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Matinee: 'Around a Fjord on Rollerskates'
9 August 2025
Saturday matinees long ago let us escape from the ordinary world to the island of the Swiss Family Robinson or the mutinous decks of the Bounty. Why not, we thought, escape the usual fare here with Saturday matinees of our favorite photography films?
So we're pleased to present the 616th in our series of Saturday matinees today: Around a Fjord on Rollerskates.
This charming 4:06 video is a nice mix of stills and video of a Norwegian excursion on rollerskates along the coastline of the Esefjorden fjord in Balestand. The whole thing was 11.65 miles and took almost two hours (burning over 1,025 calories at that).
Wikipedia informs us:
The municipality is named Balestrand, a compound name for the area that was created in 1832 by the Norwegian writer Henrik Wergeland. The first element is the name of the old Bale farm (Old Norse: Bali). The farm name is identical to the word bali which means "grassy hillside." The last element is derived from the word stroÌnd which means "beach" or "shore." Thus the "shore along the grassy hillside."
And that's what Jamie Rojo, Kim Clausen and Elise Acton photographed while Brock Allman shot video.
We thought the adventure might serve as an ersatz summer vacation for those among us who are not able to indulge in the annual rite this year.
In our youth, we four brothers would pile into the station wagon and endure the 180 mile ascent into the Sierras for two weeks at magical Lake Tahoe where you could see fool's gold sparkling in the rippled sand under the lake's little waves and catch crawfish or trout. Not to mention take a horseback ride, play pee wee golf or even ice skate at the Olympic arena where the U.S. beat Russia in hockey.
These days nothing we could conjure up would compare to that.
But we got a kick out of the rollerskaters flailing for the camera and the gorgeously serene scenery of Norway.
We did have to laugh, however, when the fastest any of these guys skated was at the very end as they returned to the hotel. They had to get up some momentum for the short hill in front of them but we suspect they were also in a hurry to restore a few calories at the hotel bar.