Besshø is a mountain in Vågå

Vågå

Vågå is a municipality in Oppland county, Norway. It is part of the traditional region of Gudbrandsdal. The administrative centre of the municipality is the village of Vågåmo....

, Oppland

Oppland

is a county in Norway, bordering Sør-Trøndelag, Møre og Romsdal, Sogn og Fjordane, Buskerud, Akershus, Oslo and Hedmark. The county administration is in Lillehammer. Oppland is, together with Hedmark, one of the only two landlocked counties of Norway....

, Norway

Norway

Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...

, and is part of the Jotunheimen

Jotunheimen

Jotunheimen is a mountainous area of roughly 3,500 km² in Southern Norway and is part of the long range known as the Scandinavian Mountains. The 29 highest mountains in Norway are all in Jotunheimen, including the very highest - Galdhøpiggen...

 mountain range. It lies right above Bessvatnet

Bessvatnet

Bessvatnet is a lake in Vågå, Oppland, Norway. Bessvatnet is known to everyone that has hiked Besseggen, as one passes its southern end, while looking down on the green lake Gjende.-The name:...

, along the Besseggen

Besseggen

Besseggen, or Besseggi, is a mountain ridge in Vågå kommune in Oppland county. Besseggen lies east in Jotunheimen, between the lakes Gjende and Bessvatnet....

 hiking trail. On the mountain's north-eastern side a small cirque glacier

Cirque glacier

A cirque glacier is formed in a cirque, bowl-shaped depressions on the side of or near mountains. Snow and ice accumulation in corries often occurs as the result of avalanching from higher surrounding slopes....

, and is surrounded by a large ice-cored moraine

Moraine

A moraine is any glacially formed accumulation of unconsolidated glacial debris which can occur in currently glaciated and formerly glaciated regions, such as those areas acted upon by a past glacial maximum. This debris may have been plucked off a valley floor as a glacier advanced or it may have...

, a relatively rare feature in Norway.

From Besseggen there is a nice view over Gjende

Gjende

Gjende is a lake in the Jotunheimen mountains in Norway's Jotunheimen National Park. The proglacial lake shows typical characteristics of glacial formation, being long and narrow—in length 18 km and in breadth 1.5 km at the broadest point with steep walls...

 and Bessvatnet. Gjende is about 400 meters lower than Bessvatnet. While Bessvatnet has a blue color common to lakes, Gjende has a green color due to glacier runoff depositing clay into the lake (rock flour

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...

).

Toponymy

The mountain is named after Bessvatnet

Bessvatnet

Bessvatnet is a lake in Vågå, Oppland, Norway. Bessvatnet is known to everyone that has hiked Besseggen, as one passes its southern end, while looking down on the green lake Gjende.-The name:...

, the last element is the finite form of hø for "large and round mountain".