The Lofoten Islands
Norway week 5
We booked a bed in a hostel close by the ferry port in readiness for an early morning crossing. It was ideally placed, practical and the beds were comfortable. However, with the benefit of 24 hour daylight, roadworks started up just outside as we went to bed around 10pm until 6am, the grinding, vibrations of scraping back the road and re-surfacing reverberated through the building through out the night. It wasn’t a great start to the next day…
Puffy eyed and (me) feeling a little grumpy we set sail…first finding seats with a reasonable view, then getting coffees and yoghurts from the buffet…but before I could sit down and start my breakfast I was in the grip of the mountain seascape all around me. It was simply breathtaking. Vertical mountain ranges shooting straight up from the sea, in deep purples, auburns and ochre. The sea changing colour from shades of cerulean blue green to deep violets and almost black. Everything shape shifting as we sailed past…I spent the entire three hour trip sketching in my books moving between the front deck and back, watching Bodo recede and Lofoten grow. Davie spent much of his time tucked up inside…and when he did venture out he spotted a whale straight away. We saw it breach the surface a couple of times and blow water spouts and then simply disappear. Such a magical treat.
The excitement grew as we drew closer to the harbour at Moskenes and the scale of the mountains became more apparent as houses, bridges and roads gradually came into focus but appeared minutely small against the towering backdrop. There’s been a lot of wows for me on this trip but that journey into Lofoten, is probably top of the list.
We spent a week exploring the islands and I continued to draw the fascinating mountain formations. We visited preserved quaint old fishing villages, discovering surprising scenery round every bend and watched sea eagles lazily fly over fjords. On one walk we came across four waxwings in a tree just a few feet from us, close enough to see their peachy bouffants and all their markings including tails that looked like they’d been dipped in pots of bright yellow paint.
I’ve also enjoyed discovering the arctic wildflowers that are in full bloom just now…it’s always a thrill for me to meet a new plant for the first time and try and work out what it is.
The fish racks are a stand-out feature on Lofoten, fascinating but thankfully most had been divested of their stock. Some still remained, hanging bodies macerated by the winter winds, heads in open grimaces reminiscent of Munch’s scream.
The Lofoten Gallery in Henningsvaer is a gem of a place with a collection of 19th-20th century paintings from the golden era of painting on the islands, depicting the landscape and lives of the fishing folk inhabiting it. I was also inspired by the large scale watercolour paintings, by contemporary Swedish artist Lars Lerin, made during the ten years he lived on the islands…also documenting the landscape and the now more industrial fishing industry.
In a museum of a completely different kind we came across some of the oddest things. The war museum in Svolvaer houses the collection started by one man in the sixties which consists of hundreds, probably thousands, of items related to the German occupation of Norway in World War II. The SS had headquarters in Svolvaer and seemingly had everything they used stamped with their own insignia or the swastika, from crockery to cigarette packs and lighters…to their own special edition Christmas baubles! These for me sat in stark contrast to the contents of another cabinet, the tiniest hand stitched books and an over patched set of pyjamas that had belonged to Kari (a female Norwegian prisoner held in the SS prison Grini) on which she embroidered ‘I want to go home’. Kari survived, by the way, living into old age.
