There’s no time to rest, our journey in the Arctic Circle continues! We wasted little time in Abisko, Sweden (beyond eating candy at the hostel) after finishing the Kungsleden, and were soon on a bus headed west to Norway. It took most of the day and a couple transfers to reach the remote village of Svolvaer, which is stuck out on a ludicrously beautiful chain of jagged mountains and fjords called the Lofoten Islands off the Norwegian coast. Hold onto your butts and get ready to have your minds blown, cause there’s a reason Slartibartfast won an intergalactic award for the fjords of Norway.
True to form, we arrived in Svolvaer with only the barest outline of a plan, and spent most of that first day just trying to come up with a serviceable itinerary. Thanks to the brave translation efforts of the tourist’s information office, we eventually came up with a plan to day hike in the morning, kayak the next day, then go on an overnight hike after that. Luckily, the next day was forecast for blue skies!
In the morning, we took our sweet time and sauntered over to the nearby trailhead after breakfast. Thanks to the freakish geography of Lofoten, reaching Svolvaer’s most famous hike requires barely more sauntering than a trip to the grocery store. But the proximity to town and the super easy access proved to be deceptive, and we quickly discovered that when the Norwegians use “Strenuous” to describe a hike, they aren’t fooling around (the tourist office did warn us!). Right out of the parking lot we were scrambling up rocks and scree on our way up the 2000ft, steep ascent.
Fortunately, every vertical foot you climb just makes the view better and better as more unbelievable mountains are revealed. Near the top, the trail follows a hair-raising ridge line to the summit, and the whole town of Svolvaer and seemingly all the fjords of the world are laid out before you. Every direction features something great on it’s own, and we spent a while eating lunch and just lounging around, enjoying our time at the top. On the way back down we followed a herd of surefooted sheep through the valley, then got passed by a couple old Asian ladies on the steepest section of the descent, which I only mention cause those old ladies were 5ft tall powerhouses.
Back in town, we had dinner and shockingly expensive drinks by the water. The Norwegians apparently legislated away their seasonal drinking problems (the result of endless night in the winter) by taxing alcohol into orbit – but the high price of booze is compounded even further in remote Svolvaer where a single, casual, draft beer can run you $15! Exactly one regrettable beer later, we spent the evening researching and booking our kayak trip for the next day, as well as praying for good weather.
We must have prayed to the wrong Norse gods though, cause the next morning it was cold, raining, and the clouds had descended down low enough to reach out and touch – though perhaps that’s all the Norse gods have on offer. Under normal circumstance we might have chickened out, but we figured we were only ever going to be in Lofoten once, so we elected to go on our boat and kayak regardless. For our bravery, we were rewarded with insulated boiler suits so that we would survive tour. They piled us in the tour boat with a group of other idiots and we headed off to Lofoten’s most famous and most scenic fjord, Trollfjord. For us, it wasn’t worth the couple of hours spent bumping along the bay in the rain and fog to see it, but perhaps that’s all just more of that Norwegian ambiance.
In the afternoon, after nearly chickening out again, we continued on with the kayaking portion of our tour. The clouds were a little better offshore but it certainly wasn’t any warmer. I think that on a clear day, being out on the water with the giant peaks marching across every horizon might have been one of the highlights of the trip, but we merely tolerated paddling our asses off and didn’t see too much. At least we can say we did it! That night, we did our best to dry out at the campground, but there were few options for drying our clothes in the rain.
The next morning we got up early and rushed to the bus stop to begin the final stage of our Lofoten plans – overnight hiking part of the Lofoten Traverse trail. One thing to note about hiking in Lofoten is that there are no simple hikes – everything is remote, steep, and inaccessible – and the 30 mile section we chose was no exception. And, in addition to all that, our particular section hinged upon taking a ferry over an uncross-able section of trail, which is important to note because the ferry only made the trip once per day with absolutely no alternative way to cross. Needless to say, we really didn’t want to miss that ferry, and with this in mind we left nice and early from Svolvaer so that we would reach the trail head with ample time.
Click here to see a short video of the bikes passing us by (sound warning!)
Click here to see a short video of the band playing (sound warning!)
Or at least that was the plan. What actually happened was a bike race (the Arctic Race of Norway) closed the only road in Lofoten and we got stranded in Svolvaer until late morning, just lamenting our fate at the busstop and cursing along with several other angry tourists. At length, one of them bitched out the bus company so bad that they paid for us to all take a van taxi part way there, with the impromptu hope that we would connect up with another bus from there to our trailhead. The taxi worked out but the next bus didn’t, and we got stranded again in the town of Leknes with nothing to do but watch the race go past us. We bummed at the local library, clapped along with the cheesy live kids band, and made the best of it, but by the evening we were so helpless that we nearly gave up and illegally camped behind the local high school. Finally, a bus did finally come and take us to the trailhead – at 8pm.
