Pictures and text by Rudolf Svensen

We can see at least 30m down before the light gets too faint. Had there been any corals down there, we would have been unable to reach them.
Every now and then a fish pops up from the darkness to look at us, and I feel a little envious when I see how effortlessly it glides into the depths. What is hiding down there?
The biology of the fjords is diverse, and every spot has its specialities. Piked dogfish, or "sharks", skate and catfish are common here. For macro photographers nudibranchs, anemones and shrimps of all sorts are among species they are sure to observe.
Lobsters thrive, although unlike the crabs and scallops that are found in large numbers, divers are not allowed to catch them. You could find yourself fined £400 and have your gear and, if you have one, your boat, impounded.
Way too soon the dive is over. Decompression is fast. The water is comfortable and life abundant. We take a couple of fjord crabs back with us, and on the boat gather round the chart. Perhaps the deep-sea corals thrive better on the other side of the strait?
The Lysefjord is the best-known fjord in Ryfylke, famous for its almost vertical cliffs. Its Pulpit Rock and the Kjerag Wall, which rises vertically for more than 900m, have become famous, not only in Norway but also abroad.

There is nowhere like it, and certainly no Norwegian fjord compares with the Lysefjord and its environs for smooth, vertical surfaces, because this is the only area in which the bedrock consists almost entirely of a mixture of homogeneous granite and gneiss.
The narrow "sill" fjord has cut its way several kilometres into the mountains, and though at its mouth the water is only 20m deep, further in it is more than 400m to the fjord bed.
From its highest peak to the seabed is a good 1500m. The cleverest mountaineers might be able to scale the highest cliffs here, but no matter how well-equipped we divers are, we can only hope to scratch the surface of these submarine mountain wilds.
It's an early autumn day, and the sun is shining on the polished rock face of the Lysefjord, speckled with green trees and bushes which have found subsistence in the many cracks left here by the ice.
We are out for pleasure, to check the biology of the area, and perhaps to get some pictures of marine species we have not seen before. Our boat glides slowly over the glassy surface.
The scenery is so spectacular that we need time to take it all in.
Ahead, Pulpit Rock hangs over the fjord, 600m above our heads. People standing near the edge of this angular structure look as small as sandhoppers from where we are.
Tramp Hole is a 10m-wide cleft that turns sharply in towards the mountain. Legend has it that "boat tramps" hid from the law here after a series of thefts. The head of the hole is screened off from the fjord, and it is almost as if we were on a little mountain lake.
The echo-sounder shows 60m. Had visibility been good, we might have explored part of the cleft, but silica algae have coloured the upper 10m of the water greenish-white, like pea soup.
Visibility will be better further down, where lack of natural light makes it impossible for the algae to survive, but we decide to save this spot for winter, when viz is normally good for several months on end.