Arctic Circle K
August 12-21, 2022
One of the sights that left a lasting impression on us during our first trip to Norway was, in and of itself, nothing special. It was simply a tent set up in a grassy field not far off the road in Jotunheimen National Park, all alone, surrounded by mountains. But to us, living in Germany where “camping” means cramming as many tents as possible next to one another in a parking lot, this lone tent felt like the epitome of outdoor freedom. The “right to roam” and sleep in nature is written into Norway’s constitution as a fundamental human right. We vibe with this hard. So, we vowed to return to Norway someday with our backpacking gear and enjoy the freedom to hike and camp freely, something we have desperately missed since moving away from the Pacific Northwest.
The camping trips we took during the height of the pandemic always included renting a car. Plane travel was out, and driving to the alps from Berlin only took a day or so, so it was an easy choice. Norway is a huge country without a particularly robust public transit system, so we assumed we would need to rent a car there as well. But narrowing down exactly where we wanted to go proved difficult at first, as we had covered a little bit of a lot of areas on our first trip and didn’t want to double back. As we researched, the Lofoten Islands started to look more and more appealing for multiple reasons. For one, it is a relatively compact area of extremely beautiful wilderness, with a whole trips’ worth of great stuff packed into a few small islands. Second, rental cars all across Europe in the summer of 2022 were absurdly expensive, and the price to rent a car and pay for gas for this trip was going to cost more than several smaller vacations combined. If possible, it would be great to cut out that expense. We had just been burned trying to do a simple weekend camping trip in Bavaria using only public transit, but surely the Norwegians had their affairs in order better than the Germans, right?
Located way up north in the Arctic Circle, the Lofoten Islands are a bucket list destination for many outdoor enthusiasts. I mean, you can see just from the picture at the top of this post why so many people want to visit the place. You can fly into one of two small airports on the islands, but most people take a 3-4-hour ferry from the city of Bodø, which is what we chose to do. It meant a marathon first travel day, flying into Oslo in the morning, waiting in the airport for a few hours before catching another flight to Bodø, and then scrambling to make it to a ferry that would drop us off in Moskenes, on the southernmost Lofoten island of Moskenesøya. If everything went to plan, we’d leave our apartment around 8am and arrive at our campsite at 10pm.
The only issue with this itinerary was the window we had between landing in Bodø at 5:00pm and catching the ferry at 6:45pm. We couldn’t fly with propane, which we would need to cook our food, so we needed to buy it before the outdoor store in downtown Bodø closed at 6:00. The plane was a little late, and then the bags wouldn’t come out onto the conveyor, and at 5:45 we were frantically scrambling into a cab, begging the man to drive us to the store we had loaded up on Google Maps in our phone, but he just didn’t understand that we were trying to go somewhere other than the ferry. Language barrier be damned, we got to the shop just before it closed, bought our fuel, and then speed-walked to the nearest grocery store to try and put together two days’ worth of meals in as little time as possible. Then we chugged to the ferry terminal - there are two and Kirb was trying to go to the wrong one on the other side of downtown, but fortunately, Mazz realized this before it was too late. Once we arrived, we had to figure out how to pay for tickets, but the only thing inside of the ticket building was a Chinese restaurant. We asked the guy guiding cars onto the boat and he just told us to go on board; the 3.5-hour ferry was free for foot traffic. We plopped into some leather seats on the front of the boat just before it departed, made a snack dinner from our groceries, and finally let out breaths of relief.
It was still light when we strolled into Camping Moskenes just after 10pm and reception was busy with all the people like us who were just getting off the ferry. It was Friday night in high season and the place was packed. There were terraced grass areas facing the water for tents, and it felt unpleasantly German the way so many were crammed next to one another, but this was the only paid camping area with bathrooms on the entire island of Moskenesøya so it made sense that they were going to try and accommodate as many people as possible. We didn’t want anything to do with that mess though, so we walked up to the ridge above the main campground and found the least-muddy place possible to set up our tent. We’d looked at the terraced grass below, and most of the areas left were in standing water.
You may be asking yourself, “Why are they staying in a paid campground if the whole point of this trip was to break away from the penned-in campgrounds of Germany?” A little research before the trip revealed an interesting catch-22 about free camping in Lofoten: just because you can, doesn’t mean you will particularly want to. It rains in these islands all the time, and the landscape is essentially mountains jutting up directly out of the sea. So, if you can find a flat place to camp in these parts, it’s probably a bog. This was immediately true even for the designated pitches at Camping Lofoten. Anything even remotely flat was most definitely a bog, but at least there was a bathroom and a place to wash dishes. But unlike a campingplatz in Germany, we were able to go find someplace beautiful just a few minutes’ walk from the facilities to pitch our tent where we didn’t have to see or hear anyone else. You could set up in a soggy field with 10 other tents, but you didn’t have to.
One of the things that sold us on the viability of traveling through Lofoten without a car was the Travel Nordland Pass, which gives tourists unlimited use of busses and ferries in the region for one week. While it was most likely more expensive than if we had figured out every trip we wanted to make individually, the convenience of just having a screen on our phones we could flash at bus drivers whenever we needed a ride was too enticing. What was not particularly convenient was the frequency of these busses. Many only ran twice a day, and never at the intervals that were desired, so a lot of pre-planning went into figuring out the logistics of what we could do and when. Truly - this element of the trip likely took more time to figure out and micromanage than any other trip we’ve taken. The Travel Nordland Pass costs €130, and if we bought it at the right time, this would cover our otherwise €70 return ferry from Svolvær. Since it lasted seven days and we were there for eight, we chose to head out on our first excursion on foot.
It was only a few kilometers to the town of Sørvågen, which had access to several hikes. As soon as we made it to the trailhead the skies opened up and we were immediately drenched. A nice Norwegian man who took our photo in front of a waterfall told us that any weather in Norway is nice weather, and we appreciated his optimistic outlook. Before long, we reached Stuvdalsvatnet Lake and tried to continue on around the western edge to Trolldalvsvatnet Lake, but the path was treacherous. There was a steep, slippery rock wall on the left, a “trail” about a foot wide with mud that looked to be at least that deep, and then another steep edge on the right that would deposit you directly into the arctic lake if you slipped and fell. No thank you. So, we tried to go up instead to Tindstinden Peak, but that trail was also nothing but deep, slippery mud and squishy bog, and we turned around after less than ten minutes of slow climbing. The only other option was to walk around the lake the other direction, and that walk turned out to be quite nice, leading us to several waterfalls and making for an enjoyable out-and-back.
It was only a few more kilometers from Sørvågen down to the fishing village of Å, which is widely considered one of the most quaint and beautiful in the islands. Tucked away beneath rocky peaks, this sleepy village is busting only with tourists, though not particularly with activities to entertain them. We snapped photos and milled around the piers, but found it hard to believe that there were no shops selling the fish they were famous for catching and dry-curing using only the salty sea air, or anything else. We had planned to buy single trip tickets for the bus back to Moskenes, but we were ready to leave Å an hour before the next bus was set to depart, so we asked a nice Italian couple in the parking lot if they would give us a lift up north (this was an easy ask since you literally can’t go anywhere but north from here), and they agreed.
Fierce winds and rains came in that evening, and we realized the downside of setting up camp all alone on an exposed bluff. We cooked dinner in a little wooden shelter down by the other tent campers, serenaded the entire time by a Spanish hiker who kept erroneously reciting the boy-band lyric, “Backstreet spice, alright” over and over again. After, we tried to wait out the storm in the campsite bar. Drinks cost a minimum of €10 apiece in Norway, but we were happy to pay for someplace dry and warm to sit. That night, the winds came down from the hills with such intensity that they pushed our tent poles several inches into the wet ground, causing the tent to lose its tension and flap around like a plastic bag caught on a tree branch. It was incredibly loud and we felt like at any moment we were going to be lifted up into the air like a parachute and flung out into the sea.