If we had been anywhere else, starting at 9pm might have been a death sentence to the whole hike, but in the Arctic Circle it was merely a late start during endless dusk. At this point we had serious doubts that we would make the ferry the next day, but once we laid eyes on the views there was no doubt we were at least going to try. So, off we went into the Norwegian countryside to make it as far as we could. Around midnight we finally gave out and made camp beside a totally incongruous white sandy beach that looked more like Hawaii than Norway (if you could ignore the freezing cold).
At 6:30am, we rose to broad daylight on a cold and clear day and we booked it out of there, determined to make our boat. The day of hiking that followed was as spectacular as it was draining. The peaks and fjords of Lofoten are packed in tight, with steep passes and rugged, zig-zagging trail that finds unlikely paths between glacier-melt lakes and vertical rock walls. Around every corner is a look at something incredible, and each jagged climb brings a new view. Sometimes it looks like Hawaii, sometimes it looks like Lord of the Rings, and sometimes it looks like you’re not gonna make it.
Stopping for only the barest minimum rest, food, and gaping at the views, we hauled ass through the fantasy islands at our best pace. Even then, we made it to the dock with just 20 minutes to spare – of course, the ferry was late anyway, but that’s beside the point. Point is, we made our critical connection and had a lovely (and cold) ride across the majestic fjords. On the other end of the ride we were absolutely wiped out. Between walking late into night, the early morning start, and most of all the savage pace we set to make the ferry, we had little strength to go on.
Fortunately, (it seemed) we found an absolutely smashing campsite perched right on the fjord, not too far from the ferry stop. With rain closing in, we got the tent setup just in time to shelter from what would be the first splash of rain that night. Now, Jon and I don’t know anything about hiking in the Arctic Circle, but we aren’t complete novices – we had diligently checked the weather forecast and knew there was a 50% chance of showers overnight. We felt comfortable with that forecast, but we soon learned that “showers” in the Arctic Circle aren’t the same as showers back home. What started as a light sprinkle soon turned into lashing winds and sideways rain, and our poor ultra-light tent was suddenly way out of it’s league.
By night things were getting serious and, to save our tent from tearing or snapping a pole in the wind, we picked up the whole tent, with all our things still inside, and moved it to shelter behind a big boulder at around 10pm. Pleased with our ingenuity, we went back to sleep until a couple hours later when Jon woke up to a strange, rocking sensation around his legs. Bleary eyed, we poked around the tent and immediately discovered we were in the fjord, and the rocking we were feeling were the waves hitting the tent. I yanked back the rain fly and found the tide had come in, waaayyy in, further than we thought possible, and the whole tent was standing in 8in of rising saltwater.
No less than panicked, we rushed to get back outside and relocate the tent once again, this time in 40mph winds and heavy rain. We had to plunge our hands underwater to find the tent stakes at the corners. Jon waded in up to his knees to rescue my shoes that were literally floating away in the fjord. Now it was 2am, and we found ourselves in wind too strong for our tent and with all viable campsites literally underwater, and without a clue what to do. Desperate, we stomped a patch of reeds and tall grass as flat as we could, heavy rain pouring down the whole time, and plopped the tent down in the bushes. We didn’t sleep well after that for constant fear of the tide and that the wind would finally claim our fragile tent, so we sat up on the inside of the tent and held it up with our arms. Eventually, the weather did ease up and we caught a couple hours of sleep before sunrise.
In the morning, little evidence of the previous night’s calamity remained beyond a patch of smushed grass and some puffy clouds overhead. Just like that, the weather had returned to merely overcast and mostly pleasant. Despite our overnight adventure, we ended up surprisingly dry and with our gear unbelievably intact. A couple of double instant coffee’s later, we resumed our hike with a rough section of bouldering and an alarmingly steep climb up to the ridge. And, as bad as it had treated us, you just can’t stay mad at Lofoten with views like these.
Above the fjord where our tent had become a shitty raft (the S.S. Ssss), we found a series of high mountain lakes set on rocky terraces, surrounded by yet more jagged peaks. The trail meandered all around and between the lakes, which is where we spent most of our day hiking. Truly, this was among some of the best hiking of the entire trip. Geographically, we didn’t have that far to walk either, but the rough trail and our lack of sleep made for slow going. That was fine though, it gave us lots of time to enjoy the scenery and actually take some breaks.
Originally, we had planned to spend another night out in the tent, but with both the true nature of Norwegian weather and the limits of our tent revealed, we elected to just stay inside at some dumpy hostel. Eventually, we made it all the way back down to fjord-level to the little town of Sørvågen, where we would feast on take away sandwiches and lick our wounds.
See you in Oslo!