Tunnels

Norwegians have mastered the art of tunnel drilling like no other country on earth.  Since Norway is 97% solid rock, they have learned how to make lemonade out of lemons.  It’s impossible to go on any length of road trip in Norway without going through a tunnel.  Often, when the scenery is just drop dead gorgeous, the whole world blacks out as the car gets swallowed up by a mountain and spit out into another world on the other side.

Many coastal ferries have been replaced by undersea tunnels.  I don’t mind going through mountain tunnels so much, but I always get a little freaked out when driving under a fjord and water drips on my windshield.  It’s a sobering thought to realize just one crack in the earth or decent sized tsunami, and I’m done for.  Just to get to the airport where we lived in Norway, we had to drive through two of them.  The islands are so close in one location that they were not able to engineer a safe incline down under the sea and back up again, so they corkscrewed the tunnel down on one side.  Clever.

Some tunnels are free, some cost between fifteen and fifty dollars.  The majority of tunnels are miles long, and Norway proudly holds the record for the world’s longest auto tunnel, at more than fifteen miles in length.  Norway also has the deepest sea tunnel as it goes over a thousand feet down into the earth. 

In the summer the tunnels aren’t much fun as they are so dark and boring, but in the winter they are a nice respite from the snow and ice covered roads, since they are dry.  Norway requires all vehicles to have studded tires in the winter, so there is always a foggy haze inside the winter tunnels, however, as the bits of concrete being chewed up by the snow tires float in the air.

Norway is now in the process of building the world’s first ship tunnel straight through the middle of a coastal mountain.  They say it’s all about safety, but I think they just want bragging rights because no one else in the world has done such a thing.

Norwegians are famous for their stubborn streak and I’m sure it’s in part because they all really do live between a rock and a hard place.  Since they’ve managed to conquer their rocky environment with tunnels, maybe now is the time to conquer that hard head of theirs.  It sure would make them easier to live with.