Dusky early morning landscapes glided past the window of the train as it rushed towards the Arctic Circle, the parallax effect on the stationary landscape even more illusory in the colour drained world. Moonlit bays and ghostly white farmhouses were set against a backdrop of varying shades of grey, a cartoonish world of make believe and mystery.
The first port of call in Bodø was a café. I was in desperate need of a warm drink and something vaguely breakfasty. So, I ordered a huge mocha and a knuckle of cinammony pastry to consume while I figured out how to spend the day before the ferry arrived in the late afternoon. I ended up doing a camping resupply, then I found a secluded beach on which to eat bananas in the spitting rain. After a noodle dinner I got on the ferry. The journey was free for foot passengers, and I had a reclining seat with plenty of leg room; it wasn’t long before I fell asleep.
Værøy and Røst sit at the end of the long arm of Lofoten, the famous island chain extending into the Norwegian Sea. After a few hours of restful dozing, the two islands came into view, Røst being our first stop. Black monoliths of a long distant orogeny lay along a hastily drawn bearing as though they were dice cast from an unseen hand. The northern most island of Røst appeared as a jagged canine, swept landward at its point, while the southern tops were rounded like thimbles, scoured and weather beaten. One summit was still hidden below the drooping bands of cloud which had been lazily hanging over the ocean for hours, hinting at, but never showing the brightness beyond their loosely sewn seams. Between the cliffs were smudges of land, seaweed covered and transient, barely registering as distinct entities from the sea. Bigger islands had freed them from the grasp of seaweed though, and had risen a few metres above the Arctic waters that erred between green and black. Grass rounded hills and houses dotted the gentle slopes and stood guard over the thousands of inlets of seaweed and shore. Cormorants glided and casually flapped their wings to sail towards more profitable fishing grounds, while Oystercatchers flapped frantically just to stay above the surface.
Værøy
When we arrived on Værøy it was 22:30 and time to find somewhere to camp. I had decided on Kvalnes peninsula which was near the ferry terminal and the opposite direction to the town. First, I had tried hiking a trail that ended up being a rockfall deathtrap and a very sketchy 20 minutes of lost time, but then I headed off towards the lighthouse. There weren’t many areas of flat ground but, after going off-piste, I found a stretch of grass that was obviously used by the abundant seabird population as a place of relaxation and of… ablutions. It seems that humans and seagulls have both realised that a place of urination and defecation, can also be a place of community and solace. One of the most vulnerable times in our evolutionary histories, has become a social occasion. Whether it be a collaborative singing the Question of Sport theme tune in the surprsingly accoustically atuned toilet of a Spoons, flicking dangerously between sending beyond-risky memes to the boys group chat and wishing your grandma a happy birthday or defecating on a child after youve stolen his chips at the beach and then squawking in delight to your ragtag group of winged pals. Either way, after kicking most of the poo off my campground, I went to sleep at midnight (although it was so bright that it looked more like a cloudy mid-afternoon in England).
I stepped out to a new day, feeling refreshed and straight away threatened some rightfully angry seagulls with Robert Pattinson style violence if they flew any closer. With nowhere to be, I ate my new and improved breakfast gruel to the burbling beeping sounds of Oystercatchers hopping around the rocky shoreline.
For my first full day on the island, I was keen to have a properly chilled one for reading and recovery before tackling the more strenuous hikes of the island. So, after packing up, I headed towards a beach on the other side of Sørland, the main settlement on the island. Between the houses, climbing flowers and pristine lawns were huge areas of fish drying racks (hjell) which looked like a giant haphazard wooden kerplunk sets. They are still used for the production of stockfish (dried unsalted fish), a huge and ancient industry in northern Norway and one that helped to sustain populations throughout the notoriously harsh Scandinavian winters for centuries. My bag felt heavy and when I reached Sørlandshagen I was happy to get my tent up. I soon discovered a suitably flat boulder and dedicated a full afternoon to the fantastic travelogue writing Jonathan Raban and the beauty of this wide bay.
