If this is Thursday it must be postcards, 114

Nordfjord

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Nordfjord or northern fjord is located in the northern part of Sogn og Fjordane county in Western Norway.  It is a long fjord stretching for 66 miles or 106 kilometers from Husevågøy, an island, to Loen a village at the other end.  There are several communities all along the fjord including some old fishing villages that date back to before Viking times.

The fjord is also the home of glaciers among them, Jostedalsbreen, Briksdalsbreen and several others.  Jostendalsbreen covers 188 square miles (487 square kilometers) and is the largest glacier in continental Europe.  The thickest part is 2,000 feet and the length is approximately 37 miles.  A National Park that covers over half the glacier was established there in 1991.   This huge glacier has about 50 “arms” including Briksdalsbreen.  Briksdalsbreen is worth mentioning because it lost 160 feet of ice in 2006 and retreated 479 feet that year and is thought to be in danger of breaking away from the upper ice field.  I found it very interesting that it is not the cold temperature of the region that maintains the glacier but the heavy snowfalls. 

I think the photograph on the postcard was taken at another natural feature in this area, the very deep lake, Hornindalsvatnet .  The lake was officially measured at 1,686 feet (514 meters) deep making it Norway’s and Europe’s deepest lake.  The river Eidselva flowing into an arm of Nordfjorden called Eidsfjorden is the main egress for the lake. 

The postcard is by Axel Eliasson, published in Stockholm, Sweden, and numbered 5045.   It was tinted and then reproduced as a colored card.  The picture shows two men with oars and a woman in a red scarf holding two long poles in this small, single-masted boat.  It is difficult to tell what they are hauling in the boat; it looks like vegetation of some type, a large mound in the middle and a smaller bunch at the end where the men are sitting.  The card is an unused with an undivided back for the address only.  Any message would be written on the picture side of the card.


For more information about Nordfjord, Hornindalsvatnet, and Jostedalsbreen, please see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordfjord
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hornindalsvatnet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jostedalsbreen
http://www.jostedal.com/