Fiords

The Minnesota-based tour company Borton Overseas is offering a Norway by Land and Coastal Steamer tour July 22 to Aug. 4, escorted by Anne Johansen, a native Norwegian. The tour begins in Oslo with a two-night stay and includes a city tour, free time for visits to museums, galleries and shopping. Participants will fly to Kirkenes for one night before boarding Nordlys, one of Bergen line's newest vessels, for the southbound voyage.

If there was any lingering doubt, it was plain to all Wednesday as Pope John Paul II traipsed through provincial towns in southern Chad that he likes being on the road. Rich nations and poor, north and south, city or town--the most-traveled pontiff in history apparently wants to see them all. He has few rivals for the title of most-traveled world leader of the century, according to Vatican officials who keep track of his travels with the painstaking precision of medieval manuscript illuminators.

There was as much sun in Lillesand that afternoon as there had been rain in Bergen the day before. It splashed in gold on the town's grassy square, a block from the tiny harbor on Norway's southern coast. Baby strollers were parked near a glinting pretzel-and-crown sign at Knudsen's bakery, while young mothers and their toddlers trooped inside. Crimson roses climbed over bright picket fences and around lamp posts.

As many as 300,000 hungry seals have invaded the fiords of Norway's coast in search of food, competing with local fishermen and fouling their nets. Environmentalists say they are concerned about the extraordinary invasion but not all are in agreement on the reason for it. The seals came thousands of miles to northern Norway from their normal areas in the Arctic ice masses east of Iceland or from north of the Soviet Union.

The word came back with the moose hunters last February: While stalking their prey along Nunatak Fiord, they had heard loud, ominous sounds coming from the Hubbard Glacier 33 miles northeast of here. Something was happening. Now, barely six months later, the Hubbard Glacier has advanced so fast and so far that it has set in motion stunning geologic change that is slowly but surely altering the land and waters of this Alaska panhandle community.

In his scathing review of "Revolution" ("England's answer to 'Heaven's Gate' "), the New York Times' Vincent Canby observed that "from the spectacular nature of the terrain seen in the battle . . . it could have been a Norwegian revolution." Canby has a sharp eye for little old rocks 'n' rills.