Tag Archives: fjord

Birtavarre, Norway

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After chatting with Christian, our campground host, about how best to see aurora, we put in a concerted effort last night. It was cloudy, but there were patches of sky visible most of the time, and we hoped that the cloud might just clear away. It didn’t, but we drove 8kms out of the village to the end of the (cleared) road to see if it was any better there. It wasn’t, but along the way we noticed that most of the houses had lights on inside – when we drove along here in summer, we had assumed that most of the houses were just holiday places, but apparently not. The Scandinavians have a lovely tradition of putting a small light or a standard lamp in every window. Around Christmas and New Year, there were a lot of decorative lights,  nearly all of those have gone now, but there are still lights in a lot of windows. And indoor plants too.

We set the alarm to wake up every 2 hours overnight to check the sky and make sure we weren’t missing anything. At 5am, we both saw Lights behind the clouds, but the cloud was too thick to give us a decent show. We gave up after that and slept in until dawn … at 9am.

Greg walked around the campground this morning, taking some of the photos that are in the previous post. There are moose/s around here. I saw one last night and Christian showed us bare patches on trees around the cabin where they had stripped the bark off to eat. There are footprints around the cabin, and I’m being careful when I go outside in the dark – I don’t really want to meet a moose up close. We donned several layers of thermals and other clothes and walked into the village, which has 2 ‘supermarkets’, a car mechanic, a pretty church and probably a few other shops that open when there are more tourists around. The mobile library bus was at one of the supermarkets when we were there.

January is the worst month, according to Christian.Long, dark, too cold to snow and not enough snow to make things interesting. December is good because of Christmas, and February is good because the days are longer and the snow sports people start arriving to do their snow thing.

Tonight, the sky is completely clear and we’re hopeful. It’s our last night here, tomorrow (Tuesday) we have to do the 1600km drive back to Stockholm, which will mean a very long day’s driving, a stop somewhere along the way for some sleep and an early start on Wednesday to get the rest of the way before midday. And then we fly to Dubai for a couple of days to thaw out before heading home on Friday night.

Trees with the bark stripped and eaten by moose
Greg sitting out in the snow watching for aurora

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Mad Dogs and Fishermen

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…. go out in the winter dark. Apologies to any fishermen reading (*waves to Ian Banks and Mark Nash*), but really they must be some of the craziest, most dedicated people alive.  We have seen them ice fishing on frozen lakes where they have to use big ice drills to cut a hole in the ice in order to fish, and today as we were driving out of Tromso, there they were standing on the bank of the fjord with the temperature hovering around -15C. I can’t even imagine how they managed to stand still for more than a couple of minutes, let alone put tiny pieces of bait on a hook when it’s that cold. I do admire their dedication though.

So we spent a couple of nights in Tromso, but had no luck finding any Lights. The first night, we drove across to Kvaloya Island and found a dark spot with views across the fjord, but didn’t see anything. Last night we didn’t even bother going out looking …. and of course there were some Lights where we’d looked the night before, but only for 30 minutes or so, so even if we had gone back out, we might have missed them. It can be a very frustrating pursuit, trying to find these darned Lights.

We liked being back in Tromso, especially as we didn’t get a parking ticket this time. But parking in a parking station for a couple of days cost nearly $40. Cheap hotels don’t have parking, and the least expensive hotel that did have parking was an extra $100 per night, so using a parking station was the best option for us. We wandered around the city centre yesterday morning, browsing in an electrical store and a sports store that had a winter sale. We don’t need anything, but it was interesting to see just how many different kinds of thermals they sold. Merino thermals were around $40, which seems cheap compared with Australian prices, but we already have 3 sets each and I’ve been really happy with the polyamide ones we got at the Columbia sale just before we left. Much more comfortable than the polypropylene ones I’ve had for …. almost ever.

The Tromso library is a magnificent new building that has great views over the fjord and looks across the water to the beautiful Arctic Cathedral. The Library is 4 or 5 storeys with a glass front to take advantage of the view and the light. As always when I’m visiting a library in a foreign country, I headed to the English language section and looked to see how many Tim Winton books they had …. only one, Dirt Music, but I was happy to see that.  The library is open every day and has lots of spaces for sitting, reading, using computers , accessing newspapers and magazines and, of course, borrowing books. It’s right next door to the local cinema.

We fly to Dubai on Wednesday, so we have a couple of days left before we have to take the rental car back and catch a plane. We’re spending them in a tiny cabin at Birtavarre (you can see some photos here), which is at the end of a fjord 170kms east of Tromso (much less as the crow flies …. those pesky fjords!), and about 80kms north of the Finnish border. We drove through here on our way to Nordkapp, but don’t really remember it as it was just another tiny village on the edge of yet another fjord.  We’re the only ones in the campground and it’s the usual Norwegian cabin set up – a couple of single beds, small table, 2 chairs, electric hotplate and this one also has a fridge which is a bonus, although we don’t really need it as we have our own, and it’s still -15C outside. There is a huge mountain right behind us, and one of my first thoughts when I saw it was ‘oh, I guess they don’t have avalanches here’. There’s not much snow on the mountain at the moment anyway. Our host, Christian, is a very helpful man who speaks excellent English and has told us quite a lot about the Lights and where to find them around here. He was born on the property when it was a farm, and has spent most of his life here, apart from a few years in Oslo. He and his family also own a house in Italy and they spend time there as well. He still farms some of the land, but the campground and cabins have taken over from farming as his main occupation.

