Child abandonement and neglect on Runde Bird Island

August 26, 2019

We abandoned one child halfway up the mountain, and one of the other almost froze. It all worked out in the end, though: We'd brought chocolate, bunny, and a blanket. Goats also made it better.

The reward was stunning coastal landscapes; soaring, windswept cliffs; and puffins at the very edge of the vast Atlantic.

The drive from Ålesund to Fugleøya Runde — Runde Bird Island — takes you across Sulafjorden on the ferry to Hareid and then island hops its windy way across stone causeways and sweeping bridges. Small farms, pastures, and clusters of houses dot the surprisingly green and lush coastline.

Think you need to see the Atlantic Road? No, you don't: The drive to Runde is every bit as good. It also comes with a hike to a bird sanctuary and is nowhere near thronged with other tourists. Not a tour bus in sight the entire trip.

It's a blustery day, as befits this ruggedized landscape and the defiant village of Goksøyr. If you close your eyes and forget where you just came from, you could just as well be on the Shetland or Orkney islands. It's salty and windblown, but the steep mountain sides are covered in lush grass, and the houses are all cushioned in dense cottage gardens full of flowers.

The hike starts at the parking lot, just down the road from the trailhead.

Sure, we're all cocky now — we haven't seen the path yet.

Oh. Yep. It's steep. There's a reason Runde is also called a fuglefjell, a bird mountain. And we're going up and over. On all the promotional Web sites and hiking guides this may be classed as moderately strenuous, but, understand, that's “moderate” by Norwegian standards. “Moderate” means not entirely vertical. Norwegians grade hikes the same way we grade cold, which is to say against a much hardier baseline. Be forewarned.

The first section is the steepest, and it does take a bite out of you. Poor Emma is already dragging. She's the girl in the pink raincoat down the path, staring at her phone. She decided to stay back and just enjoy the view about halfway up; birds aren't her thing, anyway, and there was this guy back in Louisburg, Kansas, that she'd rather be texting with …

Now, if you're two years old and get to ride on daddy's back all the way up, on the other hand, the grade is no concern at all. Mia talked up a storm all the way up.

And up. Meanwhile, daddy was having a serious case of sweating in that Norwegian wool quarter-zip of his. You know, carrying another person up a near vertical incline (give or take a few degrees of slope) will heat you up some, and I didn't notice how stiff and cold the wind gets up there. It comes in off the ocean, and Runde is just a mountain-sized ramp to funnel and compress it. It may have come all the way from Hudson Bay, and it goes right through you.

Sitting there on my back in the frigid wind, Mia was wearing shorts. When we arrive on the other side of the narrow plateau, she's freezing. At first I thought she was bawling because she wanted to get down to run around and stretch her little legs. Looking over those sharp edges overlooking gaping voids of certain death, however, running around wasn't happening.

But then we realized she was just freezing. And that I was a shitty parent. My daughter is freezing to death and I'm kvetching because I think she's being a pain in the ass.

Doesn't look toasty, does it? Let that be a lesson. Don't be a bad parent like me. Bring warm, wind-proof pants for your kids if you're going to Norway. Fortunately, we had brought a blanket for her, so we bundled her and bunny up in the carrier. Then we broke out the chocolate to seal the deal, and she settled down, mostly.

The goats that graze up there were a good distraction, too. And with Her Majesty mostly settled (at least, not bawling), we were able to enjoy the jagged, the view out over the ocean and the soaring cliffs where seabirds nest by the thousands.

We didn't get the close encounters with puffins we'd hoped for, but we'd timed the visit right — late afternoon — to them returning from the sea with food for the chicks. Runde is the southernmost puffin nesting site in Norway, and the air below us was swirling with the dainty little things. From up high, they look like hummingbirds, darting this way and that, with their tiny little wings flapping so fast they're a blur.

The puffins have carved out their territory on the jutting crag below Rundebranden; birds of a feather do flock together. The noisy and messy gull colony a few hundred meters over is a stark contrast to the puffins's tidy nests, tucked away in the green cliff sides. It became obvious why some of our fellow visitors had taken the trouble to lug telephoto lenses up there the size of howitzers: With ordinary lenses, you can barely make the damned things out. But we saw them, I swear, and here's the view, at least: