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The story of Nærøyfjord

Nærøyfjord

The Nærøyfjord is one of the narrowest arms of the whole Sognefjord system. It is about 17 kilometres long, and at its narrowest it is only about 250 metres wide, while the mountains around it rise to about 1,761 metres. South of the village of Bakka, the distance between the summits on each side is only about 3 kilometres.

The fjord was carved by glaciers during the Quaternary ice ages; when the ice retreated, seawater flooded the deep valleys. Waterfalls and hanging valleys cut into its steep sides. In some cold winters the fjord has frozen over: in the 1920s and in 1962, scheduled boats could not get in and had to navigate along the ice edge.

In 2005 the area was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List together with the Geirangerfjord. And if this landscape looks familiar, it may be because it was one of the inspirations for Arendelle in Disney's Frozen.

This story is compiled from Wikipedia and other open sources; dates and numbers are checked against the source. The text is shared under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence. Source ↗

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