Posted on by Trish

Marsteinsvola

The radio mast is the goal for this walk. There was still a little way to go to get to it when I took this picture.

Saturday’s long walk was about 10 km and my walking companions were my husband and my son. Marsteinsvola is a hilltop that has a ham radio mast (among other things) and lies at 442 meters above sea level.

This walk was much longer than any of the three of us really enjoy. was that this was the But my son has his ham radio license and my husband is studying for his license, so I thought that going up to see the mast was a good goal for a walk. A new period of warm weather was being forecast when we were planning this walk the evening before, so it looked like we would have clear skies, it wouldn’t be too warm and hopefully there wouldn’t be too many insects. Well, read on to see what we experienced.

I will start with a map so that you can see the route that we took. We were able to take a round trip, meaning that we went up one trail and came down a different one. Only the half kilometer of road out to the parking lot was done on both parts of the walk.

This is the same map as for Finnheimen and Søråsen. The red lines are the main trails and parking is marked with a large P.

We parked at Røflo (2), near Inderøy’s main water source, Røflovatnet (188 meters above sea level). We walked along the north side of the lake and took the trail through Røfloskardet (280 meters above sea level). This was our first steep climb. At roughly the T on the map, we were able to check-in to the app on our phones and get 30 points for our efforts so far. We have now walked about 2.5 km, so about half way to our final destination.

We continued on uphill on the trail to Marsteinsvola (442 meters above sea level), a challenging climb with some very steep sections that got us older walkers puffing and panting and needing breaks to get our breathing and heart beat back to normal before continuing. The younger person got to the summit much quicker than his older parents. However, we got 50 points for our efforts when we got to the top. At the top we took a good break, drinking water and eating sandwiches so that we would have the energy to get back to our car.

We took the alternative route downhill that took us through Yssedalen/Ydsedalen (two spellings found on the walk) before heading west to Fløåsen (about 280 meters over sea level) where we got another 20 points. Here we took a sit-down pause before taking the final downhill section back to the parking lot at Røflo where we found our car still parked in the shade.

How long did this take? We left the car at about 10:30. I checked in at Stubbseteren at 11:15, so we used about 45 minutes on the first quarter of the walk. I checked in to Marsteinsvola at 12:10, perhaps 5 minutes after I got there, so we used a little more than one and a half hours from the car to the summit. We spent about half an hour at the top before heading back to the car. I checked in to Fløåsen at 13:34, so about one hour after we left the summit. We had a rest for at least 10 minutes and were back to the car at 14:00. So we used a little under one and a half hours to get back to the car. As usual, it takes a little less time to go downhill than uphill. For the round trip we used three and a half hours.

Norwegian vocabulary

A lot of the place names are actually based on words that refer to a type of place. Here are a list of some of the ones that we come across a lot in our walks in Inderøy You will find these on the map above. In Norwegian, nouns use an ending to show the definite article (the) that we put in front of a noun in English. The most common endings are -en, -et, -a.

  • bekken – the stream, the brook
  • berget – the mountain
  • dalen – the valley
  • haugen – the hill
  • heimen – the home
  • hytte – cabin; hytta – the cabin
  • myra/myran- the bog
  • seteren – the mountain farm, usually used only in the summer
  • skardet – the gorge
  • tjønna – the small lake
  • vatnet – the lake
  • vola/vollen – the embankment
  • åsen – the ridge

Norwegian has many dialects and this will be reflected in place names. The same word can have many spellings, and pronunciations, depending on what part of the country you are in.

The Trail

The nature of the trails that we were following varied. We started on a gravel road. We had sections that were obviously originally tractor roads, wide enough for three people to walk abreast. In some places we had lovely dry forest trails and unfortunately, this walk entails a lot of very swampy, wet ground. We all had good shoes on, a must on this hike.

The first half of a kilometer was along a gravel road. We are going to turn off to the right to start climbing uphill.
We won’t be the only ones out here. This gate on the road marked the difference between “innmarka” (the farm’s cultivated land) and “utmarka” (the wild area where sheep would be left on their own for the summer). The gate must be kept closed and the signs give information about who to contact if one sees damaged animals and also general information about the advantages of having sheep on the hills (mainly they keep the trails free of tall grass and bushes). Dogs must be on a leash.
We met this mother with her two youngsters near Stubbseteren.
Our first hill to climb. The sheep are keeping the trail open and wide.
Along one section of the trail we saw a lot of these small frogs hopping around on the trail. There were hundreds, if not thousands of them in the wet grass.
The higher we climbed the narrower and rockier the trail became. However it was relatively cool in the forest.
One of the bridges that crossed a stream, though there wasn’t much water in the stream today.
On the return walk, we had several places where there were large planks placed across the bog. This both protects the hiker and the bog. The hikers stay on the planks, otherwise people are always trying to find a slightly drier crossing of boggy areas and the bog gets very muddy.
A lot of the trails that we are following are prepared ski trails in the winter. On the map above, produced by the sports clubs of Verdal, the ski trails are marked in blue.

Stubbseteren

Do you see the building here with its grass/sod roof?

We often walk around this lake, Stubbsetertjønna, but today we just saw it from a distance and kept on going. Half of the lake is in the municipality of Inderøy (where we are standing) and the other half is in Steinkjer which is on the far side of the lake.

Marsteinsvola

This was the reason for taking this long walk, though I find the walk a bit too long for me now and there is a lot of swampy ground to cross. The top of this hill, though we are 442 meters above sea level, is quite wide at the top. The weather was hazy, but there were few places where one was high enough above the trees to see the view very well.

Marsteinsvola is also the meeting of three municipalities, Inderøy, Verdal and Steinkjer. Both Inderøy and Verdal have a lot of marked trails in the area, both for hikers and for skiers in the winter.

There are several small buildings at the top. The post boxes would each have a book you can write your name in, each book belonging to a different sports club.
Here you can see part of the radio mast.
The small shelter to the left was built recently and was divided into four quarters, so that four groups of people could sit on benches but be sheltered from the other groups. Unfortunately we met a lot of flies here at the top, so it was not pleasant to sit at all. I wandered around, trying to catch a bit of a breeze that would help keep the flies away from me. The sign is a map of the area so you can find your way downhill again.
Looking north-east from the top with Leksdal Lake. The south end of the lake is in Verdal and the northern end, which is seen in this picture, is in Steinkjer.
Looking towards Straumen in Inderøy, with Mosvik in the far distance.
Looking west. The gap in the distance on the right is Trondheim Fjord with Levanger on the left of the gap and Mosvik on the right of the gap.

Fløåsen

Fløåsen was a farm before 1590 that was owned by the king. In 1728 it was sold and it changed hands regularly over the next two hundred years. In 1924 it was bought by the municipality of Røra. There are two main buildings here which are owned by Røra School. In 2008, the old cabin that was here burnt down, and the present building (see the next picture) was built in 2009 by volunteers. The cabin is open for everyone to use.
Fløåsbua. This building is open for anyone to use. There is a small kitchen, sitting area and a toilet room inside.
The picnic tables outside Fløåsbua were interestingly built. The seats folded up when not in use, so they wouldn’t get wet or covered with snow. They were easy to fold down when one wanted to sit.

Though a 10 km walk is much more than we usually do, we had a nice morning to do the walk. I probably won’t do this walk again for several years. I need a reason to take someone on this strenuous walk.

Røflo Lake, Inderøy’s main water source. It was sure nice to get back to the lake and know that our car was only a few hundred meters away.

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