Nada Skerly

Cruising the Norwegian coastline in September is a way of buying time, of getting my emotional and geographic bearings before reentering Shangri-la. That’s how I remember Stryn, the pastoral idyll deep within the shrouded glacial mists of the Nordfjord, Norway, discovered via seaplane, no less, in April, 1971. I was an Alicia Patterson Foundation fellow on aging around the world. (Later, Newsday columnist for “Life Over 60”) In Bergen, an intuitive editor suggested I visit his cousin in home town Stryn, offering transport in the Bergens Tidende aircraft next to the pilot and the newspaper’s Tuesday edition. For two unforgettable weeks, Martin Lilleheim, and his wife, Malene, adopted me and my quest, opening doors unto a loving, balanced milieu. Fidelity to family, custom, and place bonded old and young. An athletic vitality defied chronological aging. Retirement was a foreign concept. Martin Lilleheim at drinking fountain. Planning a return, this time introducing my husband, Bill, intensifies concerns. As Bill teases about my “shrine,” I wonder if it was all fantasy or journalistic hubris. We board the

The Post and Courier Charleston, South Carolina Sunday, December 30, 2001 ARTS & TRAVEL, front page   Sometimes you need to see a place from a different perspective to better appreciate its history and culture. That is true of Charleston as you glimpse the story-rich shoreline from a Fort Sumter tour boat. That is even truer of Norway, all twelve hundred craggy miles of coast walled by barren cliffs and glaciers that plunge into the North Sea. Subsistence patches of scrub forced Vikings as early as 800 A.D. to go “aviking.” The Norse verb for exploring propelled them, bravely, into uncharted waters and the determined conquest of five rich continents. Late summer, my husband, Bill, and I made comparatively luxurious explorations via the Norwegian Coastal Voyage’s new “MS Richard With.” We had flown from Oslo to board the ship in northern-most Kirkenes. Then we sailed south, a five-day odyssey that led to the port of Maloy and further adventure. Our extended wanderings began when we docked near the tip of the globe and took a