James & Heather Travelogues

During our stay in Fjærland, I got it into my head that we needed to visit the Arctic Circle. After a fair amount of research, we figured out a route that would get us there (taking about a day and a half) by a combination of bus and train. We looked in to the idea of flying, but unfortunately the cost was too prohibitive – a great pity because the last part of the flight would have been in a small plane flying at low altitude (also known as a bug blaster).

We caught the bus from Fjærland to Otta (taking around 5 hours) and then a train to Trondheim, before catching an overnight sleeper train to Bødo, one of the main towns in Norway’s part of the Arctic Circle.

On arrival at Bødo, we wandered around checking out the fishing village, the beach and other local facilities (including posting our last set of postcards). However, we still had a few hours to kill before we caught a ferry to the Lofoten Islands, which were our ultimate destination. As such, we decided that an ice cold beer (or a few) was in order. Now, one would normally think that drinking cold beer in a cold environment would not be a good idea (lowering body temperature and all that) and vodka or something similar would be better. However, the temperature must have been around 30 degrees C or so, which wasn’t helped by both of us dressing for arctic weather (heavy trousers & jackets, etc). As such, several beers were more than truly welcome (even at Norway prices, which aren’t quite as bad as Paris but close).
Eventually our ferry turned up and we stumbled on board for the trip to Svolvær, slightly the worse for wear.

On arrival, it was around 9pm so we quickly checked into our cabin (oops, a 6 person rather than 2 person) and wandered into to the centre of town for dinner. Throughout our stay thus far in Norway, we had not really eaten any local cuisine so we decided that we better remedy it; Norway however has whale meat as one of its delicacies. I am quite happy to eat just about anything served up in front of me and will always try new things, however I draw the line at creatures more intelligent than the average human (although given the intelligence of some people, an amoeba could outsmart them) – I was not going to eat whale (by all accounts, it’s a bit like salty beef). Heather plumped for a veal rack (baby cows are so much easier to eat) and I went for duck (Hah! Not even mammalian!). They were both served in Norwegian sauces; we could at least say that we tried.

The following day, we wandered around the beach and the town centre, where the main port is. Another Norwegian delicacy is freeze dried fish, which is made outside during the winter months on wooden A-frames. We saw a number of these, but due to the lack of snow, no freeze drying fish. Also in Svolvær, they have a permanent ice & light show gallery, which we decided to check out. I am sure that the artist tried his best, and he no doubt did a better job than I could have done, but I think his report card at Art School probably said “Could try harder”. Still, it was the only damn way we were going to get cold in the Arctic Circle… Bloody global warming.