Paddle a fjord a quarter of a kilometer wide with a thousand meters of rock on either side

The Nærøyfjord is an arm of the Sognefjord, about 17 kilometers long, and at its tightest there are 250 meters of water between one mountain and the other. The mountains go up past 1,700 meters. No road runs along it, so the middle of it can only be reached by boat, and the smallest boat is the best one.

The day starts on the shore at Gudvangen in a two-person kayak, and it is a whole day on the water: fourteen to sixteen kilometers of paddling, with a barbecue lunch in the middle of it on a shore no road reaches.

What everybody says afterward is that it was quiet. The water is often still enough to hold the cliffs upside down, and the sounds are paddles and waterfalls and not much else. At some point the group stops talking, without anybody suggesting it, and stays that way for a while.

The fjord is about 17 kilometers long and about 250 meters across at its narrowest, with summits reaching 1,761 meters, and it has been on the UNESCO World Heritage List since 2005 as part of the West Norwegian Fjords, together with the Geirangerfjord. Whether it is the narrowest fjord anywhere is not settled. Fjord Norway calls it one of the narrowest in the world and Visit Bergen says Norway's and perhaps the world's, so this page gives the measurement rather than the record.