"A fierce gravity energizes Norway, a force that seems as palpable as wind or fire or ice. You can feel it as you drive from Bergen, on a road chiseled into sheer cliffsides, to the Sogne Fjord. You can feel it especially in spring, when melting snowfields become torrential streams that thunder into waterfalls and the water in the deep ragged ocean inlets seems to pull, as if the gravity had bottomed out and pivoted to the horizontal. Suddenly it's clear why generations of Norwegians have found release—and relief—on the broad, open sea.
—From "In Search of Vikings," May 2000, National Geographic magazine
