We booked an activity we found on TripAdvisor for Olden that was hosted by Oddbjørn “Oscar” By. It was billed as a trip to the farm with lunch and then a further hike up to a waterfall. What we got, exceeded lots of expectations!
Oscar picked us up at the port and drove us about 15 minutes to the family farm. It had been in his family for about 200 years, with his Uncle being the last in line and having no children, so his older brother quit his job and decided to try to make a go of working the farm. Oscar works and lives in Olden during the summers and then spends the winters in Oslo working for a publishing house. They run these tours to help supplement the farm income.
The farm, some 150 hectares, rises up the side of the fjord from the water, the main farm houses are at the end of a road (which didn’t arrive until the 1970s) and then we had about a 45 minute hike (would have been 25 minutes if we knew what we were doing) to the Summer Farm, where there is another small farmhouse along side a rather impressive falls. There is no electricity on the summer farm, just a small kitchen, a small living/dining room and a loft that can sleep six. No indoor plumbing (all the water comes from the waterfall). Oscar’s mom had hiked up the day before to prepare for our arrival and she often spends a couple weeks up there by herself during the peak of berry season, where lots of wild blueberries and “thorn berries” grow, which she picks and then makes jam out of.
We were joined by another couple from Miami, who had not realised that there would be extensive hiking involved. It was good, because I think they would have avoided it if they had realised it was such a challenging hike, but the both grinned and bared it and I think (hope) they were glad they came along.
Oscar’s mom was a wonderful host and we had “first lunch” and “second lunch” at the cabin (which had a wonderful wood fire, which was totally welcome because it had rained lightly most of the way up the hill). First lunch was bread and vegetable soup. Second lunch was “hot dogs” which were wrapped in a flat wrap that was very much like a tortilla and made with spelt.
Oscar also entertained us with a couple typical Norwegian games, which included a matchstick game, where each person was given 99 matchsticks over 10 rounds to “bid” against the other players, the highest bid won the round but everyone had to discard the sticks the bid, meaning if you bid too high too early, you wouldn’t have further sticks to bid. We also played some horseshoes, which brought back memories of playing horseshoes with my family growing up. I can only guess the the nordic influence on Minnesota had infected my family, like some of the other traditions we have that have come from other parts of the world (like Cornish Pasties).
Simon and Oscar decided that they would hike further up the farm towards the top of the mountain where the waterfall originates. The Christina and Juan (the couple from Miami) and myself decided we would stay in the warm cabin with mom! We played cards and chatted at length about life and everything while Simon and Oscar hiked.
We started heading back down and time was getting a bit tight. It was a bit slower going than we had expected and we only ended up boarding the ship about 10 minutes before the “all aboard” and they would have taken away the gangway and we would have been left with the 12 hour drive to Stavanger to figure out! Luckily everything worked out fine and Oscar gave us some parting gifts, including a copy of a book he wrote, where we discovered he is the holder of two world records for memorisation. He obviously was a little bit “self-conscious” of his feats and while proud, didn’t want to spend the whole time talking about his memory abilities while we were on the trip.
