Free Europe @ 2.4 km/h by Ken Haley

country he did not hesitate. ‘You must visit me and let me take you fishing.’
    And so at Andalsnes this warm June day he is there to greet me at the station — with his broad smile and booming voice. Accompanied by his partner, Sue O’Neill — an associate professor from Sydney University newly relocated to Molde, on Norway’s central-west coast — he plays host on a sightseeing tour that takes in Trollwall (Trolleveggen in Norwegian), a beetling cliff face famous throughout Scandinavia.
    Late in the afternoon we drive 12 km the other side of Molde, to a spot above the boat landing at Fraenafjord. After carefully helping me into his 15 foot runabout, the professor rows me across the pond to the isle of Svansholmen where 45 years ago his father built a cabin.

    Spoken Norwegian sounds like snowmelt. The language is babbling, playful, almost fey. And I have already taken to asking Norwegians what they think of their neighbours the Swedes. At this juncture Norwegians cease to be babbling, playful and fey. Even those who acknowledge that as a people they are inclined to be rulebound say that, in general, Swedes are even more so. According to the professor, his people sometimes say of themselves, ‘Inside every Norwegian there is a German’. (He doesn’t say whether this homunculus is struggling to get out — or to inhabit a Swede.)

    We set out after breakfast on Sunday morning. Having again helped me into the rowboat at one end, Kolbein takes up his position at the other. Sue waves us off. I let Kolbein row — pure laziness on my part.
    We both agree that I should have first go at trying to lure a fish to the rod, even though I have warned him that my uselessness at this task is one of my principal disabilities.
    For half an hour the fish of Fraenafjord lie low. Just as I am about to give up there is a tug on the line. Unfortunately you gain no points for reeling in a tenacious tuft of seaweed. Kolbein disentangles the kelp and returns the rod to me. But my heart has gone out of the fight. As I lay down the line, he revs up the outboard. We round a cape of dazzling green and head into the next, wider fjord. There, another twenty minutes on, the miracle takes place. The effects of that second cup of tea I had for breakfast are beginning to make themselves felt in an insistent bladder, so — reaching into my rucksack to fetch my plastic urinal — I announce with all due modesty my intention to use this device and, at the risk of polluting one of Norway’s most pristine waterways, to empty its contents into the deep. Before I can finish my explanation, there is a second pull on the line, and after an impressive contest for mastery Kolbein hauls in a respectable-looking fish, perhaps 30 cm long, which he pronounces to be a cod.
    Scarcely has it landed, gasping, on deck when there follows a third pull on the line and up comes a langerfish . The next ten minutes bring two more catches — both cod, the latter of them the biggest of today’s haul.
    No conventional angler, I can at least lay claim to being part of a successful fishing expedition. And, although Kolbein brought them aboard, I know it was only my threat to contaminate their freshwater supply that induced these elusive creatures to quit their natural element. My contribution isn’t confined to putting the piss back into piscatorial pursuits, it turns out that Kolbein cannot immediately find the gaff he needs to prevent the big fellow from getting away. So I offer the nearest thing to hand, which happens to be my copy of Les Carlyon’s masterwork on the battles of the Western Front, which I’m reading in preparation for Belgium and France.
    The cod doesn’t move again, proving nearly 90 years after the guns fell silent that — just as Les wrote — The Great War is still creating casualties.
    183-185 km
    This is the story of how I fell in with Norway’s latter-day Bonnie and Clyde. Per and Tina (not their real names), rather than meeting their deaths