When the sun came out, small grey birds hunted the shallows, tipping a wing and diving in at the sight of something worth the icy dip. At the shore was a lapping wash of seaweed detritus a foot wide, but beyond that the sea was pure glass. The white sand bottom was only occasionally broken by boulders, their journeys to the tidal realm told by the extensive aprons of fallen companions who hadn’t made it that far, fanning down from the mountain slopes. Small crabs half swam, half scuttled their way through the seaweed wash hunting for shrimp, while strange pink bag-like organisms washed around helplessly, their seamed bodies gurgling with some sort of bioluminescence.
When the few families with their drones and chatter finally left, all I could hear was the uneven splash of the smallest wave, there wasn’t even the antisocial holler of a gull to break the tranquillity. The sun soon began to threaten to dip below the retaining mountain wall of the bay, casting my boulder perch into shadow. So, I used my time in the sun to refill my water and while I was at it, I paid 75p for a poo. Surprisingly, I wasn’t too put out by the price because the loo was clean and it meant I didn’t have to squat, bum to the setting sun like a vile act of ancient sacrilege. Back to the tent, I stood, toothbrush in mouth, watching the milky satin water of the bay devolve into knapped flint at its terminus, where the wind was allowed to stir the surface into a chaotic frenzy.
In the morning, as I slid out of my door and into the cool morning air, murmurations of wind swung over the surface of the bay, plucking at tiny surface ripples and deforming them into running channels and dissipating eddies. Troughs in the unmolested ripples showed deformed snapshots of the pastel sky. The blue in the troughs and the inky black on the peaks seemed like a mysterious longitudinal binary code, read perhaps in the irregularities of the broken crests or the manner by which they were striking the shore. A code that told tales of sunken boulders and the distant wave of kelp arms. At the water’s edge, with the departure of bathing gulls, there were no ripples, the only discernible movement was the breath of air that seemed to carry across some intermediary space between water and air. A transparent and intangible medium visible only to those at the correct angle and in the right light. The movement of this medium, this mystical fabric of the sea, was like a whisper rolling across delicate gossamer.
After a full day of reading and resting the day before, I was ready for a good hike. I began by heading up towards the saddle between the Hornet and the gentle ridge towards Håtua. I used the small track hewn from the hillside by the tread of a thousand shoes and cut the corners of the road’s hairpin turns. As I rose up to the ridge, my need for views was battling the wind’s need to throw me to a suitably spectacular death. To my left, the town below sat in an oval plain around the harbour and, to every side but the sea, it was penned in by mountains. To the right were silos of granite bulging defiantly from their grassy skirts. On the left was a ridge, slowly devolving from its clear-cut origins near the mountain peaks to its gnarled and broken teeth by the harbour. Beyond the ridge and the summit of the Hornet was the bulk of the Lofoten Islands, a hulking conglomeration of mountains rising from the sea, crowding, pushing and vying for prominence. In the other direction was Røst, its isolation even more apparent from on high.
At the end of the ridge, I trespassed on the NATO radar base to catch the view from Håtua, the Instagram famous viewpoint. Luckily, I started walking early in the morning so I could enjoy the views unmolested by voices. In fact, the only sound was the thumping eardrum solo of the wind. Punn Sanden, the beach only accessible by boat, was a pure and shining opal far below me. Each cut of its surface, each of the million facets of sand and sea, shone back with a brilliance beyond measure. The single boat that brought people to the beach rocked gently in its own wake, ripples in the sea’s surface that would have to stand in for waves on such a still summer’s day. Beyond the beach was the famous view. The view of the narrow isthmus separating us from the curving peninsula where the abandoned village of Måstad sat in the shadow of a crescent of precipitous puffin-nesting cliffs.
From Håtua, I enjoyed the downhill of the same ridgeline to the saddle and focussed my sights on the summit of the Hornet. It was a short and steep scramble to the top and I got there just in time for an early lunch of dried mango and almonds. From the Hornet, I wanted to go down to Nordlandshagen but the path was an unwelcoming alleyway of unstable rockfall debris so I turned around and admitted defeat. Naaah, that would’ve been too sensible. I put away my walking poles in preparation for clinging onto rocks for dear life and just as I was entering the least stable looking jumble of rocks, a huge, topless, bearded and tattooed man appeared in shorts and a small backpack. I asked the giant, who had presumably caused a few of the rockfalls with the sheer torque of his footsteps, if the track was alright and he replied, “It’s steep but…” *looking me up and down* “…you’ll have no problem.” What a fine man indeed. Not only did he affirm my choice in walking track, but he also believed in me. He calculated by the twinkle in my eye, the angle of my arm and the curve of my buttock that I was ready for what lay ahead.
