Chill-loping 1

Voyage along the Norwegian Coast – Northbound

Technically, this isn’t a loping trip, but I figure some of you fellow lopers might like to see my highlights of this gorgeous voyage.

Having just spent six weeks hyper-organising each day’s walk along the swcp, I was determined to loosen the reins while in Norway. For this reason, these blog posts will be more relaxed and light on detail than most of you lopers will probably expect of me. Basically, I’m going to let my pics tell the story.

If any of you would like more cultural, meteorological, geological, and/or historical details of the Norwegian Coast and its communities, I recommend taking the trip yourself. It is, in one word – spectacular.

Enjoy 🙂 Penloper

Day 1:

Bergen’s old town.

Getting acquainted with the MS Trollfjord and my cabin (before it got messy)…

It was full dark when the ship finally cast off, and we were on our way.

To enhance visibility of the skyscape at night, the top deck (deck 9) is kept almost pitch black.

From the centre of the bay, Bergen city looks like a golden necklace of lights stretching in nearly 360° around the horizon. So magical, but it was freezing up there on deck 9.

Day 2:

Just gonna put this out there – I like clouds. I find them endlessly interesting. And Norway proved to be fabulous for cloud watching.

The landscape is incredibly dramatic too. It’s the sort of place where you can delight in humanity’s relative insignificance – where it’s a positive thing to feel infinitisimal.

It didn’t take long travelling north before snow caps appeared…

…and we arrived in the Hjørundfjord, by Urke, where I had decided to go on an excursion walking inland and up the mountain to a historic summer farm where shielings (little houses for dairy maids to live in) had been rebuilt after an avalanche destroyed the original summer settlement.

The ship can’t get close to the shore at Urke, so everyone going ashore squeezed into the cargo hold to wait for the tender boat.

It came as a huge surprise that fog had descended while we were waiting,…

…but it didn’t spoil anything about the fairly gentle walk through Urke and up to the snow line, following a bubbling creek full of moss-laden stones.

The group gathered for a Norwegian-style picnic begore a final explore and hike downhill to the pier at Urke.

Back on board, the ship retraced its path seaward, then north to Ålesund.

Blessed with stunning blue skies and beyond stunning mountain scenery – I’ll let these pics speak for themselves.

That night we had our first Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights) sighting.

To my eyes, it looked like shear white shimmering waves of light across the northern skyline. To my phone camera they looked like this:

No. You are not seeing wrong.

Nor are you misunderstanding my description.

I know that in all the professional photos of northern lights they are glorious wild ripples of green and sometimes orange, yellow, or red. But most of the time your eyes can’t see those colours in the Aurora, and the only way your camera can capture them is with a tripod and long exposure times. To the naked eye, they are generally white, with, if you’re lucky, a feint hint of green.

I hope, dear lopers, you will forgive me because I’m going to cheat and give you a photo taken by a new friend on the boat who had the fancy-pants equipment necessary to take decent photos of the northern lights (thanks David).

The squiggles at the bottom are of time exposed electric lights on the shore and the blurry reds are of people in front of the camera on the ship’s deck. David had brighter green shots that I could have chosen, but this paler colour is more like what our eyes actually saw aboard ship.

Day 3:

I woke to the rumble of the ship’s side propellers doing a delicate manouver to dock at Trondheim.

The last time I visited this beautiful city, I went on a guided tour. This time I planned to stroll explore on my own. From the docks I croosed the canal and made a bee line toward Stifsgården Palace and Nidaros Cathedral, before crossing the old bridge over the River Nid and returning to the ship via the old town.

Departing Trondheim, the ship passes Munkholmen…

…then a couple hours later it passes Kjeungskjær Fyr (lighthouse)…

…and a bit later again we passed quietly through the very narrow sound at Stokksundet.

In the intervening times, I busied myself doing laps of the promenade deck in the freezing cold sunshine that gradually turned to gold,…

…and enjoyed the delicious lunch buffet where salmon is served in just about every possible foodie incarnation (along with a few other dishes for the sake of variety). If salmon could be made into icecream, I think it would have been offered. Dinner is usually a set three courses, and you can whet your appetite by reading the menu at breakfast or lunch.

What do you think? Sound tasty?

