The anticipation will mount on the cruise from Stavanger across Lysefjord

On the edge: Pulpit Rock The anticipation will mount on the cruise from Stavanger across

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Lysefjord, as day-trippers brave the top deck for close-ups of sheer cliffs and the rainbow-arced waterfalls that spill down their vertical faces. These mighty granite rocks razor many hundreds of metres above opalescent waters of cyan, azure and turquoise. It’s a sight that inspires towards the poetic and the profound, and one that distills the ethereal beauty of Norway’s southern fjords. Preikestolen, or Pulpit Rock, is the iconic fist of rock which thrusts 604m above the fjord. To reach it, you can take a 4km-long path – partly hacked out by Nepalese Sherpas – which wriggles up through a dense forest of gnarled pine and birch, before shimmying across granite slabs and exposed cliffs to the plateau.