Fjørdgasm: The origin

Getting old did not come as a surprise.

I mean, why should it? It’s not as if the passage of time had proceeded secretly to be revealed — ta-da! — on my fiftieth birthday. Even if it had, when my dad passed away just a couple of months earlier, after months of close calls and increasing, painfully visible frailty, there could have been no more urgent reminder that I’m not here indefinitely and I’ve used up a significant chunk of my allotted time already.

So here I am, old. (Older, fifty being the new forty, you know). But I was prepared and I had planned. I had planned to a degree completely out of character for someone mostly inclined to wing it. I literally pored over maps, for months. I coordinated calendars, driving distances, logistics, and acquisitions. I agonized over destinations and sights, which to include, which to skip.

I am planning the Last Big Trip, dammit, the trip I’d wanted to take for years but somehow could never afford or find the time for. Tomorrow, Lilie, the elder — the first daughter I ever had, so to speak — turns 19 and is practically moved out already. By this time next year she'll be past wanting to go on vacation with the fam. We're down to the wire, the last chance to shoehorn Traci, an honorary Norwegian and the world's most patient and understanding girlfriend, and all the kids into a car all at the same time and show them all the things I have wanted to show them but hadn’t, yet: The Fjørdgasm.

Gustav Vigeland's Sinnataggen, maybe the most iconic piece of his massive Vigeland Sculpture Park, demonstrates what a toddler feels like after five hours, or maybe just one, in the car seat. (Photo: Visit Norway)

The Fjørdgasm is and was so important that I thought, and still think, cramming two adults, two teenagers, each with one foot out the door, an 11-year-old boy going cold turkey off Fortnite, and a toddler into a car for three weeks to drive Norway lengthwise* would be a good idea.

It’s probably not. But it’s worth a try.

So here we go. In a month, we travel — in two batches; it’s a long story — from Overland Park, Kansas, to my hometown of Hokksund, Norway, where we’ll pile in the brand-new Volvo Traci is picking up in Göteborg, Sweden the day before. From there, we wind our way through Norwegian mountains and along the fjords then north, past the Arctic Circle, to the stomping grounds of my parents, their parents, and their parents’ parents. We’ll cover the world’s largest bonfire, a mountain with a hole through it, a maelstrom, and enough fjords, trees, mountains, and rugged coastline to make you thoroughly sick of it.

All that with an almost-two-year-old strapped in the back for several hours a day. And sleeping in tents. Far enough north that the sun doesn’t set. And it’s cold, because, you know, the Arctic Circle. Did I say it was a great idea? Again, it probably isn’t, but we’re doing it, because I’ve planned, dammit.

* Alright, not quite. We’re not starting at Lindesnes and going all the way to Nordkapp. Sue me. It’s close enough.