After the steep and dodgy beginning, the trail did improve, and I got to the bottom where Nordlandshagen beach was an inviting scythe of white. However, I was still feeling spry, so my day was just beginning. I filled up my bottle and headed for Eidet, the isthmus I had seen from Håtua and the home of an incredible looking beach. The walk was surprisingly tough mainly due to the heat, that side of the island was a windless baking affair on that particular afternoon. There were a few large rockfalls to contend with and one rock field in particular was a reeking purgatory. Sometimes it smelt of a particularly fruity IPA and sometimes it smelt like a septic tank, it was safe to say I didn’t hang around.
By the time I reached Eidet it was clear that I wouldn’t be camping there, I wouldn’t have enough water to cook and drink, so I decided that I would continue to Måstad, the abandoned village which according to the map had a water source. First though, I desperately needed a dip. Now, I’m not someone with a great affinity for water. Beyond looking at it, my enjoyment of the water comes from the activities that it affords you i.e. cliff jumping, snorkelling, diving, kayaking etc. But, going for a dip or a swim has very little appeal to me for two main reasons:
- Water is generally too cold. Someone should sort that out.
- I sink like the sea has an odious agenda.
So, it was a momentous occasion when I decided to submerge myself in the Arctic Sea. Granted it was turquoise blue, there were no people or jellyfish, the sun was shining, and the sand was porcelain white, so this won’t go down in the annals of history as the most courageous endeavour. Anyway, I donned my trunks and slowly, with controlled breathing and slow steps, I made it all the way in, submerging myself completely. I hung around, drying for a while, happily enjoying the fact I wouldn’t have to rush off to Måstad before it got dark because, well, it wouldn’t.
The walk to Måstad was gorgeous and followed a narrow path cut from the long grass and flowers along the cliff edge. Beyond the crosshatching of stone walls of abandoned farmland, Måstad was spread out in the afternoon sun. The traditional houses were well looked after and some still seemed to be used in some capacity. Behind the houses were huge cliffs, where the original inhabitants used to hunt puffins with their specially bred puffin dogs. The puffin hunters had gone but the seabirds remained, wheeling over the rubble-strewn no-man’s-land cackling and screaming. At the well, I replenished my supply and spotted about the only place to camp in the entire town. Someone had camped there recently and there was still an imprint of a tent so I quickly claimed it because all other space in town seemed either private or boulder-filled. For the rest of the evening, I sat in the shade of a house, watching the shadows spin and elongate as the sea silently rose and fell like the chest of a sleeping giant.
I awoke early on the next day and, even though my gas bottle strained to cook a helping of gruel for my breakfast, I sat and enjoyed one of my peaceful mornings anywhere in Norway. Unmolested by flies, I watched as the heavens sent piercing rays to the conical mountains near town and turned a chosen triangle of the sea’s surface into embers. It was so bright that I almost expected arcing trails of popping sparks to erupt from it, whirling away across the still water. The stillness and freshness of the morning was rejuvenating.
The walk back from Marstad to Nordlandshagen had the opposite effect. While the baking heat from the day before had gone, so had the vibrancy of the scene. Eidet was wind chafed and dulled, no longer a turquoise jewel fit for a swim and soon every aspect of the walk was grating on me. So, I switched from the sounds of nature to “The Rest Is History” podcast which provided me some distraction from the increasing frustration I felt every time I stumbled or chose the wrong path, fighting through chest high grasses and unstable boulders.
I reached Nordlandshagen as the morning found its groove. People were packing up tents as I set mine up and that was where I remained for most of the day. There was one problem with this camping spot however, something I had mostly been able to ignore during the day, but when I awoke in the morning there was little ignoring it. The smell was horrendous. When I tore my way through the amniotic sac of the dream world and into the physical realm, the heat and the stench greeted my arrival. I quickly wrapped a top around my face and alternated between my makeshift gasmask and mouth breathing as I packed away frantically, sweat pouring off me. Outside of the tent the air was much cooler, but the odour remained. A saltmarshy sulphurous smell. A guff from the sand that spoke of truly diabolical bacterial processes happening below. The air was heavy with it and its unusual viscosity made it linger, made it smother you in a sickening embrace.
