Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
through scree slopes to the summit of the Veslefjellet plateau before a fairly tame walk
back down to Gjendesheim.
The walk is accessible to anyone of reasonable fitness. We have seen lots of families
with small children doing it, although you will have to carry them up parts of it and the
climb up the Besseggen Ridge becomes somewhat trickier with a young child clinging to
you.
HARDANGERVIDDA
The desolate and beautiful Hardangervidda plateau, part of the 3430-sq-km Hardanger-
vidda National Park, Norway's largest, ranges across an otherworldly tundra landscape
that's the southernmost refuge of the Arctic fox (the natural population of which has in-
creased through reintroduction programs) and home to Norway's largest herd of wild
reindeer. Long a trade and travel route connecting eastern and western Norway, it's now
crossed by the main railway and road routes between Oslo and Bergen.
Reindeer numbers have dropped in recent years, from a high of 19,000 in 1998 to
around 7000. This fall in numbers is, however, part of a program of resource management
by the park's authorities, as a ban on hunting until recently meant that herd numbers be-
came too large and reindeer body weights began to fall dangerously due to a lack of suffi-
cient fodder.
Apart from Finse and Geilo, Hardangervidda National Park is accessible from Rjukan
and Eidfjord; there's an excellent national park centre at the latter.
For more on this area,
see
(
Click here
)
