Key takeaways
- The slide went at about eight on the Tuesday morning, in Norangsdalen, over the well-known tourist road between Øye and Hellesylt. [1]
- Bergens Annonce Tidende reported three days later that a mountain called Æneipen had come down, laying a high wall of stone right across the valley. [2] The 1911 county survey names Kjeipen as the source. [4]
- Of the stones and rock blocks in Norangsdalen, the survey records, some were as big as houses. [5]
- Romsdals Amtstidende wrote a week afterwards that there was no doubt this mighty slide would draw many tourists to it. [6]
What came down
Norangsdalen is the valley that runs inland from Øye, at the head of Norangsfjorden, and carries the road over to Hellesylt. On this trip it is the notch you can see opening at the end of the arm; it was, in 1908, the single most travelled tourist route on Sunnmøre.
On Tuesday 26 May it lost a mountainside. The slide went at about eight in the morning, across the well-known tourist road between Øye and Hellesylt. [1]
Bergens Annonce Tidende had it three days later, and gave the mountain a name: in Norangsdalen a mountain called Æneipen had come down, and a high wall of stone had laid itself right across the valley. [2] Romsdals Tidende, reporting the same week, put the consequence plainly: a great stone slide had gone through Norangsdalen, and the tourist road between Øye and Hellesylt was destroyed over a not inconsiderable stretch. [3]
Three years later the county survey came and looked at it properly, and its account is the one worth keeping. It was from Kjeipen that the great stone slide in Norangsdalen went on 26 May 1908. [4] And of the stones and rock blocks in Norangsdalen, some were as big as houses. [5]
The first thought was tourism
The reaction in the local press is the most human thing in the record.
Romsdals Amtstidende, on 3 June, barely a week after the mountain fell: there is no doubt that this mighty slide in Norangsdalen will draw many tourists to it. [6]
That was correct. By the end of September, Søndmøre Folkeblad was reporting an excursion in which the whole party went forward to the slide in Norangsdalen, and noting that the weather was excellent the whole day. [7]
A destroyed road became a destination in four months. It is worth remembering that this valley was already on the tourist circuit: an 1894 shipping paper describes passengers who either go ashore and take a walk, or drive through Norangsdalen to Hellesylt, where the ships have meanwhile gone round to meet them. [8] The steamer dropped you at one end of the valley and picked you up at the other.
Some of the blocks were as big as houses, and the river through the valley disappears beneath the slides that have come down from the sides.
A valley built out of its own rockfalls
The 1908 slide was the biggest of its generation, not a freak. The county survey describes a valley whose whole floor is made of the things that have fallen into it.
Stone slides are frequent in Norangsdalen, it records, many farms are exposed to snow slides, and in many places people must row far from land on that account. [9] Rowing out into the middle of a fjord to avoid what might come off the mountain is a routine, not a panic.
The river gives the game away. The river through Norangsdalen partly runs underground, the survey says, or rather it disappears beneath the great slides that have come down from the sides. [4] A river that vanishes under the debris and comes out lower down is a valley that has been filled in, repeatedly, for a very long time.
Even the ground under the mountains is made of fallen rock. The survey quotes the naturalist Strøm's observation that the mountain foot in Norangsdalen is nothing but loft-screes, meaning stone screes with a loft of soil grown over the top. [4] Soil on Norangsdalen's floor is a lid on older rockfalls.
Narrow, dark, and worth it
The single sentence that tells you most about living there is also from the survey.
Norangsdalen is narrower and darker still than the fjord outside it, and those who live here must do without the sun for several winter months. [4]
Hjørundfjorden itself is famous for being steep and shaded. The valley behind it is worse. The mountain walls stand close enough together and high enough that the sun does not clear them at all for part of the winter, and the people living under them simply waited.
And they stayed, because the ground was good. Higher up the valley grows wider and the mountains lower, and Norangsdalen has lush and rich pastures, and is, despite the danger of stone slides, a sought-after place. [4] That is the trade the whole of this coast is built on: excellent grazing directly beneath a mountain that occasionally arrives.
There is one more route out, and the survey clearly enjoyed writing about it. From the valley the Brunstadskaret leads like a secret passage over to Norangsdalen and Frikedalen; it is a mountain notch, narrow and wild, without equal. [4]
What the RIB shows you
The safari runs the fjord, not the valley, so you see the mouth of it rather than the slide.
What you do get is the scale that makes 1908 make sense. From the water, the arm at Øye is a slot with walls going up on both sides, and an 1891 Ålesund paper had already decided the point: Norangsfjorden and Norangsdalen from Øye to Haugen are so unique that nothing else compares with them. [9]
The valley road is still there, rebuilt, and it still passes the slide. If you have a car day on Sunnmøre either side of this trip, the drive from Øye to Hellesylt is the same route the 1894 steamer passengers walked, through the rock that came down on a Tuesday morning in May.
The slide, week by week
26 May 1908, about 08:00
The slide goes in Norangsdalen, over the tourist road between Øye and Hellesylt. [1]
29 May
Bergens Annonce Tidende names the mountain, Æneipen, and describes a high wall of stone across the valley. [2]
30 May
Romsdals Tidende reports the tourist road destroyed over a not inconsiderable stretch. [3]
3 June
Romsdals Amtstidende predicts the slide will draw many tourists. [6]
30 September
An excursion party goes forward to the slide, in excellent weather. [7]
1911
The county survey names Kjeipen as the source and records blocks as big as houses. [4] [5]