I had run out of gas so there was no gruel for breakfast and I was happy to hit the road with a pocket full of raisins and almonds. The walk back to Sørland was nice and easy along the coast of the island. Road walking meant I made it to town in good time, time enough to restock with supplies that wouldn’t need cooking and then tear up to Sørlandshagen beach for a familiar camping spot before the forecast rain started in earnest. After stretching my legs with a pre-rain amble, I retired to my canvas cage and settled in. I stayed in the tent from 11:30am, listening to podcasts, eating, finishing Jonathan Raban’s ‘Passage to Juneau’ and trying to ignore my rising need for a wee. The rain and wind were oppressively consistent and the white noise of its crackle against canvas helped me drift off to a deep sleep.
The next day was stunning and I slowed my pace back to town to soak in the quiet island life of Værøy for the last time. The magic of inlets and peaks, trails and slipways, geese and gulls. I took the ferry back to Bodø, knowing I was leaving somewhere special but also ready for a shower, a bed and an obscene amount of homecooked food.
Steigen
After figuring out how to get on a new speedy ferry, I was heading north. Emma would be in Bodø in a day or so, therefore, after my recuperation I had decided to get one more solo adventure in before she arrived. North of Bodø and to the ferry’s starboard side, the mountains were a jagged and irregularly shaped crown of thorns. As we got closer to my stop, islands rose ominously from the sea like bloated whale carcasses, swollen and bare protuberances from the unstable grey shimmer of the ocean’s surface. Then finally, as we were approaching Helnessund, the water suddenly shallowed. Those small islands that had seemed unnatural and remote in the deep water suddenly hosted fringes of dazzling green water and stunning arms of sand, the destinations of families whizzing between them on their boats.
I got off the ferry just after midday and prepared for a long hike to the trailhead for Kraktinden (my mountain of the day). I started the walk through the village of Leines and quickly found it to be possibly the prettiest place I had ever seen. Firstly, many of its houses were either above or next to the most stunningly blue water. In the distance were views over the Lofoten Wall, while in the foreground local mountains with characterful summits and vast tracts of island-speckled ocean filled large picture windows or panoramic views from private decks. In the village, gardens almost melded together into a perfectly kept village green with everyone sat out enjoying the sun. Leines didn’t last long and soon I decided I’d try and hitchhike. I got picked up by a local couple within a minute and they dropped me off at the beach of Brenviksanden, and what a spot it was.
The sand stretched for a couple of kilometres in a wide crescent, at one end were forested hills and small villages, on the other were huge, pointed peaks. The sea was shallow and clearer than any seawater I’d ever seen before. It lapped gently on the ashen sands, that sparkled with micaceous flakes, not a hint of pollution anywhere along its length. I set my camp up outside of the nature reserve area at the far end of the beach and then began my hike in the mid-afternoon.
First, I clambered through a thick and wild stretch of birch and pine forest, whose floor was mossy and littered with burbling streams. The pines soon gave way, and the birch reigned supreme until a few 100m of elevation whittled them down to shrubs and the walking opened up. The first saddle concluded over 400m of elevation gain and gave an incredible view of the peninsula and islands. Then I entered the valley with Skardu cabin, where the grandeur of this particular hike became apparent. A semi-circular sweep of dark bare rock formed a colosseum hundreds of metres high, the cabin sat nestled in a glade that lay at its centre. I crossed a boggy section of the glade, whose waters ran into a small lake, then I followed the left hillside on a narrow track to reach the rim of the colosseum. Up there I ditched the walking poles under a rock and continued, needing my hands to clamber up the increasingly steep terrain. The schisty rock was really starting to come apart at this elevation, leaving boulder fields and perfect tiles of rock that seemed to want to slide off the bulk of the mountain at the faintest touch. After some fun rock hopping and climbing, there seemed to be one final steep ascent to the summit. After having a closer look, a serious looking overhang put me off, and I decided to return a few hundred metres to find a suitable rock for cashew consumption and view watching. Luckily though, a man appeared. He seemed as though he had run up the mountain without producing a simple ampule of sweat, so naturally I eyed him with suspicion. But he knew the way around the overhang so I watched him go (keeping my distance from the cyborg/ man who was physically incapable of sweating… we all know the sort of sordid things they get up to…) and soon followed his path. This took me around the side of the overhanging wall, where there was a steep slope and then a human-sized crack with a rope. After some intense clambering, I reached a plateau with a short jaunt to the summit.
