I had planned to spend the morning out on the pier in Å, reveling at the ocean, now that my attention this far had been given to the mountains. But I didn’t wake up until ten thirty, which meant I barely made it to my bus. Oh, well, I guess I needed the sleep.

Going north, the landscapes turned a bit softer. Still high peaks, but they were further apart and there were even fields and meadows between. Cows, sheep and ponies grazing, recently cut hay lying in the sun to dry.

It made me think of the first part of the bus trip from Sarajevo to Belgrade that I made last summer. Also through sunny mountains, listening to First Aid Kit. I’m creating a web of memories for myself. Life isn’t linear, not static. We create and recreate it, constantly, our past, present and future. Life is meaning, and meaning is what we ascribe to what we meet. The meaning of today is colored by that sunny, hot day on a bus from Sarajevo to Belgrade, and the meaning of that bus ride is colored by the high, austere peaks of Lofoten in the Norwegian Arctic. History as a circle. Life as the constant and constantly changing North Atlantic Ocean.

I arrived in Kabelvåg and it’s the cutest little village, with lovely old wooden houses and a beautiful church. I’m sitting down by the water now, on a cliff by the pier. The drama of the Kaledonian mountain chain continue into the horizon and the soft edges of the granite that I’m sitting on tells of rough fall storms. Today, though, there is almost no wind and the ocean only gently caresses the feet of my rock. I can’t believe how lucky I’ve been with the weather on this trip, constant sun and even warm enough to hike in t-shirt. I’ve heard it rains most of the time here, but not now.

There’s a watery quality to the sunlight, it never gets really strong, as if there’s so much atmosphere that it has to get through that only the bravest and purest sunbeams make it all the way down to Earth. It is clear, and always around.

Now the oystercatcher that kept me company flew away. Maybe I should find something to eat too.

Later, at the hostel:

A meal at the local burger place in Kabelvåg cost 150 kroner or more. The kid’s meal cost 110. That’s more than twice the price you would have to pay for a burger in Sweden. And they didn’t even have a proper vegetarian alternative. So I had oat porrige with lots of nuts and raisins for dinner. I had the same for breakfast this morning, but luckily there is breakfast included in the price at the hostel here in Kabelvåg, so I’ll probably get to eat something slightly more inspiring then.

Really, Norway is just silly. Moneywise.

But sitting in a crevice perfectly shaped for my body, reading ”The Golden Notebook” by Doris Lessing while the sun continued on its neverending journey of the Arctic summer sky, food didn’t feel that important anymore. I can take a little bit of uninspiring food, if that is the price I have to pay for the rocks and the ocean, the mountains and the midnight sun.

What I will remember most are the smells. The sweetness of blossoming rowan trees and cow parsley in the valleys by the lake where the tiny little white butterflies fluttered about in the wet meadows with ferns and wood cranesbill.

The dry, sun-warmed smell of low heath up on the peaks above the treeline, like an embrace.

The slight itchiness of rotting bladder wrack in the air, so much associated with childhood adventures and learning how to swim.

And the light. The sun circling the sky, allowing devotion. The forgetting of time.

I could have died today. Or, at least that’s how it felt, several times, while climbing to the top of Reinebringen.

Reinebringen is a 448 meters high peak, rising basically from sealevel, straight up. The trail is steep, according to the internet with a 40-70 percent incline.

I don’t generally have a problem with heights, but I once had this panicked reaction when reaching the ridge of a mountain in the Olympic National Park in Washington, and I was afraid I might get the same thing here. I didn’t, but still. The view was incredible, like, among the most amazing things I’ve seen, but I could never totally let go of the awareness of how extremely steep the climb down would be.

I can just say, I was lucky I had Juan with me. I don’t know what would have happened if I didn’t have him there to ground me and remind me to marvel at the massiveness of the view.

 

(Let me just say, I now understand why the ‘landscape designer’ in one of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy books got a prize for designing the Norwegian fjords. The Norwegian coast really is the geomorphologists wet dream.)

Reinebringen, as seen from Reine.

After the climb, we went to have ice cream in Reine. I can’t believe the luck we’ve had with the weather here, sun and temperatures that encourage ice cream eating. While I hear it’s raining and cold in Stockholm.

Today, Juan and I walked 10 kilometers to Reine, climbed the mountain, then I left Juan at the ferry (he’s going back to Stockholm) and walked all the way back to Å again. I’m exhausted. Like, I might not be able to walk tomorrow.

I was going to go sit out on the pier tonight, but I couldn’t get out of the room after eating dinner. So I’m just sitting here, listening to the seagulls having their evening gossip. This is the good kind of exhausted. I should climb mountains more often.

 

The view from my hostel room window.

Oh, how I love the birches and the ferns. And look how active the slope processes are!

 

 

Magical, there’s simply nothing else that can be said.

