Lofoten Islands

Feet, Bus, Plane and Boat to the Lofoten Islands

We planned to fly out of Oslo early the next day and figured out that we would need to set our alarm for 6:00 in the morning to safely catch our plane to the Lofoten Islands.  Kaitlin set her cell phone alarm for 6:00, then went ahead and set my cell’s alarm for a minute later in case the first one wasn’t loud enough to wake us. We gave her the task of keeping both under her pillow as she is the fastest at turning them off. I was worried that a 6:00 alarm, or rather alarms, might make the other five people sleeping in the hostel room with us remember all the reasons why they hated youth hostels too.  Then we slept soundly. When morning came I was startled out of a dream into a semi-waking fog. Somebody was playing jazz. Then two people were playing jazz.  I lay there and listened for awhile. Imagine – hearing jazz this early in the morning in an Oslo youth hostel.  The seven other people trying to sleep in the room all turned over restlessly, some pulling a pillow over their ears. OhMyGoodness! It was the cell phone alarms! I rushed over to Kaitlin, pulled the pillow from over her head and hissed, “The alarms are going turn them off!”  “No they aren’t.”, she said trying to burrow further under the pillow.  I won the argument, Kaitlin turned off the jazz, and we got out of there as quietly as we could.

We checked out at the hostel’s front desk and began the day’s long list of different ways to get from here to there. First, at 6:15 in the morning, we trudged back to the train station heavy packs on our backs where we figured out to get a bus to take us to the airport. Oslo has three airports and ours was 60 km away from the city center!   The city isn’t nearly that big they just were very generous with their nomenclature.  At the airport we boarded a plane to take us to Bodø. The sky was cloudy at take off but cleared about halfway through the flight giving me the most amazing aerial views of a landscape I’ve ever seen.  Norway is a very mountainous country and the region we were flying over is also deeply cut with fiords which read as graceful blue ribbons from our height. It was mostly forest of a dark evergreen green with bands of farm fields whose bright green glowed. The tiny dots of buildings were almost all one of four colors – deep red, deep gold, black or white. There were lakes here and there, and some of the mountains were covered in glaciers.  I was in awe.

We landed in Bodø, retrieved our backpacks from the baggage claim, and set out in search of the ferry which would take us to the Lofoten Islands.  I liked Bodø, a small port town on the mainland side of the Lofotens, as we walked through it to get to the ferry which was on the other side of the town from the airport.  On our way we stopped at a gas station so that Paul could fill the empty new plastic gas container that we had brought with us all the way from Austin.  Now when we went camping we would have a backpackers stove and gas for it.

Finding the ferry was easy, finding out what time to take the ferry wasn’t.  When we got to the ferry dock there was a ferry boat right at the time the schedule said it should be. We prepared to board double checking first that we were going to Moskenes on the Lofoten Islands. The ship captain told us that no this wasn’t the boat we were looking for and he wasn’t sure when it came in but to go over in that direction (vague wave of the arm) and we would find the right boat.  The ship captain had us so enchanted that we never thought to ask for clarification on directions. Here was the white haired, intensely blue-eyed, stout sea captain with a salty air and fisherman’s way of speech that Hollywood’s talent scouts had been looking for.  We took up our backpacks and left him to look for the other ferry.  After much traipsing around the port we concluded that we had originally been in the right place. When we got back to our starting point we asked the woman behind the ferry station’s fish and chips counter when the next ferry would leave.  She told us, “Oh about 45 minutes after it docks.”  After awhile another ferry pulled up. We asked again and perfect-for-a-movie ship captain number 2 said that this boat would get into Moskenes around midnight but if we waited three more hours we could catch one that would get there before 9:00. This was because boat no 1 was stopping at other islands first, while boat no 2 was going straight over to Moskenes. Seeing as we were planning on finding a campground and setting up camp once we got to the Lofotens we opted to wait three hours in order to arrive three hours earlier than the ship that was leaving.

