The ever-changing play of sky, snow, earth and sea in the region is utterly intoxicating. So grand, so elemental that it should be intimidating, but in summer at least it delivers adventure on a plate and makes Viking heroes of us all - of kids and grannies and stressed-out single dads.Carried away by these surroundings, I am persuaded to book a helicopter ride. We are instructed to turn up at the Stat Oil petrol station outside Sognedal. On arrival we find a bog-standard pump arrangement and nothing suggestive of aircraft No H marks the spot; no barriers denote a landing area In the shop they point us back to a car park. Sure enough, with three minutes to the appointed rendezvous a gnat-size speck appears in the sky at the head of the valley. The church stands on top of a hill overlooking the jade-green fjord, with panoramic views of the snow-capped mountains that rise steeply from the depths.

The people who worshipped here must have thought they were masters of the universe. The carvings on the exterior of the north wall are reused fragments from an older building - similar to the Celtic style - featuring stylish if bonkers-looking lions (Viking sculptors were not bothered much by verisimilitude) battling with serpents.Those Vikings knew the meaning of Location, Location, Location. We scramble through the ravines and watercourses of the Labyrinth to emerge on the ice fields of the upper valley. Their granny, who is also with us, is more excited by Urnes Stave Church, a Unesco World Heritage monument.

The wooden church is described as "Late Viking" and has stood here in defiance of some of the meanest elements on the planet for nearly 1,000 years. The interior is tiny, dark and claustrophobic, but there is something very moving about this statement of community against the odds. The network of waterways that makes up the system is criss-crossed by ferries of varying size. In the mind's eye it is easy to replace them with Viking longships appearing out of the mist, especially as we cross Luster Fjord to the tiny settlement of Urnes.Tom and his eight-year-old brother Niko are thrilled by the dolphins riding the bow wave of the ferry. The point of this trip is the outdoors.Sogne Fjord is more than 200km long and is 1,400m deep in places - the biggest and deepest in the world.

Cut!Back at Vesterland Resort near Sognedal, where the clan Guha is based, it strikes me as odd that in a country where colossal vistas seem to be the birthright of every citizen, the view from our cabin is miserly. It consists of the backs of other cabins and a few parked cars bearing GB stickers. The site seems to have been carefully chosen by an agoraphobic troll.There is nothing much wrong with the cabin itself - if you have a high tolerance for pine. Tables, chairs, bunks, wardrobes, floors, walls and ceilings are all in the ubiquitous soft wood. But the resort is well equipped and functional if somewhat charmless.

Luckily, we have not come all this way to play mini-golf, roast in the sauna or hang out in the launderette. Glaciers, he says, don't follow rules and this one is defying the logic of global warming.Logic belongs to another world. For the moment we are on a river of blue ice topped by white tumuli through which we can see a vivid green lake The views are as improbable as they are immense. Tom and I are pinching ourselves - are we really here? Or have we stumbled into an episode of Doctor Who? The possibility that we have jumped dimensions into a sci-fi fantasy is not entirely delusional: throughout the glacier walk we are ambushed by a German TV crew who keep popping out of crevasses to film actors striding purposefully across the icy expanse.