Latest news with #fjords
The Guardian
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Racing cheeses, spicy birthdays and a fun celebrity gatecrash – take the Thursday quiz
The Thursday quiz has always been interested in fjords, not least since it was revealed in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy that they were the design work of Slartibartfast. However, it is difficult to ask questions about them. What is the longest fjord? Well, where are you measuring from and how are you accounting for curves? How many fjords are there in Norway? Nobody has ever really added them all up, have they? And anyway, how big does an inlet have to be before it can be considered a fjord? So, no fjord questions this week. Instead, we have the usual: 15 questions on topical news, general knowledge and popular culture. There are no prizes, but let us know how you got on in the comments … The Thursday quiz, No 212 If you really do think there has been an egregious error in one of the questions or answers – and can show your working and are absolutely 100% positive you aren't attempting to factcheck a joke – you can complain about it in the comments below. Why not watch Three by Hello Mary instead?
CBC
6 days ago
- General
- CBC
Title: Photo of 'gem of Eastern Canada' graces throne speech cover
Description: Jake Graham photographed himself hiking above a fjord in Gros Morne National Park in Newfoundland in 2017. Prime Minister Mark Carney chose that photo for the cover of the printed version of this week's throne speech.
ABC News
23-05-2025
- General
- ABC News
'Bulky new neighbour': Norwegian man wakes to find cargo ship in his backyard
It is not yet known why the ship ended up in the backyard of Mr Helberg. ( Reuters: Jan Langhaug ) A man in Norway awoke to discover a huge container ship had run aground just metres from his fjord-side house — and he had slept through the commotion. For an as-yet unknown reason, the 135-metre NCL Salten sailed up onto shore just metres from Johan Helberg's house in a fjord near Trondheim in central Norway. Mr Helberg only discovered the unexpected visitor when a panicked neighbour who had rung his doorbell repeatedly to no avail gave up and called him on the phone. The 135-metre unexpected visitor came close to striking Mr Helberg's home. ( AP: Jan Langhaug ) "The doorbell rang at a time of day when I don't like to open," Mr Helberg told a local television channel. His neighbour, Jostein Jorgensen, said he was awoken at around 5am local time by the sound of a ship heading at full speed toward land and immediately ran to Mr Helberg's house. Mr Helberg said he got the fright of his life after he woke up. ( AFP: Jan Langhaug ) "I was sure that he was already outside, but no, there was no sign of life," Mr Jorgensen told TV2. "I rang the doorbell many times and nothing… And it was only when I called him on the phone that I managed to contact him." Neighbours came to inspect the new 'bulky neighbour'. Several hours later, the massive red and green container ship was still stuck near the wooden house, waiting to be refloated. "It's a very bulky new neighbour but it will soon go away," an amused Mr Helberg said. None of the 16 crew members were injured in the incident, the cause of which is being investigated by Norwegian police. The sound of a ship heading toward land at full speed woke up a neighbour. ( AP: Jan Langhaug ) AFP Posted 20m ago 20 minutes ago Fri 23 May 2025 at 11:41am
Times
23-05-2025
- General
- Times
Norwegian man wakes to find cargo ship beached in his garden
A Norwegian man woke on Thursday morning to find something blocking his usual scenic view of fjords. Johan Helberg had been asleep when an 135-metre container ship ran aground, narrowly missing his house. The first he knew of it was at about 5am, when a neighbour rang his doorbell after seeing the vessel beach itself in the garden. 'I didn't hear anything,' Helberg, who lives in Byneset, near Trondheim in central Norway, told the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation. 'The doorbell rang at a time of day when I don't like to open.' Jostein Jorgensen said the sound of the ship woke him up and that he ran to Helberg's house expecting the noise to have raised his neighbour. 'I was sure that he was already outside,
The Guardian
23-05-2025
- Science
- The Guardian
Myth or mystery: are moose roaming the isolated wilds of New Zealand?
