We are on our way home. The bus is slowly crawling up the winding road that zigzags along this part of Norway's southern coast. I thought Scandinavia would be all cold and harsh but right here and now the sun is burning and the landscape is just beautiful. The bus comes to a sudden halt and the driver says something about a break. It's to be only a short break but for me that will later become the most remarkable minutes of the whole journey. I rise from my seat and leave the bus, stepping into the summer breeze. I have to half close my eyes blinded by the sun and while taking a few steps I stretch and try to relax from the hours of sitting in that uncomfortable bus. My blinking eyes wander back down the road from where we came and then up ahead. Then it happens.

A small cloud floats before the sun and the breeze turns my head around. My sight is drawn away from the road and the bus, away from the cliff and out to the fjord below and the open sea beyond. I'm standing there on the edge of a steep cliff about 1000 feet above the waves, wind in my hair. In the distance I see the other side of the fjord, another towering cliff dotted with solitary trees swept by the same breeze that I can feel on my skin. Down in the fjord anchors a big luxury cruiser that merely looks like a little boat from up here. The small cloud above drifts away and a gust of warm wind washes over me. In the blink of an eye the cruiser is gone. In my fantasy it is replaced by a couple of far smaller boats, wooden longboats as the Vikings used to sail them. The road is gone too, along with the bus. The cliff though remains. The waves remain and the breeze too. What might this place have looked like a thousand years ago? I think that it probably looked just like now. Time loses itself along the level of the waves. It dribbles lazily from the uncountable cracks in the cliffs and gently plays with the ancient trees, just teasing them. For me it's a picture of eternity. What is my existence compared to this fjord? It's a little stone thrown into the stream of time, meaningless for its flow. But the little stone is precious, twinkling in the sunlight before it is claimed by the waves... competing with the sunlight. For a few minutes I am playing with eternity.

I felt so very small standing there high above the fjord. I was in awe. Everything human or made by humans seemed small to me all of a sudden. Nature seemed so much bigger. But then again we are (or were) a part of nature. Some tend to forget that. I never had a more intense reminder than in the moment on the cliff. In that moment everything made perfect sense... it didn't even need to. I saw beauty.