2025
In this book, award-winning photographer Pål Hermansen invites us on a journey through time in the footsteps of the first landscape photographers, in search of magnificent motifs. Along the old travel routes, we both discover and rediscover waterfalls, fjords and mountains in Western Norway. We look at old photographs against new ones and notice how the places change at different speeds – and together they form a new picture of a region that is still one of Norway’s most beautiful travel destinations.
In the second half of the 19th century, the first tourists came to Norway. British salmon lords, emperors, scientists and mountaineers visited Odda, Geiranger, Lærdal and Balestrand in search of new experiences and impressions. From 1883, after the opening of the Vossabanen, tourists could easily travel by train from Bergen to the small villages along the railway track – even in winter. Here they found what they were looking for: Beautiful, wild and untouched Norwegian nature, unlike anything they had seen before.
Join us and rediscover the Sognefjord, Stalheimskleiva, Odda, Geiranger, Lærdal, Balestrand and much more, then and now.
"The author offers an original twist on the traditional photo book genre."
“All credit for a reproduction of the old masters as close as possible. Even the weather seems to have been taken into account. It must have been a bit of an exercise in patience. […] We get many saturated and nice color images. The black and white images are also very well reproduced.”
"The genius is that he himself has traveled to the same places and taken new pictures of the same motifs. So you can see how the landscapes have changed, but also how similar they are, even though it may have been well over a century between the pictures. It's fascinating."