Over 100 years ago, a ship dropped anchor in the frigid fjords of New Zealand's South Island and released 10 nervous moose on to the shore. The crew watched as the animals – the last survivors of a weeks-long voyage from Saskatchewan, Canada – skittered out of their crates and up into the dense, lonely, rainforest. The moose had arrived on a flight of fancy, as part of the then premier's grand vision to turn Fiordland national park into a hunters' paradise. It was the second attempt to release moose into the region – in a country whose only native land-based mammals are bats – after nearly all of an earlier herd died crossing the seas. Red deer and wapiti, or elk, were also released around the same time for game-hunting. Over the next few years, moose sightings were reported and photographs of their hulking frames lying dead next to hunters occasionally graced the pages of local newspapers. The last confirmed sighting was in 1951, after which, they were pronounced extinct. Yet in the decades since, there have been clues that the animals remain in New Zealand. People have found footprints too large to be deer, branches 7 to 8 feet high broken and stripped of their leaves, fur snagged in trees and cast antlers. There have also been numerous unconfirmed sightings of moose. Seventy-five years on from the last confirmed photograph, New Zealanders are still hunting moose – not for their heads, but for answers to an enduring mystery that has captured the public imagination for decades: are the elusive beasts still roaming the vast Fiordland wilds? Or is this just another myth of many projected on to the eerie, isolated terrain? That question came one step closer to being answered in March, when within two weeks of one another two hiking groups from the US and Canada reported seeing moose while tramping along Fiordland's Kepler Track, sparking a new flurry of national interest. Ken Tustin, a biologist, former helicopter pilot and hunter who is more widely known as New Zealand's 'moose man' has been tracking moose for more than 40 years – half his lifetime. In 1995 he captured grainy footage on a trail camera of what he believes is a moose and in 2002, a tuft of fur he found snagged on a tree was confirmed to be moose through DNA testing at a Canadian university. It is tempting to draw comparisons between the moose mystery and the quests for Bigfoot, or the Loch Ness monster but Tustin says moose are in 'quite a different category', given they were introduced. 'The existence [of moose] is so extraordinary, it seems unbelievable. But we ask people, before you dismiss it, please look to the evidence.' Canadian Antoine Beauchamp says there was no mistaking the large animal, which crossed their path 10 metres away during their hike. 'All three of us had the same thought: that this is a moose,' Beauchamp said, adding that his hiking party regularly see moose at home, sometimes in their own back yards. 'The colour was very distinctive, it had a big shoulder bump which is not common for red deer or wapiti … this, combined with the height of the animal, it was clear it was a moose.' Without photographic evidence, the department of conservation is sceptical moose still exist. When the most recent sightings emerged, its Te Anau-based operations manager John Lucas said until there was proof, the department would 'continue to take the view that we are most likely dealing with a deer … or possibly a red/wapiti cross that has been mistaken for a moose.' Moose are larger than red deer and wapiti, and unlike the latter two species, which have tree-like antlers, moose have broad flat antlers that fan out into finger-like edges. Moose are typically dark brown, red deer are reddish-brown in summer and grey in winter, while wapiti are fawn-coloured with a rump patch. Moose are typically solitary, while red deer and wapiti tend to move in herds. 'In some respects, if someone actually gets a photo, that might be quite disappointing – the mystery would be solved,' Lucas says. 'There is a saying that the presence of absence is not necessarily the absence of presence and that will endure until someone actually takes a photograph.' Fiordland is New Zealand's largest national park and forms a major part of a Unesco world heritage site. Its rainforest, ragged mountains, glassy fjords and lakes draw tourists to its famous hikes, while its dramatic and mostly inaccessible terrain is a perfect canvas for mythology and rumour. For over a century, stories abounded of a lost Māori tribe living in Fiordland, while some people believed the moa – a large flightless bird that went extinct hundreds of years ago – stalked the vast valleys into the late 1800s. 'Fiordland is always the locus for this sort of stuff,' says Charlie Mitchell, a senior journalist for The Press who has covered the moose story for years. 'We sort of need Fiordland to be this locus of mystery, because otherwise we have to accept that we've managed to survey everything, we've found everything.' Sometimes, species deemed extinct have reemerged, such as the takahē, another large flightless bird as round and blue as Earth, which was rediscovered in Fiordland in 1948, 50 years after the last sighting. Mitchell says the odds of moose following in the footsteps of takahē are extremely low, but not zero. 'That's what makes it frustrating and compelling at the same time … as long as that [chance] is there, I think there will be people still searching for the moose.' Tustin concedes he may never find a moose but seeing one is almost besides the point. 'I love that moose have taken on an almost spiritual element in Fiordland,' he says. 'When I think of Fiordland … I think rain on the smooth water, diminishing ridges, hanging cloud, ferns bobbing under the rain. It's mood, its mystery, and my goodness, a moose fits in there beautifully.'
