A few years ago, a friend and I decided to go to Norway. We wanted to go backpacking, and we decided on the Jotunheimen National Park, which is about 400km northwest of Oslo. Jotunheimen means home of the Jotuns, with the Jotuns being a race of giants on Norse mythology.

We first flew into Oslo and hung out there for a day and night.

The next morning, we got on the bus. Around 6 hours later, we arrived in beautiful Jotunheimen.

We started at the red marker and hiked around in the area to the north, northwest, and west over the next week.

It was a little drizzly the first day, so we put on our sweaters and rain jackets and just kept plowing north before eventually setting up camp after having hiked all day.

I bought this 1-liter bottle of juice, thinking it was just juice and that I could use the bottle afterward for water. It was one of the vilest drinks I have ever tasted. It was somehow simultaneously mega sweet but also tasted like I was drinking liquid chalk. I was kind of stubborn, though, and didn’t want to dump it out because that would mean I would just need to pump and filter more water sooner. As such, I just powered through it and kept drinking.

Once we got inside the tent, I had the time to actually read the bottle. I noticed a little label…

Apparently, it was concentrated and you’re supposed to mix it with 9 parts water, which would explain why it was disgustingly strong. After mixing it, it was pretty good!

My friend was struggling, and I kept trying to motivate them by telling that it was “just another kilometer or two.” I think I said that over the course of 8 or 10 kilometers before we finally reached the top.

We descended down a different face, and there was a large stretch of snow covering a couple hundred meters. I got on it and started skiing down the slope using my shoes as “skis,” but the snow was hard enough that I didn’t sink in, so it worked out well enough. I actually got a good amount of speed, much to the dismay of my friend who was convinced that I wasn’t going to be able to stop in time before I hit the rocks at the end of the snow. I did stop, though, and the only damage was my shoes were then full of snow.

As seen in the pictures, even in the summer, there was still snow on the ground. The air wasn’t much warmer, and my shoes were now full of melting snow. As soon as we got to a spot where we could set up my tent, we did so and crawled into our sleeping bags to warm up.

The next day, we continued hiking down into the valley below and set up my tent in the trees. We were just going to relax for a day or two after our arduous hike the days before.

Then the cows came.

I was lying in the tent, just minding my own business, and I heard a loud snort of air from right by the tent. Curious, I opened the tent flap to see the head of a bull staring right at me, no more than an arm’s reach away. Taken aback, I quickly closed the tent flap and told my friend to open the other door. Thankfully, my tent has 2 doors on either side of the tent, so we made a quick retreat out the other side to find a herd of maybe 20 or so cattle around us. They also had calves with them, and the black bull right by my tent did not look happy to see us.

What was supposed to be a relaxed evening just chilling in the tent became a standoff. Human versus wild. Hikers versus cows.

We tried to scare the cows off, but… well… there were a lot of them and they were much bigger than us. We were scared, okay? That bull looked pissed.

We raised our feeble voices in muted “hyahs!” but the cows were not impressed. They started moving in closer. There was nowhere to go. Wait. There was a little aspen tree right next to us. It looked barely capable of holding my weight, let alone both of us, but climb up it we did. The cows continued observing us. One of the younger cows was curious and started getting closer to the tent. A curious fellow, it craned out its neck and licked my tent. It started to get closer.

I didn’t want it to crush my tent. Emboldened in the swaying sapling that afforded us a little distance from the cattle below (but honestly, if one of them had so much as shouldered the tree, I think it would have toppled us over), I resumed yelling out, trying to keep the cow away from my tent. It kind of just looked at these curious animals in the tree above it. We started breaking off small twigs and throwing them on top of the tent and near the curious cow to try and get it to back off.

It worked, and the cow went back a few paces, joining the rest of the cattle that had grown bored of us and were moving on. The one with the black fur never stopped staring at me. It was quite disconcerting. But eventually, he too finally turned and left, allowing us to slink down from our retreat and rendezvous with the tent. I did a few rounds, making sure there were no more incoming cattle, and finally laid back down with shaking hands.

The next day we packed up and decided to move along to less cowy pastures.

The bridge was broken, so we had to travel along the rapid creek and try to locate safe passage. We eventually just had to hike up our pants and wade through the swift currents, almost, but not quite, falling down many times.

The trail continued along the windy spine of that mountain

Enjoying the last evening in the park after about a week of hiking

The following morning, we got on the bus back to Oslo. There was a toilet on board, but something was wrong, and it made the entire bus smell like an outhouse the entire time. We spent about 6 hours breathing through our shirts.

Back in the fresh air of Oslo, we went to the hostel and got some beers at a bar where every beer was around 8 or 9 euros…

The next morning, we went to the Viking Ship Museum.

Our Viking Ship Museum tickets also got us entry to the Historic Museum, so we went.

I unfortunately didn’t take any notes, so no review on any of these expensive brewskies. I do recall the 3^rd one being quite interesting, though.

I really loved Norway! Oslo is a chill, if expensive city, and Norway’s nature is superb. I have had friends gone there to see the northern lights, and that is something I would also like to do someday. I would also like to go back just to go camping again. Other than a close call with some cows, we had an amazing time. If I wouldn’t have to learn another language, I would consider moving to Norway. Since I don’t feel like learning Norwegian, I’ll just satisfy myself with another trip sometime in the future.