The next morning we activated our Travel Passes and took an extremely-packed bus up to Reine. There was only a 10-minute window between when the bus arrived and when our ferry to the trailhead was supposed to depart, and the sheer number of people getting onboard made us miss that window, but thankfully the boat knew to wait, or it was just late too. There was a big line of people waiting to get on a relatively-small vessel, but somehow everyone fit inside, if only barely. Most people got off on the first stop for the trail to Bunes Beach, but we opted for the second stop to Horseid Beach, as it was a longer hike with less crowds.
The boat dropped us off in a tiny village and there were no signs leading to the trail. Thankfully we had the Alltrails app on our phone, which somehow knows every trail everywhere. It directed us to the trailhead, which had a tiny, blank white sign, the words long-since worn away by rain and snow. As we would regularly find to be the case in Lofoten, the “trail” was actually a stream, which meant everything in and around the trail was a bog. But this bog also had lots of big rocks, and it was often unclear when you stepped off of these big rocks how sturdy the ground beneath was going to be, so the going was slow. There were two choices for catching boats back to Reine: 3-1/2 hours later or 5-1/2 hours later. By the time we had slogged all the way up to the ridge where we could see down the canyon to Horseid Beach, it had already been over an hour, and there was still quite a ways to go. So, we decided this view was reward enough, sat down on a big flat rock, and enjoyed a leisurely lunch.
On the way back down to the ferry, we ran into some other Americans on a hiking vacation and they were elated by the weather. They had already been hiking through Lofoten for over a week and this was their first day without rain. And while we didn’t try or care to verify the accuracy of this claim, they said a local had told them that it had essentially been raining more-or-less nonstop in this area for 2 years. The clouds cleared and the sunshine intensified by the time we got back to Reine, and we were happy to find a Circle K gas station there that wasn’t closed on Sunday like other grocery stores in the area. Strangely, without knowing that they existed in Norway (they don’t in Germany), Kirb had joked before the trip: “If they have Circle Ks in Lofoten, do you think they call them Arctic Circle Ks?” Mazz looked at the Google reviews for the place and was surprised to see how many people thought it had amazing burgers, enough that it made us think about getting some for ourselves, but we chose instead to just pick up a few items to supplement the groceries we had bought in Bodø a few days before.
Like Å, there weren’t shops in Reine that sold local products from the islands as we had assumed there would be, but we were able to find something unique at the Arctic Circle K: alpine leek pesto. As described on the tag: “Alpine leek is an old, traditional plant, but not common in Norway. It is only found on a few places, like on Vestvågøy at the Lofoten Islands. It could have been imported by the Vikings.” We made some pasta with red onion, red pepper, bacon, and the leek pesto, and it was quite good. The exact flavor was hard to place, somewhere between chive, dill, and the basic pH quality of cilantro. We’d been tromping around in fjord muck like Vikings all day, and it was fun to eat some Viking food for dinner afterward.
The weather stayed peaceful and pleasant throughout the night and we were thankful to be able to break camp the next morning with clear skies. We caught an early northbound bus and found it much less crowded on a Monday. The 90-minute ride up to Leknes was full of gorgeous views, and before we knew it we were deposited into one of the only proper, well-populated cities on the Lofoten Islands, with several large grocery stores to choose from for resupplying. We were happy to learn that it was easy to buy gluten-free products in this part of the world and had no problem restocking our larders with local sausages, fresh produce, and bread Mazz could eat. Even better: all of the “light” beer in Norway is gluten-free, so there were a wide variety of delicious alcoholic beverages for her to choose from as well. A large beer in the store costs €4, which is still relatively expensive but nothing compared to drinking in an establishment. We ate an inglorious meal of grocery store rotisserie chicken and apples in a gravel parking lot, and in doing so were surprised to find a huge patch of shaggy ink cap mushrooms growing right next to the main road. According to our mushroom-aficionado friends, these are among some of the most delicious mushrooms you can forage, but we were hesitant to eat ones that were growing right next to a major thoroughfare, with runoff not only from traffic but from a gas station across the street. We let them be and kept an eye out for other delicious forageable treats for the rest of our trip.
The sky was bright and we were anxious to get on a trail and take advantage of the nice weather, but we had to wait for a bus up to our next location, Haukland Beach. Before we got on board, we double-checked to make sure we weren’t making a mistake, and lo and behold, we were. The bus wasn’t going to Haukland strand (beach), but Haukland skøle (school), which was far, far away from our desired location. Thankfully, Leknes is a proper town with taxi service, so for the low, low price of €30, a cab drove us the 15 minutes through the hills to get to Haukland Beach. We quickly set up the tent on the edge of the grass, right on the beach, and then hit the trail.
Here, again, we had made a mistake. After a steep initial climb up from the road, we checked our maps and realized we had taken off from a different trailhead than we had tried to take. We weren’t headed to Holandsmelden Peak as intended, but instead to Mannen. It would have been helpful if at any point the trail would have been marked and named, but we learned quickly in Lofoten that this was simply not something one was likely to find on any trail. We could see Holandsmelden from where we stood, and it was basically the same height as the mountain we were already on, and looked out over all the same stuff, so we just kept climbing.
The trail was marked as “moderate,” but after an hour of ascent the challenge escalated quickly, with more- and more-intense bouldering required to continue forward. The views at this point were already phenomenal, so Mazz decided she had gone far enough, while Kirb continued on to reach the peak. The last 15 minutes were surprisingly difficult, with steep, muddy hillsides and large boulders to scramble up and over, but Kirb enjoyed the challenge and was proud of his accomplishment in reaching the summit. Meanwhile, Mazz made friends with a German hiker named Sönke who had driven all the way up from Lübeck with his wife. Sönke had also given up at this point, remarking that he had hiked all through the Alps in Germany and Austria and could not believe that this trail was considered “moderate.”
The beach was well-populated that afternoon, with 70° F temperatures driving a surprising number of Nordic bodies into the frigid arctic waters. Though we had found a somewhat-empty place to set up our tent in the early afternoon, by evening the area was full of other campers. We bought firewood from the little beachside kiosk and lit it up when the light started to dim, thinking that other hikers may come to join us and say hello. Our light attracted a different sort of moth: young, trouble-hungry local teens looking to get “as drunk as possible.” Kirb encountered them on the beach as he went to relieve himself in a sand dune and they tipped their bottle to him and said “Skol,” and he returned the cheers. Apparently, he said it just like a Norwegian, and they started speaking to him in their language. They were nonplussed to learn he came from Germany, then elated to learn that he was American. They loved Elvis and old American cars, and had the tattoos to prove it. The loudest of them, who was still going shirtless after a 10pm arctic swim, was carrying a half-empty bottle of rusty-orange liquid that he claimed was moonshine he had distilled, and we begrudgingly accepted a swig. It was deeply disgusting with a taste of fermented shrimp, and only later did we realize that the moonshine was likely originally mixed with orange juice that had long since gone rancid. His buddy got a bottle of the “good stuff” from the car - moonshine he had supposedly distilled with his father - and soon after his visibly-annoyed girlfriend showed up and told us that she had found and stolen the other mysterious orange liquid somewhere and had no idea what was in it. The loud one had tried to trade us beers for it, but we were already drinking our last cans. This 19-year-old kid was a true snake oil salesman in training, the closest equivalent to Ricky from Trailer Park Boys we had ever met in real life. His aggrieved girlfriend demanded that they leave the beach about 10 minutes later, and we were grateful for her. We’re pretty sure those kids never would have left our campfire otherwise.
We were happy to have done the panoramic Haukland hike while the weather was nice, because the next morning everything was drizzly and gray again. This was perfect weather to hike around the side of the beach, though, using the dirt road the farmers in this area had painstakingly blasted out of the cliffside to connect Haukland with Uttakleiv Beach on the other side of the mountains in the 1950s. It was a lovely walk for a gray day, with low clouds covering the green hillsides and sheep grazing and hiding beneath stone slabs to escape the rain. We broke camp and made lunch but still had time to kill before the 2pm bus back to Leknes (the only other bus that day came at 7:30am), and found several people had congregated around our extinguished fire pit. We had extra wood left over and gave it to a couple from Cologne who had eyed our fire the night before but decided not to join. There was another couple there from Munich, and we had a lovely conversation with them about our experiences so far on the trip. We also discussed how the vast majority of travelers in the Lofoten Islands were German; literally every tent surrounding us at Haukland was speaking Deutsch. If all the German campers have to go up to the Arctic Circle not to camp in a parking lot, maybe Germany should figure out how to let people camp that way in their own country, since everyone seems to enjoy it so much.
We resupplied in Leknes again and waited for another bus towards Svolvær. The bus area was right next to an Arctic Circle K, and we wanted a snack. We couldn’t stop thinking about those burgers from the Google review, so we decided to go and try them ourselves. To our surprise, the gas station burger shop offered gluten-free buns for an extra €2. To no surprise of anyone, the burgers at that gas station tasted no better than any other gas station hamburger we’ve ever decided to put inside of our bodies.
The original plan was to stay at Haukland Beach for two nights, but the skies had again opened up and the prospect of being relegated to our tent without anywhere dry to stretch our legs was not particularly appealing, even if we had been able to set up our tent on the beach for free - you only had to pay for parking if you had a car. The only expense came from using the bathroom, which was €2 per pop, with contactless credit card readers affixed outside the door. Lots of people were holding doors open for the next customer upon finishing their business at that campsite. There was only one sink with cold water to do dishes, and no shelter to escape to if the weather made it hard or impossible to cook with a gas stove. Which is fine - we were originally planning on wild camping anyway, so any amenity was appreciated, but the insistent rain and wind were starting to gnaw at us. So, we decided to upgrade a bit and spend the next three nights at a compound called Skårungen, which had camping, RV spots, cabins of varied fanciness, and a variety of paid leisure activities. But most importantly, they had a way for tent campers to exist indoors.
The views when you first arrive at the compound are staggering, so we were a little annoyed when we weren’t allowed to camp facing those views; they were only for RVs, and tents couldn’t camp in the grass next to RVs for some inane reason. In the end, this was fine, as who wants to pitch their tent next to an RV anyway? Instead, we were pointed towards a collection of bogs with still-nice but significantly less-great views. Only two other groups were camping there that night with tents, and bizarrely one of them was the German family who had been right next to us the night before on Haukland Beach, which was quite a distance from here with many, many other campsites in-between. The front desk gave us some wood and after dinner we made a campfire right on the edge of the water. The mom and her son joined, and we tried our best to include the youngster in our conversations by speaking German when we could. The weather turned quickly once the sky started to darken and rain forced us into our tent right at bedtime.
Stormy weather presented a new problem at this campsite. We were set up right next to the water, and the soil here wasn’t particularly deep before tent stakes rammed into rock and were bent out of place or broken. We weren’t alone in this; there was a mangled metal stake abandoned by previous campers to mark the area when we arrived. It was sopping wet here, and the combination of loose ground and intense winds meant that when things got really gusty, our now-broken and half-length partially-inserted tent stakes would occasionally fly out of the ground and make everything go slack. Putting all your rain gear on to get out of the tent in a downpour and trying to re-insert tent stakes into standing puddles with large rocks underneath is not the most enjoyable part of the camping experience. It is an experience, nonetheless.
Thankfully, the camping area had its own dedicated building with a kitchen and showers, which gave us a place to escape from the rain. We cooked and ate breakfast alongside the nice German family in the morning, and when they continued on their way we stayed in the quaint old kitchen drinking coffee and reading books while the rain pattered away outside. We figured out how to get to the nearby village of Kabelvåg to buy groceries and then back to the campsite in only about an hour, which felt like a monumental success.
