
12:29Go!
12:30Hey!
12:31See!
12:32Go!
12:33Go!
12:34Go!
12:43Go!
12:44Go!
12:45Go!
12:46Records kept since 1994 log more than 50,000 jumps along the Viking coast.
13:00You can plan everything out. You can do everything right.
13:04And still, something can go wrong.
13:06No one can guarantee you that this jump will be safe. Ever.
13:11Even the best have died doing what they know.
13:14And we have all lost friends.
13:17That's the randomness and freedom of it.
13:20That you cannot control it.
13:22No matter who you are or what you do.
13:27But you have a little moment of, okay, I've pulled.
13:37Oh, there it is. Thank God. Thank God.
13:40It's a huge relief, joy and a new focus. Now I have to land.
13:48Depending on the suit, it's around 30 seconds of flight time before these base jumpers pull their chutes.
13:55They get to punch through the clouds like a bird. All going well, that is.
14:08For those who live in Norway, such encounters with nature are never far away.
14:13Travel 60 miles up the Oslo Fjord, past 40 or so islands, and you reach one of the most remarkable capital cities in the world.
14:31Oslo is often labeled one of the most expensive places to live on the planet, but it's also been ranked number one for its quality of life.
14:49Fewer than 700,000 people live here, yet it's a world center and the home of the Nobel Peace Prize.
15:02It's a bustling city, but more than two-thirds of its space is dedicated to waterways and forests.
15:11It is therefore a capital and a springboard into nature.
15:18From here, you can jump into the wide open wilderness of the north, or the wide open waters of the coast, and get a taste of the adventurous Viking spirit.
15:32Not far out of Oslo, signs of Norway's rich past.
15:45On the banks, mounds of dirt hide incredible treasures.
15:52This is Borre Mound Cemetery.
15:55And these piles cover the most extensive collection of kings' graves in Scandinavia.
16:04Others nearby watch over the crops.
16:09Buried with the royal remains, archaeologists have found ornaments, some buildings, and even the first-ever excavated timbers of an ancient Viking ship.
16:19All 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.
16:39Head out of the Oslo Fjord and follow the coast southwest and around for 325 miles.
16:50And you find a unique symbol of the Viking past and its incredible violence.
16:55Near Norway's south-westerly most point.
17:10This.
17:16Three bronze swords stand 33 feet tall, planted into solid granite.
17:21They commemorate a historic and bloody naval battle.
17:34In the 9th century, several kings faced off against each other in the Battle of Hafsfjord.
17:41And one of them emerged to rule all of Norway.
17:45King Hyral Ferher.
17:48Hyral's rise marked the beginning of Norway as a single kingdom.
17:54And few rulers were as notorious as the king's son and successor.
18:00Erik I Bloodaxe.
18:04The Bloodaxe part of his name he earned by murdering five of his brothers.
18:09Now one kingdom, the country, needed a name.
18:21And they found it in an inland sea just a little farther north up Kalmsund Strait.
18:26Most countries are named after their ethnic group or land areas.
18:34But Norway is named after this shipping lane.
18:37A natural protected passage that leads north.
18:41It's the North Way or Norway.
18:44Norway.
18:50On its islands, kings drowned those accused of witchcraft and wizardry.
18:57And in Aval's nest, King Hyral made his royal home.
19:03Today, it's mostly farmland and ruins.
19:06But reconstructions of a long house, a round house and a boat house for Viking warships are still here.
19:21These Norwegians are part of an archeological study, trying to uncover the ways Vikings used weapons and tools.
19:35As well as how they prepared timber and made buildings and ships.
19:42and honed their battle skills.
19:55All Viking men learned to fight.
19:59And many of the women.
20:07Viking power came from these battle skills
20:10and the ability to build boats and navigate.
20:14And of those, navigation may have been the greatest challenge.
20:24Draw a straight line along Norway's sea border and it'll measure 1,650 miles.
20:32But when you add in every island, bay and fjord,
20:36the actual coastline is nearly 10 times that distance.
20:49In this land of natural straits and channels, boats are connectors.
20:54And this land of the island of the island.
20:55In this land of the island of the island of the islandи, 50 miles of tambéens.
20:58This land of the island of the island of the island of the island of the island of the island.
21:00Through the fjords, vessels are dwarfed by cascading waterfalls and impassable cliffs.
21:08That's why the waterways have been used like highways for hundreds of years.
21:13for hundreds of years.
21:23Towns like Lysebotten are quaint harbors,
21:26and they have long been gateways to an often frozen interior.
21:31Norway's southernmost glaciers lie in Folgifona national park,
21:48and in places the ice is 1,300 feet thick.
21:53Around 14 feet of snow falls up here every year.
22:02But on a good day, this area is an adventurer's playground.
22:10We have the sun out right now, beautiful day.
22:13Next week we can have a rampant blizzard up here,
22:16and it's almost like it's changing mood.
22:19Snorrigims is a glacier guide.
22:22For him, the chilled heights and perilous cracks are part of the thrill.
22:29It's all about knowing what's going on.
22:32You just have to be patient with it.
22:34You have to work with it.
22:35You have to try to be nice with it and respect it.
22:40The glacier can be a treacherous place.
22:43When you have the snow laying on top, all of those things are hidden.
22:55So you end up really walking over snow bridges,
22:58which might be very, very thin.
23:00You don't know.
23:02You have to read the glacier.
23:03You have to know what to look for.
23:05You have to know what you're looking at in the landscape.
23:08The reward is the glacier itself.
23:13It has a mystique to it.
23:15It's nature that is constantly changing.
23:17And every single time you are up here, there will be some slight changes.
23:21So it's that excitement of seeing new stuff all the time,
23:24and seeing new things pop out, hearing the sounds.
23:27And if the sounds atop the glacier fail to impress,
23:32wait till you hear what's going on below.
23:44On the surface of Norway's glaciers,
23:46the sound fluctuates between eerie silence and icy winds.
23:57But down below, glacier guide Snorre Gimse Storo hears something different.
24:22Melting ice streams through the cracks.
24:25You can't see it, but you can hear it changing the glacier from the inside out.
24:34The ice, of course, is thousands of years old.
24:37But that provost that you're in wasn't similar last year.
24:40It wasn't similar last week.
24:42You're always seeing something new.
24:44While Snorre climbs up and out, the water from melting ice streams in and down.
24:56It finally finds fresh air as it leaves the glacier,
24:59and feeds the valleys and villages below.
25:03The towering fjords in between present their own climbing challenge.
25:18But no need for crampons here.
25:20The Flom Railway cuts through this landscape and climbs 2,840 feet in only 12 miles.
25:36That makes it one of the steepest railway climbs on the planet.
25:43And it's been ranked the number one railway experience in the world.
25:49Since 1940, the train from Flom has taken passengers past free-flowing rivers, up mountains, and by bursting cascades.
26:07It's perfect habitat for one of Norway's more elusive inhabitants.
26:30The Eurasian Otter is built for the Viking coast.
26:35It's double-layered coat has a coarse outer fur.
26:39It's waterproof to protect it from the cold.
26:51And it's just as content by salt water as it is by fresh.
26:58As long as it can still find a stream now and then to down a drink and wash.
27:05It's dense bones help it sink into streams, where it can hold its breath for up to four minutes.
27:15Enough time to snag some lunch.
27:17And when otters are not hunting, it's playtime.
27:31Illegal trapping and killing, along with pollution and net entanglements,
27:46have put otters on the near-threatened list.
27:47But they can still be seen by those who take to the water quietly.
27:49.
27:50.
27:54.
27:55.
27:56.
28:24.
28:34This fjord in central Norway dwarves kayakers.
28:37They call this a paddler's paradise.
28:38Irvin Mejia liked it so much during his vacation in 2005 that he stayed on and now guides others.
28:54I came, I fell in love with the place, and I just decided to stay.
29:01.
29:06It was just too much to absorb all at once.
29:08Extreme landscape, very nice people, just a beautiful place.
29:13Some of the views that we get to see around here are not only dramatic, but sometimes going into another world.
29:28Coming into the fjords, you are stepping back in time.
29:33.
29:34As you are coming in, it just narrows down a little bit, and then you actually realize how small you really are,
29:43because the sheer walls, around you wonder, it seems like they're closing in on you.
29:48By definition a fjord is a long deep inlet surrounded by cliffs.
29:57This one is 10 miles long.
30:02At its narrowest, it's only a few hundred yards across.
30:08The walls plunge another 1,700 feet beneath the sea
30:13and rise up 4,600 feet.
30:18But trek up above and you soon find farmland.
30:31The majority of Vikings were farmers.
30:35They made the most of the land around them.
30:39You're starting off a hike and where it starts off somewhat steep,
30:44not so steep, and then it starts turning into sheer steepness,
30:48still hikeable without having to climb.
30:54And then all of a sudden, you just are rewarded
30:57with this just wonderful view.
31:03It's almost like a dream.
31:14This dream can also be a nightmare for travelers in a hurry.
31:21Road builders must get creative to overcome fjords, peaks, islands
31:27and a maze of waterways.
31:31So just a little farther north, they built a modern marvel
31:35that's been called Norway's greatest construction of the 20th century.
31:44This is Norway's world-famous Atlantic Ocean Road.
31:58It's only five miles long, but it took six years to build.
32:05It winds and arches like a great serpent across 12 bridges
32:10and juts out over the ocean.
32:14So close that on a windy day, cars get hit by sea spray.
32:23That's not a problem for another bridge about 350 miles further up the coast.
32:30This one sits 135 feet above the sea.
32:35It's famous for what dances beneath.
32:43The swirling, twirling pirouettes below are from one of the world's strongest currents.