The next ferry did come, leaving around 6 for a 3 hour trip across the ocean to the small town of Moskenes.  By this time Paul had made a friend. We had been sitting waiting by the side of the building for some hours when Paul struck up a conversation with the other person also sitting there waiting. He was Norwegian and said his name was Ned. Ned came from Oslo, and was very shy. Once he decided that Paul was nice to talk to he stayed by his side throughout most of the ferry ride.

The ferry ride was almost as cool as the plane trip. The Lofotens are above the Arctic Circle which in mid August meant that the sun was barely setting. The sky gave no clue that it was evening.  There was a slight mist but no rain as we pulled away from Bodø. The soft light coming through the clouds turned the ocean’s surface silver which, for all its lightness of color, somehow made the water seem as deep and dark and cold as it was.  Many small islands of gray rock jutted sharply out of the dark, silvery water.  The air was chilly and the wind blew so hard that I finally had to leave the deck for the comfort of the ferry’s inside room although Kaitlin loved it so much that she stayed out in the cold salt spray almost the entire ride.

We were pretty tired when we finally disembarked. It was a great relief to see a “camping 200 meters ahead” sign as soon as we got off the ferry.  We set up camp and went to sleep.

The Lofoten Islands

It was good to be camping again.  We set our tent up on a hill far enough away from the main population of campers that we could pretend we were backwoods camping but close enough in to be able to use the water system.  When we were doing our trip planning we were told by several sources that in Norway the standard is that one can camp anywhere at all as long as it is 100 meters from a building so we figured we would just backpack camp while we were in the Lofotens bringing with us a camp stove, gas container, and water filter.  But even from the ferry it was pretty obvious that there are precious few sites 100 meters away from a building flat enough to accommodate a tent although we did see a few people doing it – mostly though the non-built-on-flat-enough land was at…our campground.  The campground itself was a bit borderline being well aware that it had an island monopoly. It cost $2 for 3 minutes of hot water and over $16 if you wanted to do a load of clothes properly… but it was really pretty and equidistant to what we wanted to do so we were happy enough to stay at the same campsite the whole time we were on the island.

Back in Austin when we were still planning on backpack camping we had filled the bottom compartment of Paul and my packs with freeze dried meals which we now began to eat down using the gas bought in Bodø to cook with.  Seeing entire backpacking compartments slowly empty themselves out was one of the thrills of our stay on the islands.  I was happy that we brought so much food with us because Lofoten food was limited and very expensive. The morning after our first camping night we asked the campground director where we could buy groceries and find an ATM. “Food in Å (pronounced “Oh”), ATM in Reine.”  Å was about 5 kilometers one direction, Reine a little farther in the other.  We needed cash to buy food so we headed to Reine.

The day was glorious and we were happy to be walking along a hiker/bike trail built beside the island’s one road. The part of the path we needed to use hugged the shore all the way to Reine.  The island of the Lofoten Islands that we visited has very little inhabitable land. Most of it is either tundra on top of a cliff or, the cliff.  The houses, highway 10, and fishing industry huddle together on a narrow band of flatter land next to the ocean.  There are many towns but they are quite small and many of the village buildings are rorbu, or small fishing cabins, that the locals use during fishing season and rent out during tourist season.  As in other parts of Norway the dominant house colors are a deep red, deep gold, white, or black and, as in other parts of Norway, the modern buildings blended in with the older ones rather seamlessly with almost no variation of size.  Some houses are better maintained than others but there does not seem to be the phenomena of the rich building huge dominating houses like there is in the US. The lawns are brilliant green often covered in severely tacky lawn ornaments. Many houses are built right up against the shore, some extending out over it with house and pier becoming joined.  Sailboats idly float on the calm harbor water and sea gulls fly overhead. The island’s interior is an amazing geography of fresh water lakes separated by steep rocky hills. (see map) It is, all of it, astonishingly pretty.

We were particularly interested to get to Reine because my dad had given me a poster for Christmas of a beautiful, beautiful village in Norway. Then, when Paul was looking up what was on our route he found that our poster picture was taken at Reine, a village right in our travel path.  So, moment of truth, did the real village look like our poster? No because it’s so much prettier in real life. All those Flickr pictures of Norway? –  the place is actually prettier than that.  In fact it got to be a bit much at times like whipped cream on top of frosting.  One of the difficulties in writing this blog is how to talk about the trip without just endlessly saying, “It was very pretty.”

