It's easy to be deceived looking at a map or in the experience of traversal, but the entire country of Norway (~149,000 sq mi) is a little smaller in land area than the U.S. state of California (~164,000 sq mi). Despite it's size, a 16 hour train ride (or drive) will only get you from Oslo in the South to about half way up its length (to Mo i Rana, just below Arctic Circle). This phenomena is attributable to a general lack of high speed infrastructure resulting from the wild topography and un-accommodating weather found throughout the land. The results of this have historically been the isolation of communities and the development of hundreds of drastically different dialects among the here).
On a "short" drive, just reaching three hours (110 miles) into Telemark's mountains from downtown Oslo, some sights illustrate these points.
GPS gave us this as a main highway.
Happened to be mostly a trucking route, and they were widening the road.
People actually live out here.
The sun reached this part of the valley around 11am.
This hydro power station started the town of Rjukan in the early 1990s - located in a valley that is too deep and steep for the sun to reach 6 months out of the year.
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