Lord Garvagh and his entourage came sailing into the fjord in their beautiful wooden three-master Sunbeam around 1850 and lived in Lordahuset (the Lord’s House) in Ohnstad, where he supposedly shot a pig that was grunting too loudly on the other side of the river, out of pure irritation. But at least he settled his debt. If we are to believe the old village rumours it wasn’t just game, trout and salmon the lord hunted when visiting Tokvam. Bjørn’s great-great-grandmother was the sole heir to the farm and had to marry a guy from the neighbouring village in a tremendous hurry when she became pregnant – and, it is said that the child was clearly of noble descent.

At least that’s been the unofficial explanation for why a steep and impassable piece of land, right in the middle of the Tokvam property, was transferred to the farmers in the neighbouring farm – as a dowry. When the lords and the British upper class ‘discovered’ the fjords, rivers and mountains in the late 18th and early 19th century, most people believed that the Earth was flat. The mountain landscape, with its jagged, pointy peaks, belonged to the ‘realm of sin’. Most Norwegians used the mountains for hunting and fishing, not recreation. And the rivers were used to catch fish, not ‘trick’ them with a cunning fly rod the way the lords did.

In Aurland, the Old Lord built Lordahuset (the Lord’s House) and there was quite the party every time they came to Aurland. Stone cabins were built in the mountains between Aurland and Hol to be used for reindeer hunting.

The ‘old’ lord was called Charles Henry Spencer George Canning, and his son was Charles John Spencer George Canning. The ‘young’ lord travelled to Aurland with his father at the age of 14 and was immediately taken by the mountains. When his father died a few years later, he came back and set up several hunting cabins in the mountains that to this day testify to the lords’ perhaps excessive love of hunting.

The 18th-century scientific revolution, followed by global voyages of discovery and 19th-century European imperialism, set more people on journeys around the world. The British Empire led this trend, with its upper class—rich, refined, and passionate about sport and the outdoors—seeking adventure under distant skies. They hailed the Aurlandselva River as one of the world’s premier sea trout destinations, transforming fly fishing into an art form, even as our main concern was simply putting food on the table.

On her honeymoon in Aurland, our friend Bridget Buxton from Horsey in Norfolk was struck by the local practice of feeding dogs smoked salmon—a delicacy, she remarked, even for canines. This was only surpassed by the memory of her new husband, John Buxton, navigating the steep hairpin bends to Myrdal station in a Land Rover. Notably, John’s grandfather first ventured to Aurland in the late 18th century to hunt bears. We are delighted that Bridget and John’s grandchildren have also made their home here on the farm.