S said, ‘Keep swimming – I’ve got to get a photo with the
snow in the distance!’
I was soon breathing normally again, and even almost started
to enjoy it. The fjord was so still I could see the Folgefonna glacier
reflected in the glinting green water: this was real wild swimming. Then from Ʃ,
‘Why don’t you swim out into the really deep water. We’ll follow in the boat
and you can get in when you tire.’
‘You... must... be.. joking!’ I spluttered. But then I
thought about it. Our intended lunch-spot wasn’t anything special. Kicking out
in my relaxed breaststroke felt good. Easy. The ripples I made with each stroke
scrumpled reflections of snowy patches on the mountaintops.
‘OK – I will then!’ I struck out back across the fjord. The
houses on the other side were tiny. Trucks driving along the main road between
Utne and Odda were minuscule, but it would be fun swimming out and completely
clear of the shore.
I was a couple of hundred metres out by the time S & Ʃ had
launched the boat and rowed out to me. I enjoyed my breaststroke – kick glide
pull... kick gli––ide pull, and the water didn’t feel that cold any more. I’d swim
into pockets that felt almost like a warm bath, but then it would be out again
into iciness. Kick gli–––ide pull... kick...
I was going strongly, though I didn’t want to put my face in
the water. I was still wearing my glasses and it felt too cold to put my head
in at all, so I didn’t rise to Ʃ’s challenge to swim right under the
boat. I headed towards a red two-storey weatherboard house. I swam. It came no
closer. Even so I began to think I might swim right across. That started a
debate amongst the three of us. S thought it was a kilometre across. Ʃ
said, ‘No – look how small the cars are. It’s much more.’
I was swimming steadily. I felt strong. I could keep this
pace up for hours. I turned and looked back. It was good to change position,
but I still didn’t want to put my head back in the water.
‘How far... d’you reckon... I’ve done?’ I asked. ‘A third?’
S was humouring me when he said, ‘Mmm. Maybe. Yes, a third.’
The rowan trees at my starting point on the east side of the
fjord still looked large. I hadn’t made much progress. But I wasn’t at all
tired and I still felt I could swim across. Then I hit a muscle-seizing cold
patch. Maybe this was what the rest of the swim was going to be like. I was
gasping again. It must be icy water welling up from the deep. I wouldn’t go on
if it stayed like this. I spluttered as much to S & Ʃ. They didn’t hear.
It wasn’t long though before I entered another bath-warm
patch, and even the next cold bit wasn’t that cold.
I turned on my back. The eastern side was still close. The
red house seemed no closer, no bigger. The water had turned the colour of gun
metal. I’d swim a bit further. To the middle at least. I looked up to the
glacier and the snow and the mountaintops. I scanned down to the tree line and
the pretty houses along the shore. Earlier that same day S & I had climbed
high above the fjord, 500m or so up the steep valley wall amongst pine and then
birch forest. We looked down not on a single expanse of water but on a varied
and varying surface – a map as intricate as any landscape. In places there were
tiny waves whipped up by undercurrents, rips and eddies. There were places
where the water looked deep dark and menacing, others where the water surface
was rippled from a slight breeze. Sometimes the water looked leaf green,
sometimes it was almost black.
From the boat Ʃ shouted, ‘What if a whale came
alongside!’ His imagination had been captured by discovering that many fjords
are 1000m deep; he was sure there were big creatures living down there. He
talked of humpbacked whales and monsters.
‘A big whale... wouldn’t come... into a fjord.’
‘What if a giant squid came up from the deep?’
‘You’d... photograph it!’
‘But it might eat you!’
‘Still got both my legs – so far...’ He wasn’t going to
spook me, although thinking of that huge body of water below me was
awe-inspiring. Being run down by a boat was a more realistic worry.
Something disturbed the surface. I took a mouthful. It was –
surprisingly – hardly salty at all. Maybe that explained the lack of seabirds.
There weren’t many wildfowl either though: just an occasional mallard or gull.
Norwegians seem to like shooting their wildlife.
Time moved on, and so did I, slowly; Ʃ – who’d come up with
the idea of this expedition – was starting to get a little bored. He taunted
me. ‘Hurry up or we’ll leave you behind.’ S was no lying in the boat pretending
– I think – to take a nap.
‘Don’t... make me... laugh... That’ll... slow me down...
even more.’ I rolled over to swim backstroke for a while but got a rain-freeze
when I immersed my scalp, and I couldn’t see where I was going. Back on my
front, I realised my hands were numb. I wanted to make fists but how can you
swim breaststroke with fists? I recalled one of my Dad’s stories. He must have
been pretty hard. He enjoyed all sports but swimming was his greatest love – a
family passion in fact. Above all he loved water polo. He played in Belfast
Lough – that wide estuary which opens into the Irish Sea. He described how
sometimes he would catch the ball then have to look to see if it was still in
his hand. It was so cold he couldn’t feel whether he was still holding it or
not. My blue wrinkled hands were that cold now.
I’d set out thinking I’d swim diagonally across the fjord –
retracing the path I’d rowed. I realised now though that, although the water
felt still and although we were a long way from the sea, there was a
significant current. The boat owner later mentioned a tide of 1.5 metres. I
changed my plan and told S & Ʃ I was aiming for a rocky spur that jutted
out from the western shore of the fjord. I swam towards a warning sign for
boats. I wasn’t sure whether this was okay for our little boat but I just
wanted to finish this now. I just needed to keep the rhythm going.
There was more flotsam: bladder wrack, leaves and a few
larger pieces of tree. The channel was getting shallow. S & Ʃ were suddenly
animated, looking out for rocks now. The current increased a lot. I needed to
swim much more strongly to make headway against the tide but I didn’t want to
kick out against jagged granite. It’s hard to see anything from the water
surface. S & Ʃ in the boat said they could see the bottom now. They were
worried about running aground. They suggested I climb into the boat but I
wanted to touch the western shore – so I could say I’d swum right across, the entire
two-plus kilometres.
Just a few more strokes. I checked before I put my feet
down. I saw clean rippled sand but that’s not what it felt like. It was sticky,
like mud. But my feet were down and I could stop swimming. How good it felt to
have my feet on the bottom at last. S & Ʃ again suggested I scramble into
the boat then they’d row me back to the jetty we’d launched from. I was standing
in chest deep water. I didn’t have the strength to get myself into the boat. I
waded in to where it was shallower but had the oddest sensation. Standing now
waist-deep I felt as if I was being pushed forward – back into my horizontal
swimming position. After an hour and a half of swimming (S reckoned it was an
hour and a quarter) my body had decided I shouldn’t be upright ever again.
The sensation soon passed, though my rubber-legs took a while to return to normal function. The pay-off was the long luxurious shower when we got back to the cottage. It was delicious.