Pretty is as pretty does however. Pretty doesn’t help very much when the only ATM on the island is broken after you have walked half the day to get to it.  A man arrived to fix it while we were wondering what to do next so we settled down at a picnic table to wait the process out.  We considered getting something to eat at the one restaurant in town but when Paul walked over to check it out he balked at the tub of grayish whale stew and $20 a bowl price tag. He and Kaitlin went off exploring among some tide pools while I laid my head down on the table. As I drifted off I heard the irate sounds of an Italian tourist family who had just arrived at the broken ATM. I woke up to happy Italian conversation which was my cue to check out the mini-bank as it’s called in Norway. Yes! 1400 kroner in the pocket. We bought as little as we could get away with at Reine’s one convenience store as we planned to do a more thorough shopping trip tomorrow when we would take our new gotten kroner to the grocery store in Å.

Dinner was a freeze dried meal called Jamaican BBQ chicken. I don’t recommend it. Kaitlin informed us that she needed more sleep and more food and went to bed at 8:00.  She woke up saying one word loudly, “FOOD!”  Later she claimed that this was a cry of recognition at hearing the clanks of our breakfast making and smelling omelets made with our convenience store eggs and cheese but Paul and I thought things were taking an ominous turn and we hurried off to Å’s grocery store.

The walk to Å, in the opposite direction as Reine, was just as picturesque as the day before. Å has a museum dedicated to the area’s main industry of catching and drying stockfish. We didn’t go into the museum but did peruse the books in the gift shop where I learned interesting things like – Norway has been exporting stockfish since 800 AD – and – Nigeria is one of Norway’s major trading partners  because it buys tons of stockfish heads for a soup recipe that is part of that country’s cuisine.  There was a barn full of the things that we passed with men taking the dried fish off of the drying racks and throwing them onto a tractor trailer bed to haul off.

In the end the nicest part of the Lofotens was that we stayed 4 days and 5 nights. We spent our time walking around revisiting the things we had liked the day before and talking together. One day we brought our cook stove to the high ground beyond the village of Å and cooked our lunch in the middle of tundra. Afterwards we walked to the edge of a cliff and looked down at the sea. There we saw a large school of fish. They were only tiny flashes of silver from our height, moving slowly from one area of the bay to another in a continuous gentle motion.

Bodø and the ATM

All of our confusion and misunderstanding about the outgoing ferry had us concerned that we could get confused again on our return to the mainland. Since we had a plane to catch in Bodø we decided that we should cut our stay in the Lofotens from 5 days to 4 in order to get to Bodø a day early to be sure to be at the airport on time. This change of plans had us taking the ferry to Bodø on a Saturday. We took down the tent and packed up camp thrilled that we had more room in our backpacks from using up the freeze dried meals. After I gave the extra gas in our container to some motorcyclists who were also camping at the campground we put on our packs and walked the 200 meters down the hill to the Moskenes ferry station.

I went into the information center at the ferry station to ask a few questions. I had never reconciled myself to $16 a load of laundry but couldn’t stand to not wash our clothes pretty soon so the first question I asked was, “Is there a Laundromat in Bodø?” “We don’t have Laundromats in Norway.”, pause, “You could probably do some wash at a campground.” Well we were planning on camping at the Bodø campground that night anyway, perhaps it was cheaper than Lofoten one. “Are the grocery stores open on Saturday?” “Yes until 11:00 pm.”  “Where can we find a mini-bank?” “Oh they are everywhere in Bodø.”  These last two answers weren’t actually true but they were reassuring at the time.

We had no problems catching the ferry and it was a beautiful three hour ride back to Bodø.

