Gjende or Gjendin is a

lake A lake is often a naturally occurring, relatively large and fixed body of water on or near the Earth's surface. It is localized in a basin or interconnected basins surrounded by dry land. Lakes lie completely on land and are separate from ...

Vågå Municipality Vågå () is a List of municipalities of Norway, municipality in Innlandet county, Norway. It is located in the Traditional districts of Norway, traditional district of Gudbrandsdal. The administrative centre of the municipality is the village of ...

Innlandet Innlandet is a Counties of Norway, county in Norway. It was created on 1 January 2020 with the merger of the old counties of Oppland and Hedmark (Jevnaker Municipality and Lunner Municipality were transferred to the neighboring county of Viken ( ...

county,

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the archipelago of Svalbard also form part of the Kingdom of ...

. It is located in the

Jotunheimen Jotunheimen (; "the home of the Jötunn") is a mountainous area of roughly in southern Norway and is part of the long range known as the Scandinavian Mountains. The 29 highest mountains in Norway are all located in the Jotunheimen mountains, in ...

mountain range and also inside

Jotunheimen National Park Jotunheimen National Park (, ) is a national park in Norway, recognized as one of the country's premier hiking and fishing regions. The national park covers and is part of the larger area Jotunheimen. More than 250 peaks rise above an elevation ...

. The

proglacial lake In geology, a proglacial lake is a lake formed either by the damming action of a moraine during the retreat of a melting glacier, a glacial ice dam, or by meltwater trapped against an ice sheet due to isostatic depression of the crust around t ...

shows typical characteristics of glacial formation, being long and narrow, with steep walls. The lake is in length and only in width at the broadest point. Gjende has a characteristic light-green color resulting from the large quantity of

rock flour Rock flour, or glacial flour, consists of fine-grained, silt-sized particles of rock, generated by mechanical grinding of bedrock by glacial erosion or by artificial grinding to a similar size. Because the material is very small, it becomes suspe ...

which is discharged into the Gjende by the Muru river. The river

Sjoa The Sjoa is a river in Innlandet county, Norway. The long river runs through the municipalities of Vågå and Sel and it provides the outlet from lake Gjende at Gjendesheim in the Jotunheimen mountains of Norway's Jotunheim National Park. The ...

provides the outlet from Gjende at

Gjendesheim Gjendesheim Turisthytte has been a staffed lodge with Norwegian Mountain Touring Association (In Norwegian, Den Norske Turistforening – DNT) Oslo og Omegn as proprietor since 1878, and is located in the heart of the Norwegian mountains. The lodge ...

, and flows eastward into the

Gudbrandsdalslågen The Gudbrandsdalslågen (or simply ''Lågen'') is a river which flows through the Gudbrandsdal valley in Innlandet county, Norway. The long river runs through a large valley in Eastern Norway before emptying into Mjøsa, the largest lake in Norw ...

river. Gjende lies in the middle of Jotunheimen National Park and both to the north and south of the lake lie peaks with elevations reaching greater than . There are numerous staffed tourist cabins maintained by the

Norwegian Mountain Touring Association The Norwegian Trekking Association (, DNT) is a Norwegian association which maintains mountain trails and cabins in Norway. The association was founded on 21 January 1868 with the scope "to help and develop tourism in this country". Today the goa ...

(DNT); in the west end lies Gjendebu, on the north side lies

Memurubu Memurubu is a tourist hut in Norway, at the end or start of the famous Besseggen hiking trail. Memurubu is originally an old mountain pasture dating back to 1872, but has had tourists just as long. Cows are still grazing around the tourist hut, w ...

and on the east end lies Gjendesheim. In the summer boats provide transport between these locations.

Name

The name () is derived from Norse ''gandr'' which means 'staff' or 'stick'. This is referring to the form of the long and narrow lake. The official name Gjende is taken from the

Gudbrandsdal Gudbrandsdalen (; ) is a valley and traditional district in the Norwegian county of Innlandet (formerly Oppland). The valley is oriented in a north-westerly direction from Lillehammer and the lake of Mjøsa, extending toward the Romsdalen vall ...

traditional district dialect used in Lom and

Vågå Vågå () is a List of municipalities of Norway, municipality in Innlandet county, Norway. It is located in the Traditional districts of Norway, traditional district of Gudbrandsdal. The administrative centre of the municipality is the village of ...

. In the Vang dialect the lake is called ''Gjendin'', which is the form you find in

Henrik Ibsen Henrik Johan Ibsen (; ; 20 March 1828 – 23 May 1906) was a Norwegian playwright, poet and actor. Ibsen is considered the world's pre-eminent dramatist of the 19th century and is often referred to as "the father of modern drama." He pioneered ...

's name for what is now called

Besseggen Besseggen or Besseggi is a mountain ridge in Vågå Municipality in Innlandet county, Norway. The tall mountain ridge is located in the Jotunheimen mountains within Jotunheimen National Park. The mountain sits about southwest of the village o ...

, formerly ''Gjendineggen'', or ''Gendineggen'' in the older

orthography An orthography is a set of convention (norm), conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, punctuation, Word#Word boundaries, word boundaries, capitalization, hyphenation, and Emphasis (typography), emphasis. Most national ...

. The name Gjende is derived from the old Norse word "gandir" that can be translated into "straight stick", whereas the lake to the south

Bygdin Bygdin is a lake in Vang Municipality in Innlandet county, Norway. The is located in the southern part of the Jotunheimen mountain range. The long, narrow mountain lake is located between the large lakes Tyin (to the west) and Vinstre to the ea ...

can be translated as "bent stick", the two names thereby referring to the shape of the lakes. The lake gave its name to a famous early outdoors man and free thinker, Jo Gjende (1794—1884), who had a cabin at Gjende.

Cultural and literary references

Lake Gjende is found in literature and travel books from the 18th century. Together, the

lakes of Gjende and

play in many such descriptions. For example,

's ''

Peer Gynt ''Peer Gynt'' (, ) is a five-Act (drama), act play in verse written in 1867 by the Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen. It is one of Ibsen's best known and most widely performed plays. ''Peer Gynt'' chronicles the journey of its title character fr ...

'' took his famous wild-reindeer ride along "the Gjendin Ridge", a reference to either the narrow Besseggen Ridge - or the Knutshø ridge on the other side of lake Gjende.

Media gallery

File:Lake_gjende.jpg, Lake Gjende as seen from

. File:Gjendesheim Gjende panorama.jpg, Panoramic view on the Gjende lake near

File:besseggen.jpg,

seen from the east, with Gjende lake to the right and

Bessvatnet Bessvatnet is a glacial lake in Vågå Municipality in Innlandet county, Norway. The lake is located in the Jotunheimen mountain range and also inside the Jotunheimen National Park. The lake lies just east of the mountain Besshø. The lake Bessv ...

to the left File:Camping at Gjende.jpg, Camping at Gjende lake. File:Muru_memurubu.jpg, The river Muru flowing into Gjende lake next to

File:Memurubu hytt Gjende panorama.jpg, Panoramic view over Gjende lake near Memurubu

References

External links

Lake depth map of Gjende (Norwegian)Gjendebåtane - "To the heart of Jotunheimen by boat"GjendesheimGjendebuMemurubu (Norwegian only)
{{use dmy dates, date=May 2022 Vågå Jotunheimen Lakes of Innlandet

Name

Cultural and literary references

Media gallery

See also

References

External links