The meeting yesterday was intense and very educational for me, but not really something fun to recount in a blog post like this. We had dinner outside in the sunshine at a sea food restaurant in the harbour together with the Norwegian researchers. The food was very good, the prices very Norwegian (i.e. shamelessly expensive) and the company was incredibly knowledgeable and pleasant.

The view from the meeting room at Universitetet i Nordland

I couldn’t go to bed due to the light. I slept too little and ended up having to rush through the hotel breakfast in order to make it to the ferry on time, and then the three-and-a-half hour ferry ride was spent in equal amounts admiring the drama of the Norwegian mountains and trying to stay awake. This midnight sun thing really messes with my head.

Leaving Bodø

So much blue.

Approaching Lofoten.

Oh, well, I made it to Moskenes, and then Å by foot, together with Juan, and there we checked in at the hostel, had some lunch and then went for a four hour hike. Amazing. Really. The thing is. Though. That I am. Overwhelmingly. Knockdown. Tired. But I took plenty of photos and will hopefully have more energy to describe the amazing scenery here on the southern tip of Lofoten tomorrow. Now, I’m going to sleep in my empty, light women’s dorm to the sound of seagulls gossiping. The sun never sets here, which apparently means the seagulls sleep in shifts, never giving up their loud conversations. Luckily, I’m ready to collapse on the floor. I’m quite sure I’ll be able to sleep despite the birds and the light and the weird hostel bed.

Tørrfisk (dried cod/stockfish) in progress in Å. This is what they used to survive on here, back in the days. Both for selling and for eating themselves, during the long, dark Arctic winter.

The hostel and stockfish museum. The women’s dorm was behind the second floor window, right beneath the triangular roof detail thing. Possibly the most dramatically situated hostel I’ve ever stayed at.

Å seen from the pier.

Considering the small size and quite uninspiring architecture of Bodø, I was really surprised to find so much original and interesting street art there. I actually got a little bit too excited, walking around town on my own after the others had gone back to the hotel to watch the football games, searching for new pieces of art. I managed to find quite a few.

Bodø really had an eclectic combination of architecture, probably at least partly due to the fact that almost the entire city was bombed to rubble during WWII. And it was so quiet and empty, almost no people on the streets. Altogether kind of weird, if I’m being honest. 

Bodø from a hill – an evening walk that Julia, the Russian-Norwegian Ph.D. student took us on after dinner. The mountains are beautiful, that they are.

Possibly the most uninspiring library building I’ve seen.

More than an hour early, I’m sitting at gate 1 on Arlanda airport. Gate 1 seems to service Scandinavian Airlines flights to Copenhagen and Oslo. Seems only right, I would say. We might have plenty of rude jokes about each other, but still we’ll always put our Scandinavian siblings first.

I’m on my way to Bodø to have a meeting with some of the researchers that are working on the Arctic Resilience Report. From the SRC, we’re two professors, a Ph.D. student and me, the trainee, going. It’s my first real business trip (because the trips with dad don’t count). I have no idea how this is going to work out. I don’t know what to expect. I’m kind of scared, actually.

Later, evening in  Bodø:

I have a cute little corner room with evening sun. It’s already past eleven, and the sun is still shining as if the end of the day was still hours away. Luckily, the curtains are surprisingly thick – or maybe not that surprising, after all. It’s  a hotel. They must get many light-sensitive guests here this time of year. There is heating in the floor in the tiny bathroom. Actually, this room is very well adapted to its location.

It hit me on the plane from Oslo: I forgot to bring Mr. P with me. I got really disappointed with myself, poor Mr. P, now he won’t get to see the midnight sun. Well, I guess it’ll be good for me to travel on my own too, try to stand on my own two feet.

Bodø is small. We walked from the airport to the center, where our hotel is. The light is pale, kind of, clear but not very strong. It is quite cold. The pre-set amounts that you can take out from the cash machine start at 600 Norwegian kroner, and end at 3000. Who would ever walk around with 3000 in cash? Norwegians really are disturbingly wealthy.

During a walk around Södermalm with Anders, we saw this.

Oh YES.

I’m in Norway now, north of the Arctic Circle, and the light is doing weird things with my head. I can’t sleep and I feel lost in time.

There are plenty of more things to tell, but there is no point in writing about Norway without including pictures of Norway, and I simply don’t have the energy or the screen capacity to go through all 553 photos that I’ve taken this far. I’ve hiked more than 25 kilometers today, at least 5 of which had a 40-70 percent gradient. Simple concepts like getting up to go get a glass of water don’t make sense in my head anymore. Even if I’m parched. So I’m keeping (incoherent) notes and will upload a bunch of stuff once I’m back in Stockholm.

So. I’ll just leave you with the confirmation that Lofoten in northern Norway is absolutely breathtaking.