Epic Drives

- Those of us who bring you the automotive news

log infinitely more air miles

than we do road miles.

Over time,

this unhealthy seat time imbalance,

makes editors cranky,

and irritable at best,

or down-right postal at worst.

The cure?

An epic drive.

Reynolds drove our Volt

from Detroit to LA,

Lowe and Lossa tag-teamed a drive

from Tokyo to LA in a Suzuki Kizashi,

Keno raced Europe's Orient Express

in a Hyundai Genesis,

and Mackenzie participated

in those last two trips,

drove a Challenger on one lap of Europe,

and conquered Australia's Outback

in the Subaru named for it.

Now, it's my turn.

Being one-quarter Norwegian,

I decided on Norway as my destination,

and plotted a route that included the gracefully arched

and curving bridges of the Atlantic road,

the steep and kinky ribbon of asphalt

known as the Trollstigen,

and the desolate E6 Highway

that stretches North past the Arctic Circle,

to the spot where mom's Winther maiden name,

entered the family,

on April 2nd, 1817, in Fauske.

By starting the trip in Bergen,

Norway's second city, down in the heart of the fjords,

I hope to also prove that Europe's best scenery

and driving roads, are not exclusively found in the Alps.

Bergen's brygge or wharf,

was a Hanseatic League trading center.

From the 14th to the 18th centuries,

powerful German businessmen

ran the town from a row of colorful wooden buildings.

It seemed like the perfect spot to launch this exhibition

in another powerful German.

Just minutes outside of town, we witness an important trait

of the Norwegians: they are avid tunnelers.

Tunnels and Ferries are the best way

to navigate a country comprised

mostly of steep rocky mountains

that plunge straight into deep fjords.

On one 32 mile stretch of the E16 highway

from Bergen toward Oslo,

we spent 27 miles in tunnels,

including one that's 15.2 miles long.

The Laerdal Tunnel design

incorporates three large cathedrals.

Each is illuminated with with multi-hued lighting,

to keep drivers from going speed-blind

in the world's longest road tunnel.

By mid-afternoon, the rain lifts

just long enough to squeeze in a stop

at Gudvangen's in Viking Valley.

Here, beneath the tallest waterfall in Northern Europe,

Georg Hansen has assembled eight Vikings to meet with us,

and we gather around the fire in their log house

for a bit of Viking 101.

Some strange matter,

the Vikings love gold.

And of course, being a young man,

born, bred in a place like this,

and meeting one of the girls in the neighborhood,

and there might only have been a couple,

and to make a family,

you would need somebody,

so the best way to, then, get money

was to travel abroad and fight for some king.

Okay.

- Because they were paid in gold.

- My ancestors' ancestors were trading

and projecting their power

throughout Northern Europe, and even Africa,

centuries before the Germans came to Bergen.

Vikings were clever and honest, if ruthless traders.

Georg shares a saga describing a cold and bedraggled Viking,

offering to trade his sword for a farmer's cloak.

- And this farmer was out in his field, harvesting,

and he had a nice warm cloak.

And the viking said, "I'll trade your cloak for my sword.

I have no need for my sword now."

And the farmer said "No, no way.

That sword won't keep me warm."

And then the viking said,

"Well, you won't need to be kept warm,

because I'll cut your head off now.

And I'll have your cloak."

But first, he offered to trade.

And that's basically, I think,

how the vikings would have done it.

They would have tried to trade first.

There is another story

about when the Danish and Norwegian vikings

were going for Paris,

but when they got close to Paris,

they were met by the French,

and the French cut their swords in two,

because the French had something very special.

They had this special steel.

Like this one, is 1,200 pieces of steel forged together.

That's what makes this pattern.

And the vikings withdrew from Paris,

and a week later they came back, with two shiploads of gold.

They said "We want to trade with you,

can we buy all these beautiful swords of yours,

and we'll give you all this gold."

And the French said "Yeah, that's a good trade."

And so they traded.

And then a few days later they came back and took Paris.

- I have purchased a horned helmet for the occasion,

but learned that this affectation was inserted

into our cultural memory centuries later,

during the Romantic period.

- I mean, they're funny, but they're not viking helmets,

I mean, vikings never had horns on their helmets.

What do you mean?

Wagner operas have been lying to me all this time?

You always see--

- No, no, but Wagner is a man of the 19th century,

and there's national romantic feelings of this time,

they tried to imagine how could vikings have looked like.

- Erik explains that metal helmets

were pretty rare in viking time.

So here we have a replica

of the only helmet found in Scandinavia.

No horns.

As we prepare to bid our Viking pals adieu,

Georg offers to trade his sword for my Spyder,

which retails here for the equivalent

of $800,000 after taxes.

Gulp.

Just 30 miles and one ferry ride away,

is a medieval marvel in Kaupanger.

So, no trip to Norway would be complete without stopping

at a stave church or two.

Now, first of all, "stave church,"

that just refers to the construction where you've got

vertical staves, or like lodge poles,

that are anchored in horizontal ones

that are set on the foundation.

Earlier churches were called post churches,

and those ones just had the stakes in the ground,

and a lot of those rotted out and they fell down.

In fact, this church was built on the site

of two previous post churches.

And it's also kind of a historical significance

to this trip, too.

Kaupanger was a market town, and there was a big war here,

that sort of marked the defining line

between the viking age and the modern age.

This was when King Sverre came here

and burned it down in 1184,

which was right around the time this church was built.

This act triggered the Battle of Fimreite later that summer,

when Sverre Sigurdsson and his loyal supporters

defeated the royal army.

Now King Magnus Erlingsson was killed here,

along with some 2,000 men.

And that was the dividing line

between the viking age and the modern age.

So I checked the box for stave churches,

next up on the agenda for the day are a glacier