"Every place in the world should be like this," Ken said, as we walked from Hamar around the edge of the Lake. There are no fast-food restaurants, condominiums, real estate developments. The air and water are clean and serene.
In the afternoon a breeze stirred the water. There were ripples when the steamboat went paddling by. Otherwise the water was still with perfect reflections. It made me think of the lines in a poem by Ghalib:
"If you want to know the miracle, how wind can polish
a mirror,
Look, the shining glass grows green in spring."
"Doesn't it look like a Munch painting?" Ken said. The Scream, Munch wrote, was about the scream that sounds through all living things. By Lake Mjøsa that intensity vibrates through the water, the trees, the stones on the path.