When we got to Bodø it was time for our longest walk with our backpacks of the trip. From the ferry to the Bodø campground was a little over 2 miles. It wasn’t a bad walk in that it wasn’t raining and the city of Bodø was interesting. We had no time pressure about setting up the tent in the dark with the sun setting so late in such a Northern sky. Our only concern was that we really needed to hit an ATM and the casual, “Oh mini-banks are everywhere in Bodø.”, was starting to seem suspicious.  We kept putting down our packs at gas stations to be told that there were no mini-banks there. Did they know of where we might find one? No not really though there might be one at the grocery store. Where was that? In the mall but the mall closes at 6 on a Saturday. It was 6:30. Were there any others? Yes probably.  We did have working credit cards with us but what we needed money for didn’t take them so we were a bit stumped. (see note at bottom of post)

Technically we didn’t need more money as long as we were willing to skimp a bit. I had counted out our bills the day before and knew that we had enough to pay for the ferry ride and to get a campsite. Our plane tickets were already paid for and there would surely (surely) be an ATM in the airport anyway.  The only thing we had to do to make it work out was not eat.

We got to the campground, paid 150 kroner for a site, and set up the tent. 150k for a campsite left me 40k to do laundry. It cost 80k to wash and dry a load of clothes but I had a plan. Paul had a plan too. He knew that he had seen an outdoor ATM on our previous walk through Bodø and wanted to see if he could find that street again.  A rock concert started up in a nearby park. This was so exciting that carloads of local teenagers began to drive past yelling and honking and throwing empty beer cans out the window in jubilation.   Kaitlin opted for re-walking Bodø with Dad rather than doing laundry with Mom. They left and I gathered up our dirty clothes and headed for the washroom.  40k to wash, 40k to dry. I could either 1. hand wash and take a gamble that the dryer worked or 2. machine wash and take a gamble that the clothes would dry over-night in the tent. Both machines looked incapable of doing much of anything. I decided on option number one and began hand washing a rather large amount of laundry. I put it into the dryer (which worked!) and began to wait for Paul and Kaitlin’s return.

It took Paul and Kaitlin 45 minutes to get to the place where he had thought he had seen an outdoor ATM. His memory was right and they cheered as they saw it from two blocks away. Paul put in his card and it spat it back out with an out of service notice. After a few minutes dejection they went into a nearby gyros and kebab restaurant to ask again where a working ATM might be.  Over the past year Paul had taken two semesters of Norwegian at UT. He worked really hard on it and learned more than one usually does with only two semesters of a language but here in Norway he still hadn’t had any chance to use his new skill because everyone who has grown up in Norway in the past 60 years has had many years of learning English in the public school system. They speak English so well that there is little patience for his attempts at Norwegian.  But this one time Paul was encountering an immigrant who didn’t speak any English. “Et det en andre minibank?” “Glass Huset.” Hmmm….They remembered a shopping arcade they had passed before with the name Glass Huset (Glass House) and walked back to it. An accessible ATM! One that worked! They took their money and returned to the kebab place to get some dinner.  By the time they got back to the campsite triumphantly waving a kebab it was past 10:00pm. We had money, clean clothes, kebabs, and a dry tent over our heads. We even had a rock concert until 1:00 in the morning.

Note on money management in rural Norway: Throughout our whole trip finding ATMs outside of Bergen or Oslo proved to be more of a task than one would expect. At times the nearest ATM could be more than half a day’s drive away even though dozens of towns lay inside that driving distance. Why so ATM averse? I don’t know really but Norwegians bank differently than Americans.  They don’t use checks and are used to having a card that works similarly to a US bank’s debit card. You take the card to the grocery store or ferry terminal etc and swipe it and, as long as your bank account has money in it, viola.  Many of these card swipe-y things also took credit cards but not consistently.  If one is paying lodging and transportation in cash there are times when hundreds of dollars are quickly flowing out (especially in Norway where almost everything is expensive by US standards…) which can be a problem because US banks have a cap on how much you can take out every day. The recommended thing for travelers to do is to set up a Norwegian bank account ASAP – which is good in theory but you need a number called a D-nummer before you can get anywhere with that plan and a D-nummer isn’t given out until you fully go through the process of registering with immigration – which can take up to 3 months. So good luck with that. My new advice is to take as much out as possible every time you see an ATM whether you need it or not, and use the credit card when you can.

Go to the Oslo Revisited for the next post.