Day 4:

Starting with crossing the arctic circle at dawn (see the spherical landmark? It’s on a tiny island called Vikingen), this was a stunning morning…

…but, boy was it cold!

The other highlight of the day was a guided walk along the coast from the northern edge of Bodø.

I’m afraid I don’t remember the guide’s name, but she was great at unveiling pieces of Norwegian geological and social history, and placing these details in the context of our immediate landscape. For instance, did you know there’s a cold water coral reef off the coast of Norway? And, did you know that people weren’t considered Vikings until they’d travelled across the seas for at least a year?

Based on this single criteria, I can now call myself a Viking. Woohoo!

Happily, this walk melded beautifully with my other loping adventures this year.

Here we are, standing on a Viking burial mound.

Some kids were having a great time playing on a new patch of ice – slipping and sliding and breaking it up to make ice-frizbees.

To give you an idea of how far north we were – this last photo was taken at about 2.30 pm. To me it looks like dusk falling. The days were definitely getting shorter!

Day 5:

All holidays need a holiday within the holiday – a break from being a tourist. That’s my theory anyway. This day I purposely took a break from paying attention.

Going ashore just didn’t appeal.

Instead, I walked circuits on the promenade deck, enjoyed the bevvy of delights in the buffet, read a bit, sat mesmerized in the panorama lounge by passing scenery while listening to music, wrote a few postcards, and spent an amazing hour wallowing in the top deck jacuzzi under arctic starlight.

I didn’t take many pics, but here’s a few:

Day 6:

Most of the day’s excitement would happen for me after dark, but I did spend a bit of time strolling about on deck with Ellen (one of my dinner table mates), trying to pay attention to the information given by the ever-enthusiastic Julien (the expedition team advisor on nature and culture)…

Late morning we arrived in Honningsvåg from where you can visit the North Cape. I just mooched around the tiny town, trying to get my land-legs back on treacherously icy ground. Not sure if this was such a good idea, but anyway…

Here I found a fabulous gallery with art that looks like stained glass windows, but is in fact collages made of cut paper. Since I couldn’t decide which print I liked best, I hedged and bought a little calendar that I can split up and frame when 2019 is over. Sweet.

Night fell predictably early over the MS Trollfjord, so it was pitch black when we docked briefly at Kjøllenfjord. A small group of us gamely got off the ship and soon waved goodbye to our floating home.

No, we had not been abandoned, we were off on a cultural adventure to the home of a North Sami reindeer herder to hear about the history and ongoing life of his people, his language, and his culture.

I thoroughly enjoyed this visit, but my usual level of attention to detail was still on hiatus. To help my sketchy recollections, I asked my new friend Erik to share his notes. Thanks Erik 🙂 (any mistakes are mine).

First, we were invited in and offered seats on these reindeer skins which were lustrous and thick – perfectly suited to the Scandinavian climate.

Here is our host wearing traditional dress and waving the Sami flag.

We passed around a bunch of hand-crafted items, including reindeer skin ski boots and the grass that goes inside to help insulate (amazingly they are comfy to -40°C), a knife, and drinking cup.

We tried chewing on fresh willow bark (okay for a few seconds, and then disgustingly bitter), then had a tea made of either angelica flowers or crowberry (can’t remember, sorry). We ate dried fish, and dried reindeer, and cloudberries, and smoothed pine tree resin on our dry lips. Then polished all these new tastes, textures, and smells off with a small nip of rose root schnapps-like liquor. Mmm.

By this time, we were all pretty happy, but our host offered one more gift – a yoik (Sami folk song) accompanied by the sonorous tones of this traditional drum (the wafer-looking moves over the symbols as a sort of future predictor or seance board – best I could figure).

Such a fabulous way to learn a little bit about an unfamiliar culture, though it’s clear that these bits and bobs were merely the tip of the iceburg.

For anyone concerned with ship sailing off into the clear moonlight, yes, we did meet up with it a couple of hours later in Mehamn, just in time to decant all our woolly-wear, and sit down for a lovely seafood buffet (what else?!). Thanks for the great company Di, Peter, and Erik.

Oh, and I almost forgot, the Aurora again graced us with its glow.

Day 7 (part 1):

On this day we reached Kirkenes, the farthest port on our journey.