There was too much to take in. Human brains can’t comprehend things on such a scale. A full 360-degree view of land and sea. Bodø and Landegode island, far to the south, were caught in the golden sea of a slowly relenting sun and between there and my summit were snow blanketed hollows of a snaking mountainous spine which rose occasionally in defiant licks of rock. Down towards my camp, the mountains stooped below me, one especially sharp pinnacle, the wonky tooth of a ridge line, stuck out towards the sand. Running towards the beach was a river whose source I could see below. A pure sapphire, the lake’s colour was not artificially blue, cloudy or turquoise blue, it was striking in the subtleties of its deep and rich azure purity. To the north, islands were flung out in haste from every peninsula, mimicking the bearing but not the size of the distant curtain wall of granite, schist and gneiss that makes Lofoten so otherworldly, an impassable barrier rising in stoic defiance to the erosive tyranny of the sea.
As I climbed down, trying to take in the shades of blue and the irregular and astonishing beauty of the peaks, I was getting very thirsty. The salt of the cashews had made my mouth an inhospitable and arid place. I managed to hold out against the temptation to drink from the streams and made it to the small car park for the beach. There I saw a tap, but it had a shower attachment on its nozzle. Was it drinking water? Was it socially acceptable for me to rip the shower attachment off and wrap my whole mouth around the tap? The answers to both questions sent me back to the tent thirsty. But it wasn’t long before I was drinking the water brought down the mountain from sapphire lake to sea.
After an hour or so of strange gusts of wind coming from nowhere, I went for a pre-bed stroll as the tide receded. It felt good to be barefoot, and even in the wet, the dark grey sand sparkled in the long sunset. Pink streaks of sand could be found in sheltered stretches of the bay, while razor clam shells littered the beach with evidence of subsurface life. Gulls and some fork-tailed, chevron-winged, white birds came together to hunt in the shallows. The gulls seemed to be the oafs in the group, splashing into the water noisily and taking off with some fuss, while the others hovered and wheeled down in graceful arcs picking off fish with deadly accuracy. This may have been the first time in my life that I felt any interest towards birds… A scary thought indeed.
The next morning, I walked back to Helnessund through hamlets straddling electric blue bays of knee deep water in order to catch the only ferry back to Bodø. I arrived an hour early at the dock, happy in the knowledge I would soon be heading for food and comfort. When I left Bodø to come to Helnessund they had told me that the return trip would be simple, there would be no need to buy a ticket beforehand, in fact, they said there wasn’t any way of doing so. Imagine my surprise, nay my horror, when I went over to the small building at the dockside and asked about the ferry, only to be told it was full. Excuse me? It wasn’t even here yet. I tried to talk to the ferry man, the man who seemingly held my fate in his wrinkly hands. However, he had labelled me a disturber of the peace, a menace to the status quo and after trying to ignore me for a while he suggested “I don’t know, get a bus? Maybe there is a bus, maybe not… I don’t know.” The severe lack of help and the fact that this ferry was my only surefire way to get to Bodø in time to collect Emma meant that I obstinately hung around pacing, complaining and leaning menacingly. This eventually got the man to produce a sheet to write down my details in case a space became available. Despite being on the harbour first and the first name on the sheet, I was told that the American family of three would have priority because they were “first” (into the office) but I suspect the fact they had a Norwegian guide helped their case. The start of the Helnessund festival around me had hardly registered because soon the ferry was arriving and the few people without tickets eagerly watched as ticket holders went aboard. It was then announced there were two spaces left, not three. Bye bye Americans, James is going to Bodø.
Final Thoughts
The mountains, coves and fjords of southern Norway had impressed me, but until I sat in the silence of dawn in the bay of Måstad, struggled to comprehend the vast complexity of the view from Kraktinden and saw the life humans had eked out in the remote harbour of Sørland, my Norwegian picture wasn’t yet complete. The Norwegian Arctic struck me as a place where a visceral connection with nature was unavoidable. A place where the land erupted from the ocean in such proportions, dimensions and forms as to strike you as belonging to mythology.
