NORWAY FJORD FOCUS COSTAL CRUISE AN IDEAL WAY TO SAMPLE COUNTRY'S DELIGHTS.

Byline: BETH ASHLEY Staff Writer

ABOARD THE KONG HARALD -- The ship threaded its way among barren islands, forest-rimmed fjords and strings of snow-frosted mountains. This is one of the world's most scenic voyages, a navigation of Norway from the old Hanseatic city of Bergen to Nordkapp and Kirkenes, well above the Arctic Circle.

Now and then we came to a notable city -- Trondheim, Tromso -- but we were often far from civilization. Tiny farms with sheep or goats sat in lonely isolation, carved from the wilderness onshore.

It was the beginning of a memorable exploration of Norway.

After the seven-day voyage on the 490-passenger Kong Harald, which included several stops and optional tours, we reached Kirkenes, 12 miles from the Russian border, and took off for a two-day visit to Finnish Lapland.

From there, we drove back to Kirkenes and flew to Oslo for one magical day, and capped off the trip with a daylong train ride from Oslo back to Bergen -- through mountains still packed with snow, melting rivers and bobbing floes of ice.

It's amazing how much you can do on a 12-day vacation (including flights to and from the West Coast). No, we didn't see all there was to see in Norway, but I'm sure we caught most of the highlights.

The Kong Harald, which had many aspects of a luxury cruise ship, is also a working vessel, delivering mail and goods to settlements north of Bergen. It is one of several such liners run by Norwegian Coastal Voyages, which plies these waters year-round.

Agents at the New York headquarters of Norwegian Coastal Voyages helped us book the whole trip, which included many highlights.

The Gerainger Fjord is gorgeous and unspoiled, its sides laced with waterfalls, its forests sprinkled with remote farmhouses, most of them long since abandoned. We took a bus through the hills, past an occasional sod-roofed dwelling and fields carpeted with dandelions, and ended up at the art nouveau city of Alesund, built in the 1930s.

Of all the fjords we saw, this was the loveliest, a United Nations heritage site.

The Lofoton Islands lie above the Arctic Circle. At midnight, we watched the sun gleam off snowy peaks, and in the bright light entered the tiny Trollfjord, barely big enough for our mammoth ship.

Throughout our late-May voyage, the light was remarkable, the dark never came; we were in the season of the midnight sun. In contrast, during periods of winter, the darkness never lifts.

Trondheim, a German submarine base during World War II, was host to a choral festival in its main square. Tromso, the so-called ``gateway to the Arctic,'' had an arctic museum and a jagged white arctic cathedral, brightened by a huge stained-glass window.

Shortly after we crossed the Arctic Circle, all passengers were summoned to Deck 5, where a man dressed as King Neptune initiated us, pouring ladles of ice water down our shirt fronts. Passengers, until then somewhat distant, erupted in laughter and good cheer.

The war museums in Svolvaer and Kirkenes depict the Nazi occupation in wrenching detail.

At Kirkenes, where peddlers sold Russian wares from kiosks in the square, we left the ship to spend two nights in Lapland. Portions of Russia, Finland, Norway and Sweden compose Lapland; we were in the Finnish part, where there are 40 times more reindeer than people.

Many of the residents were Sami, traditional reindeer herders who still wear costumes of bright red and blue. We visited a Sami household, where both man and wife had their own reindeer herds. The animals were everywhere -- by the side of the road, or foraging among the birch trees.

In early May the land was just thawing out from the frozen winter: streams were rushing, rhododendrons and fruit trees were lavishly in bloom.

In Inari, where we stayed in a snug little inn, one of the most sophisticated museums I've ever visited depicted the flowers, wildlife and seasons of Finnish Lapland.

A plane lifted us out of the wilds and into sophisticated Oslo, where we had but a single day to explore. Consult your guidebook to decide what you want to see. We circled five things and were able to see them all, thanks to the get-on, get-off bus we caught at the information center near City Hall.

The bus -- unlike other things in expensive Norway -- was a real bargain: $35 a ticket, compared to the large tab a cab would have cost us.

Some recommended sights in the city:

Vigeland Park, an open-air museum of bronze and granite sculptures by Gustav Vigeland, shows human beings in everyday moments of activity and emotion.