32:49It rips through this strait in Salzdermann, forming mighty whirlpools 30 feet across.
33:00It's been clocked at the speed of 23 miles an hour, nearly as fast as a galloping horse.
33:16But for the most spectacular water flows in Norway, you don't look down, you look up.
33:27Water courses through the veins of the Viking coast.
33:30It shapes the land in spectacular ways.
33:44These glaciers began their carving out of Norway's fjords and deep valleys about 20,000 years ago.
33:53Now rain, ice and snow melt are finishing the job.
34:00Some waterfalls plummet more than two and a half thousand feet.
34:15Ten of the world's tallest 30 waterfalls are in Norway.
34:27Some may look like a trickle compared to the towering cliffs around them.
34:33But others fan out, as legend says, like cascading locks of hair.
34:40All this flowing water carves the landscape until every winter when nature turns off the tap.
35:04And everything grinds to a halt.
35:23Vikings quickly learn how hard the winters here can be.
35:27But there's one place where the water never freezes.
35:41When the snow caresses the sea in far north Lofoten, it's time to go fishing.
35:48Winter brings a great migration of cod to Norway.
36:02And anglers head out in traditional fishing boats called a shark.
36:12Cod are bottom dwellers.
36:14And here, they hang out on the continental shelf.
36:21Right now, they've just spawned with the females laying between 20 and 30 million eggs each.
36:29The time is right for sports fishermen to strike.
36:34It's hard, cold work done with rod and reel.
36:41But the rewards are usually worth the effort.
36:47In this case, a cod weighing nearly 30 pounds.
36:52A cod weighing nearly 30 pounds.
36:55Commercial boats are here, too.
37:07Commercial boats are here too, using long lines that stretch out for miles.
37:31Big cob eat one thing, other fish. So these commercial lines are baited with mackerel, herring and squid.
37:44Dragged through a crowd of cob, the bait is irresistible.
37:56Cod from Lofoten has its own name, referred to the world over as skrei.
38:05And they catch nearly half a million tons of skrei every year.
38:11Back on shore, the fresh meat is sent to markets in the United States and Europe.
38:26But the real genius is what they do with the heads and tails.
38:37Fishermen in Norway's far north use their arctic climate as a free form of freeze drying.
38:47Giant drying racks for fish have been used since the Viking days.
38:52They hang the fish up for three or four months, and the cold, dry air does the rest.
39:02The result is stockfish that will last without refrigeration.
39:06For nearly a thousand years, stockfish has been a major Norwegian export.
39:16It helped build the nation.
39:19It's Cobb that allowed the Vikings to settle and stay in Lofoten.
39:40It was their northernmost outpost.
39:45The stunning cliffs and seaside fishing villages, all caked in snow,
39:57mask one of Lofoten's best kept secrets.
40:00The water is relatively warm.
40:04Despite these islands being in the Arctic Circle,
40:08the Gulf Stream keeps the ocean here well above freezing.
40:13The towns of the Lofoten Islands support around 24,000 people.
40:29They must still deal with winter on the roads,
40:33and they do it with modern machinery.
40:36It can be hazardous work during midwinter when Lofoten has a full month or night.
40:48But their work in this part of the Viking coast may still be illuminated by spectacular displays of the northern lights.
41:01Aurora Borealis.
41:11The dazzling green shimmer of the northern lights is created by charged particles from the sun.
41:19They are drawn to the poles by the Earth's magnetic field.
41:24And now they collide with gas particles in our upper atmosphere.
41:33It's all happening 60 miles up.
41:37Making a great spectacle for those on Earth and in space.
41:42Some say the Vikings believed the lights were the armor of the Valkyrie Virgin warriors,
42:01who escorted the dead from the battlefield to the heavens.
42:13Beneath these northern lights is where the Vikings of Lofoten built some of their most impressive dwellings.
42:21giant long houses.
42:25This life-sized replica of a long house in Borg is nearly 300 feet long.
42:39Norway's most formidable chieftain lived here.
42:42The area's natural resources made him a powerful leader.
42:50And there was no one to the north to compete.
42:53No Vikings settled further into the Arctic than this.
42:58It was the end of the road.
43:04And eventually the Viking way of life itself ended.
43:14Christianity replaced the war-loving gods of Norway.
43:20And slowly the Vikings moved from raiding and fighting to farming and fishing.
43:28The last of the Viking monarchs was killed in a raid in England in the year 1066.
43:37What remains now are symbols of the Viking past.
43:42A rugged coastline, wild inhabitants, and an irrepressible spirit of adventure.
43:51A UI of zor därmed är i checking.
43:53The vikings may be gone.
43:55But the incredible Viking coast will honour them forever.
44:00The vikings may be gone.
44:02The Vikings may be gone.
44:04But the incredible Viking coast will honour them forever.
44:12The ocean above a solar var competency.
Be the first to comment
Add your comment