When the rain stopped, we followed Alltrails to a path just a little down the main road, which was unsurprisingly unmarked and unnamed. Also unsurprisingly, it was a bog, with many sections in which you had no choice but to walk through boot-deep moss and muck. Mazz’s all-leather Meindl boots kept her feet dry, but Kirb’s leather and synthetic Gore-Tex boots were soaked within 15 minutes. The trail led up through the slanty bog to some very slippery rocks covered in black algae, then to a cute but relatively-unremarkable alpine lake. We couldn’t find anywhere up there where one would have wanted to pitch a tent, and we were happy not to have just gone exploring with our full packs looking for a nice and solitary place to free camp. There was a local teenager sprinting up the slick, hazardous route in trail runners. Norwegians are a special breed.
We were the only tent campers left at Skårungen that evening, so we felt comfortable commandeering the kitchen building as our own and using it to cook steak and potatoes and drink aquavit and play cards all evening. At one point, a nice girl from Michigan who was doing a work stay on the compound came in to tell us that there was a rainbow arching above the building outside, and we admired for a few moments before returning back to the comfort of our indoor perch. Simply being inside and dry felt like a luxury.
The sun was out again the following morning and we set off early for a hike so we could be back in time for a 2pm spa session at the compound. Of all the activities Skårungen offered, the hot tub and sauna with full panoramic views was by far the most popular and required booking days in advance, and for our 3-day stay there this was the best 90-minute time slot we could get. We weren’t sure exactly where we were headed when took off from camp, but there were a mess of trails that led in essentially the same direction towards lakes and peaks, so we crossed the highway and walked through an elementary school before ending up on a trail that was, once again with no real surprise, a bog. After 30 minutes or so of sloshing through deep standing water, the trail actually got worse, devolving into a full-on mud pit. Kirb tried to be cavalier and stomp through it, saying, “We’ve walked through worse than this,” before immediately slipping and landing on his hands like he was doing a crab walk. In some areas the path was gravel, but the rocks were laid over some kind of inflated bags to stay above the surface of the bog, and it felt squishy and unnatural to walk over. Still, it was a marked improvement from what lay beneath.
We were grateful to finally spot a sign to Tjeldbergtind along the base of the mountain - maybe the only trail marking we saw on the entire trip. It let us know that after aimlessly trudging through bogs for the last few hours, we were finally on a dedicated track. There were also pink flags dotting the sides of the trail for something called the Arctic Triple, and we learned that this route was part of a series of arctic races that Scandinavian people sprint up and down for competition. It was a steep climb, but we were happy to be climbing up a solid path. The summit rewarded us with a full 360-degree view of the area, looking down on Svolvær to the east and several lakes and the rocky coastline back towards our campsite to the southwest. From the peak, we could see the Skårungen spa sticking out on the water waiting for us, and we didn’t have very much time to get back before our reservation, so we enjoyed the views for only a short while before starting back down the other side. At the bottom, on the edge of Svolvær, we tried hitchhiking with no luck, and the bus wouldn’t show up for over an hour, so we called a cab to drive us home in 15 minutes instead of another hour and a half walking along the road.
Kirb was initially hesitant to shill out €70 for us to sit in a hot tub, but the spa at Skårungen was the main reason Mazz had wanted to go there, and Kirb is easily persuaded when it comes being warm and comfortable. After a long morning hike, 90 minutes sweating in the sauna and relaxing in the hot tub with an unobstructed view of the surrounding mountains was worth every penny. We followed up spa time with pizza and wine at the compound’s restaurant, then returned to our kitchen perch to play more cards. Several more campers had arrived that evening, and the girls who set up right next to us were joined by a very lovely dog named Magada, and Kirb made sure that they became fast friends. There was an incredible sunset that bathed everything in pink light, and all of the conditions were perfect for the Northern Lights to appear once it got dark. We made a deal with our new friends next door to wake up at different intervals throughout the night to check for them, but the lights never appeared. It would have been the icing on an otherwise perfect day: hiking up a mountain with incredible views, spa time in a fjord, a pizza party, a wild sunset, and a new dog friend. What more could you ask for?
