The Arctic Circle

Mo I Rana is just south of the Arctic circle. It's still pretty chilly there, even at the end of May. I tried to jinx it into not raining by wearing my raincoat, which worked until I mentioned to Vanessa about the jinxing which then jinxed me and it started raining. We visited Havmannen who was not wearing a rain jacket and had a gull shitting on his head.

The Highlight of our Visit

The sun also technically set at 11:57pm. There were limited forms of twilight between then and about 3am when the sun came through the curtains and into my eyeballs again.

After breakfast we drove on North. During a break in the rain I ate an apple and nuts at a rest stop. Not the most atmospheric apple I've eaten on this trip, but in Norway even a dumpster at a highway rest stop can look scenic.

Shortly after that the battery indicator on the dashboard was draining fast and I realised we were ascending (himmelfarting) again. Sure enough, the landscape changed to snow and I was forced to pull over to go for a jolly down to a river cutting through snowfield. I caught sight of the back half of a freight train as it cruised down the hill back the way we'd come; familiar Norwegian supermarket brands with their brightly coloured shipping containers contrasting the black and white into which they disappeared.

It was as we kept driving through the snowscape where we appropriately entered the Arctic Circle.

After that, ironically it got sunnier (after a lot more rain). I ate a beef kebab in a place called Røkland. When the rain stopped we took another jolly along a rocky beach.

Some thing on the beach.

In the afternoon we reached the metropolis of Bodø where we filled in some time at the mall until our ferry to Lofoten.

Bodø (From the ferry)

We boarded the ferry around 18:15 and sailed for about four hours in relative comfort until we reached Moskenes at 22:00. The sun was still out although a blanket of clouds was hovering over the chain of islands that we were approaching, in the otherwise clear and slightly purple yet still bright sky. Plenty of other people were outdoors on the ship with me as we closed in on the silhouettes of jagged rocks emerging from the ocean. There was a shared sense of trepidation that we were close to reaching one of the most beautiful and remote places on Earth. A 24 hour flight, followed by 2 weeks of driving, and then an elusive reservation on the long ferry crossing. The ship blasted its horn and it was time to return to the cars in the hull and make land.

The initial stretch of driving from Moskenes to Ramberg, particularly around Reine, was top tier life shit for sure. On the south side of the islands, the northern sun was obscured by the mountains other than where the gaps were between peaks, at which points the light flowed through the cloud cover and cast an absolutely beautiful hue over the rocks, ocean, the houses nestled up the cliffs, the roads and bridges braving their way into nature. I would have stopped to take a thousand photos, but I'd promised Vanessa I'd have her in bed by midnight and as it was her birthday I did not renege on this. So I was forced to live in the moment, to take in every beach, snow capped mountain, vista, shimmer. Sometimes the sun was behind me and the whole scene was an atmospheric haze. Other times I drove directly into it and I had to fish out my sunglasses despite the clock ticking closer to midnight.

We arrived in Eggum just before midnight. Eggum faces east-north-east, under the watch of a large mountain, so there was no direct sunshine when I turned in around 12:45am. Out the window, over the sea, the clouds glowed softly like a sunset had just passed. Beyond the water, another mountain. The name of the WiFi in the Airbnb was "midnightsun" and as I fell asleep I pondered if they change it in September to "northernlights".

I have never been to Disneyland, I don't think I'd like it if I did. But for some reason Disneyland is the word that occurs to me when I visit certain places with certain lighting. Venice. Olympic National Park. Lofoten.

I have no photos from that drive. Only memories. And it was unforgettable.