It’s currently cloudy outside, but we’re hopeful ….

Frozen Waterfalls
Frozen Waterfalls
Fjord south of Tromso
Fjord south of Tromso

 

The narrow ends of the Fjords have started to freeze over
The narrow ends of the Fjords have started to freeze over
The sun never made it over the horizon, but its starting to get dark at 1pm
The sun never made it over the horizon, but its starting to get dark at 1pm

 

Birtavarre Campground, our cabin is behind our white car, we are the only guests
Birtavarre Campground, our cabin is behind our white car, we are the only guests
The sunrise that is south of us showing up on above the mountains of the fjord at Birtavarre
The sunrise that is south of us showing up on above the mountains of the fjord at Birtavarre
River behind the campground at birtavarre
River behind the campground at birtavarre
Sleds for sale at the local Coop supermarket
Sleds for sale at the local Coop supermarket

 

 

 

 

A day trip to Narvik in Norway

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We spent most of yesterday in the apartment in Katterjokk, doing exciting stuff like washing clothes, catching up on what’s happening on the interwebz and cooking a delicious dinner of pulled pork and vegetables. We tried to buy more pulled pork at the supermarket today but they have sold out. Now we’ll be looking for it every time we go into a Swedish supermarket. We ventured out last night to do some aurora-watching, but even though it was a very clear (and cold, down to -7C!) night, there wasn’t much solar activity and the aurora weren’t all that exciting.

So today we were ready to do some exploring and decided to drive to Narvik, which is 45kms away. It still amuses me that we can do a day trip to another country, which probably just means I’m easily amused. As soon as we got across into Norway, the countryside changed – it became more mountainous, and where this part of Sweden is mostly unpopulated outside the towns and villages, in Norway there are houses, huts and holiday cottages dotted all over the place. The sky was full of pink clouds that look like sunrise/sunset clouds, even though it was 11am and at the moment the sun doesn’t rise or set at all. I did find out that the sun will rise in Narvik on Tuesday for the first time in a month … and then it will set 30 minutes later. We’ll be watching for it  on Tuesday, but I’m not sure when it actually rises here. We’ll let you know.

We drove to Narvik and on the way I remembered that Greg had really enjoyed Lefse, a Norwegian pastry, when we were here 6 months ago, so we made it our mission to find some for him. Except that all the shops are closed on a Sunday and we had both completely forgotten that. So we walked around the city centre for a few blocks, trying to walk on grit and not to slip on the icy footpaths. It’s warmer in Narvik than in Katterjokk, and not as snowy, probably because it’s located on a huge fjord which gets warm(ish) water from the Gulf Stream. As we walked, it started getting dark and we loved looking at all the houses and lights perched along the sides of the fjord. Very pretty. There is a ski slope just above the town and we saw people skiing, but the real ski season doesn’t start for another month or so when there is more snow. The checkout operator at the little supermarket here told us that it can get down to -40C, and Greg has just read that the snow around here can last from late September to May!

We drove back to the apartment with the 63 Norwegian kronor ($12) in coins that I had brought from Australia, so I guess we can regard it as possibly the cheapest trip to Norway ever! We’re planning the next part of our trip, and the choices were to go to Norway or Finland. Just those few hours in Narvik reminded us of how expensive Norway is …so we’re heading east to Finland. We want to stay inside the Arctic Circle, in the hope of seeing more Lights, and have booked a cottage just across the border for a few nights.

Dawn at 11am – except we will not actually  see the sun rise over the horizon for a few more days. We last saw the sun a week ago.
Going for a drive is a twenty minute operation. Get the car started run it for 15 minutes in the -7C temperature then scrape the rest of the ice of the windscreen, so you actually see out of the car.
The studded winter tyres that came with the hire car. The metal spikes improve the grip on the icy roads
Main street in Narvik. Carefully walking down the very icy footpaths. Many of the locals were wearing spikes that fit over their shoes and give them better grip in the ice.
Reminding ourselves how expensive Norway is.The large pizza at the top equates to $40 Australian Dollars for just one Pizza.

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Christmas drinks Glogg which is alcoholic and drunk warm, and Julmust which is non-alcoholic and drunk at Christmas and Easter
Christmas drinks in Sweden- Glogg which is alcoholic and drunk warm, and Julmust which is non-alcoholic and drunk at Christmas and Easter