We weren’t particularly interested in camping our final night in Svolvær for a few reasons. One, the only campsite in the area is a 30+ minute walk from the docks, and our ferry the next morning left at 7:55 am, so we would need to wake up especially early to break camp and set off on foot to catch our boat. Mazz’s back was starting to act up after a week of sleeping on the ground and walking around in bogs, so we chose not to go on a final mountain trek in Svolvær and just explore the lowlands on foot, checking out the shops for souvenirs and presents and walking across nearby connected islands for good views of the town. The whole town smelled strongly of fish, and by Norwegian standards was fairly run-down. When we’d walked enough, we randomly stopped for a drink at a place called Børsen and found that it was one of the coolest-looking bars we’d ever seen: all wood everything with 1950s Norse seafaring charm. We followed up drinks with dinner at Anker Brygge Bryggebaren and the food was simple but delicious. We got mussels with fries and aioli and thin slices of smoked whale served over creamy potato salad with red onions, and happily devoured every bite. The rest of the evening was spent watching Sandman in a comfy hotel bed, a simple luxury that felt all the more luxurious thanks to a week of sleeping outdoors in the rain.
A complementary hotel breakfast usually isn’t anything to write home about, but the spread at the Thon hotel in Svolvær was the best we’d ever seen. There were four kinds of smoked and cured fish, an entire gluten-free section for Mazz, smoothie shots, a mountain of bacon, and pretty much anything else you could think to ask for. We would have stayed and grazed indefinitely if we didn’t have a boat to catch.
This was our long travel day back, with a three-hour boat ride to Bodø, a brief bus to the airport, a flight to Oslo, a train into downtown, and then a trek to find our hotel. By the time we finally crashed down onto our hotel beds we could have easily been done for the day, but we’d never seen Oslo before. It was a glorious blue summer day, so we set off to explore some more with all the buzzing Scandinavians, outdoors in full force to enjoy the beautiful day. We checked out the great architecture at the opera house and marveled at how clean and well-designed the downtown area felt. For dinner we made our way to the Vippa food court, with a variety of different cuisines set up in a communal hall right on the water.
It was Saturday night and it felt like we should probably go out and enjoy the nightlife in the city a bit after dinner, so we looked for a bar with natural wine and headed to a place called Esaias. We watched the bartender make a cocktail for the girl ahead of us that looked incredible, so we had her make two more for us. Her unnamed creation had elderflower liqueur, cold tea that smelled like peaches, chardonnay, and a garnish of dried lime. It tasted like something the fairy folk would serve at a joyous summer festival. We made friends with the bartender, as we do, and not wanting to go back to the hotel just yet, ordered some glasses of rosé. Two cocktails and two glasses of wine cost €70 at that bar. It’s best to just remember how enjoyable the drink was and not how much is cost. That seems to hold true for experiencing most things in Norway.
The Lofoten Islands are beautiful and miserable. The payoffs of a high vantage point on a clear day were some of the most striking of any place we have explored. Conversely, we cannot think of any place with trails in such poor condition. In a way though, that’s part of the vibe of Lofoten - it’s real, unforgiving wilderness, and a “trail” is just a path through the bog that feet have stomped down since the Vikings. Very little about the nature there has been manicured and tamed, for the locals or the tourists. Almost everything about this trip felt like hard work, from the planning to the execution. We didn’t come home from vacation rested. We came home tired and in pain. But we also came home feeling accomplished: We did the whole thing without a car, and in hindsight, we don’t believe that the extra freedom a car would have afforded us was worth what it would have cost. We came to this brutal place, and we saw, but it felt like it may have conquered us in the end. It takes a Norwegian to conquer this kind of environment, and they are made of sterner stuff than us.