On one hill is his famous ``Monolith,'' 121 entwined human figures, reaching and pushing past each other to get to the far-off top. Three carvers spent 14 years to complete it.

The Thor Heyerdahl museum displays the raft and tule boat on which Heyerdahl made his famous oceanic voyages.

The Fram museum houses the ship used by Fritjof Nansen and Raould Amundsen in their daring expeditions to the poles. Maps, photos and texts bring their exploits to life.

At the Viking museum -- a personal favorite -- old ships excavated from river bottoms show the mighty, curved-prow ships in all their menacing majesty.

Placards in several languages acknowledge the fearsome plundering of the early Vikings, as well as their courageous expeditions to Greenland, Iceland and North America in open ships powered only by oarsmen and sails.

The National Gallery displays the astonishing paintings of Edvard Munch (pronounced Moonk) -- not only the famous ``Scream,'' but some touching portraits, one called ``Madonna,'' another ``Puberty,'' and two that were scenes from a sickroom, perhaps that of his sister.

The Munch paintings are interspersed with works by Van Gogh, Monet, Gauguin and Cezanne. The museum has many rooms, but we felt enriched just seeing two.

Oslo is a beautiful city, with a boat-filled waterfront, stately parks, glamorous shopping streets, and sturdy wooden mansions behind profuse hedges of lilacs. Our bus passed close by the royal farm and the royal palace.

There would be one last opportunity to savor Norway's fabled scenery, this time on the Oslo-to-Bergen train.

Green countryside, replete with farms, rolled past our window, a sufficient treat until we suddenly reached the Hardangervidda plateau, a remarkable landscape of ice, rushing water and gray-brown tundra.

Hardangervidda is a huge national park to which Norwegians, addicted to skiing, gravitate almost year-round. It's where explorers such as Amundsen, Scott and Shackleton tested their polar equipment.

We got off the train a couple of times, once in a town called Finse, which is reachable only by train and is inhabited off-season by only 10 people. Its hotels were vacant in early June, but its vistas were still spectacular.

We carried home several impressions:

Norway is very expensive. Our cab trip from the Bergen airport to our hotel was $90. A simple supper in Oslo -- pasta, a salad, one glass of house wine -- was $74.

Norway is very rich. When oil was discovered in the North Sea in 1968, Norway reaped the bonanza. Average income is better than $43,000.

Norwegians are heavily taxed but get plenty of bang for their kroner: free health care, generous leaves from work and free education (including college).

Norwegians are purposely independent from the rest of Europe (they decline to join the European Union), but their government contributes generously to international causes -- hunger relief, AIDS.

Norway is proud of its designation by the United Nations Human Development Index as the most livable country in the world.

It is no doubt livable -- if you factor in all that social welfare. It is remarkably warm, considering the months of ice. The climate is far from perfect -- in Bergen, it rains almost daily.

But beautiful? Indeed. It is one of the most beautiful places you could ever expect to see.

IF YOU GO

THE CRUISE: Norwegian Coastal Voyages, the only line offering comprehensive tours of Norway's ragged coast, offers cabins in many classes and locations, from singles to triples. Doubles are available from $1,884 for a 12-day voyage (to Bergen, Kirkenes and back) and from $1,262 for the seven-day voyage to Kirkenes, May 1-31; similar cabins are slightly more in ``high season,'' June and July: $2,077 for 12 days, $1,392 for seven.

ENTRY: No visas are required for either Norway or Finnish Lapland.

TRAVEL TIP: Because the Gulf Stream hugs the Norwegian coast, climate is generally mild. Layered clothing is suggested.

INFORMATION: www.norwegiancoastalvoyage.us; [phone]).

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(1 -- 4 -- color) A Norwegian Coastal Voyages cruise in western Norway delivers some stunning sights. Top to bottom: Raftsund Strait, pristine fjords glimpsed from on deck, the art nouveau village of Alesund, a hiking-trail in the shadow of Seven Sisters Falls.

(5) A cruise ship is a good way to take in the barren islands and forest-rimmed fjords of Norway.

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IF YOU GO (see text)