The city of Bergen - second largest of Norway - is soon to be reaching a population of 300 thousand people. From its famous World Heritage Site - the old Hanseatic wharf buildings known as Bryggen - a crow would fly 35 km north-north-west to reach our farm on Lygra. If the crow were to fly into the same direction for 35 km from Graz - second largest city of Austria - it would miss the town of Bruck an der Mur by 5 km short. So Lygra is clearly not a place beyond civilization, which would take hours to get to (or get away from), considering its closeness to major infrastructure. Many Norwegians - especially from up north - would very likely say quite the opposite.
Lygra lies within the municipality of Alver, which has a population density of 44 people per square kilometer. Finnmark, the northernmost county of Norway has a population density of 1.5 people per square kilometer. Bruck an der Mur has 186 (although I am aware that I am comparing apples to pears here) — Graz being where I spent the better part of a decade before ending up at the very end of Lurevegen.
But then again, the rurality of a place can not be described, defined and understood merely by numbers of population density and Cartesian distance to the next metropolis. Driving from Graz to Bruck will take you around 30 minutes on a highway, which mostly allows for 130 kilometers per hour (and said highway is not even declared as a European route). Now, leaving Bergen northwards, the tarmac beneath your wheels is labelled E39 - a European route starting in Aalborg in Denmark, leaping over to Kristiansand in southern Norway (the ferries, of course, are not called E39), only to continue for 1105 kilometers all the way to Klett, close to Trondheim (which by the way, is just roughly a third up north through the country).
However, just about 10 kilometers can truly be classified as highway on E39 from Bergen to Lygra (meaning two lanes at 90 kilometers per hour). Then, after about 28 kilometers from Bryggen, you would leave E39 at Knarvik - largest agglomeration of Alver municipality with a population of 6594 inhabitants. But only when you leave Lindåsvegen (Fv 57) at Seim and continue on Lurevegen (Fv5474), you will start to get the feeling, that the end of the world might just linger around the next bend. Lindåsvegen is a primary county road (Fylkesvei) - their numbers go all the way to 890. Everything higher than that is a secondary county road and is characterized by being mostly single track with lay-bys every couple hundred meters. Also should you most definitely not leave the tarmac, as the road generally ends exactly where the tarmac ends, and not rarely will you find deep mire just beyond that brink.
Now that you’re on Lurevegen, it will take you around 25 minutes (depending on the oncoming traffic) and possibly sweaty palms (if you are forced to brake harshly and reverse to make way for the oncoming bus - yes there is a bus) - until the road simply runs out at our farm. And it is exactly this end-of-the-road-feeling on this on average 500 meter wide island, which gives you the impression of actually having reached the end of the world. And it doesn’t take very long before you somehow start to forget about all the noise and clutter of society, and you might start to feel disconnected - disengaged, at the very least - from all the things unravelling around the globe.
But not disconnected in and of itself — for as you start to lose the noise, you begin to connect. To the place, to the here and now. To your self.
Lygra is a place of recalibration, not of self-discovery. Sure, you might come here, learn something about yourself, then leave again and take that learning with you. But that is not quite the point. It might be the moment you turn off the engine at the end of the road and suddenly notice how quiet it actually is. Or the morning you wake up and genuinely cannot remember what day it is. It is much rather about you simply being here — open and present to this place — until, somewhere between the silence and the wind and the end of the road, something in you quietly settles.