We docked today in Honnigsvåg on the island of Magerøya, Norway. This place is part of Finnmark, one of Norway’s counties, and the island is connected to the mainland by a subsea tunnel that is about 4 ¼ miles long and reaches a depth of nearly 700 feet below sea level. Honnigsvåg is the principal town with a population of about 2250. (The population of the whole island is only about 3000.) The principal industries are fishing (what else!) and a port for transshipment of liquified natural gas. In the summer there is also significant tourism here.
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| This is downtown Honnigsvåg |
I took a tour to Nordkapp, the most northern place on the European continent that can be reached by road. The actual furthest north spot is about one mile away at a place called Knivskjelloden (how’s that for a name?), but it can only be accessed by hiking. I’ll write more about NordKapp below but first I want to write so I’ll remember some things I learned about this place and its people.
The island is a bleak and barren place with the terrain being basically tundra covered with lichens and mosses. There is little flat land; instead there are rolling mountains with the highest only 1370 feet and at the northern edge of the island steep cliffs that drop down to the Barents Sea. During the Ice Age the place was covered with glaciers and as they receded the mountains which are volcanic became rounded with sometimes sharp ravines through which streams flow down into little lakes and fjords. It’s beautiful in a way, but I wouldn’t want to live here. In the summer there is never darkness, with 20 hours of sunlight and perhaps 4 hours of twilight. In the winter the opposite is true with 20 hours of darkness and four of twilight.
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| Little houses outside the town. I can't imagine being there in winter. |
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| This last photo with what looks like a horn sticking out of the cliff is the actual North Cape |
This part of Norway along with portions of northern Sweden and Finland, along with a very small area of Russia, is the traditional home of the Sámi people. They are an indigenous people who inhabit a region known as Sámpi. We English speakers have known them as Lapps or Lapplanders but the Sámi consider that name to be offensive. The Sámi have been fishermen, fur trappers, and sheep herders but they are best known for being reindeer herders. In April the Sámi in this part of the world bring their reindeer herd to this island because reindeer evidently like to feed on lichens and moss. The Sámi bring them from the mainland primarily by boat and allow the animals to roam freely on the island until late September when they round them up and take them back to the mainland. The animals can’t stay here over the winter because the snow and ice are too thick and hard for the deer to break through to feed. I found it interesting that when the reindeer are brought over in the spring they have their winter coat on which is white or off-white, not brown. The males have antlers in the summer but lose them in the winter. Instead it’s the females who have antlers in the winter. I guess that means that all of Santa’s reindeer must have been females. Go girls!! That’s probably more than I need to know about reindeer, but I thought it was interesting.
During WW II all of Norway was occupied by the Germans and this place was no exception. In fact, it was considered very strategic because it was close to the route that Allied ships took to bring supplies to the USSR which was our ally at the time. When the Germans eventually had to withdraw they burned every building on the island except for the little church. Many of the residents were evacuated to the mainland and those that stayed had to take refuge in traditional Sámi houses made of sod and thatch until the 1950s when reconstruction was well underway. Today there is still a NATO outpost on the island because it still occupies a strategic place, maybe even more so now that there is more focus on the Arctic and the resources there.
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| A traditional Sámi house of sod and thatch |
So, I took a ride to Nordkapp which I’ve already said is as far north as you can drive. Along the way we passed some reindeer grazing and I tried to get photos, but they aren’t great. We saw a few isolated houses along the way which I assume belong to fishermen. In the winter the road can be closed for long periods because the snow and ice can reach 15 or 20 feet. I don’t know what people living outside of Honnigsvåg do then. I’m guessing that if they can afford it they go to the south of Spain for a few weeks. We passed a few fish racks for cod to dry out, but they didn’t look very full here either.
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| These are reindeer but they don't look like Santa's |
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| Not many cod heads drying on tese racks |
At NordKapp (the North Cape) there is a large visitor center. Out at the very point above the cliff there’s a steel globe sculpture marking the northernmost point of mainland Europe. As I looked in both directions the island ended in sheer cliffs with the very cold sea below crashing into rocks at the cliff bases. It's a very dramatic coastline. We were fortunate with our visit because when we first arrived there were broken clouds with little wind. Apparently it can be quite windy there. I don’t like photos with me in them, so I took one of the globe alone. In the visitor center there is a theater which shows a short film about the birds in the area and shows scenes of the four seasons there. There are also a chapel and the northernmost post office. There was also a nice café and, of course, a gift shop. After I’d seen the sights and bought a few touristy things I went into the café and got myself a Norwegian version of a stroopwafel. As usual I didn’t get up in time for breakfast and I missed lunch because of when I had to meet for my tour, so I was hungry. I slathered it with homemade strawberry jam and it was wonderful! Our timing for the visit was perfect because by the time we had to board the bus to go back to the ship, the sky had become quite angry looking and the wind had picked up.
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| These are pictures of the land at the NordKapp Visitor Center |
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| Look at these rock cliffs and crevasses |
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| A pair of friendly trolls in the visitor center |
Back on board I had a lovely evening dining with my friend Hilary and John Baron who was a cruise director on several of my cruises and who now has some corporate position with Seabourn. He is lot of fun to be with so we laughed a lot as we ate. And of course I ended my day by going to the show performed by a very entertaining British comedian and dancing a few dances in the Club afterwards. It was a lovely day and now I have two sea days to look forward to. They are my favorites!
The day before we got to Honnigsvåg we spent in Tromsø. I'd been there before but here are a couple of photos I took from the ship while docked and of the fjord as we sailed away. It's a pretty place.
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