“At Last, the Lofoten” OR “In Cod We Trust” OR “Finally, Some Dudes”

Well, folks, we’re about done here. We have a few more summing-up posts planned, but we’ve pretty much run out of time for more trips and places to take pictures. Fortunately, we saved some great stuff for the end.

Throughout our time here in Norway, Norwegians have been asking us, “Have you been to the Lofoten Islands, yet?” The Lofoten are up in the Arctic Circle, and are where Norwegians who are inured to the rest of the Norwegian coast go to be blown away. The answer was no, we hadn’t been there yet.

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Additionally, we’ve been lucky enough to be visited by lots and lots of friends. It’s been really great, and we love them all. But, for whatever reason, they have overwhelmingly been women, who were considerate, validating, and supportive guests. It was time for socially unacceptable jokes and casual emotional cruelty. Folks, it was time for some dudes.

We solved both of these problems at once, by having a whole batch of our friends come up at once to spend a week with us in the Lofoten. The first two to arrive were our friends Tom and Matt, who met us in Trondheim. In small ways, the presence of male guests made itself apparent immediately. For example, the guest towel rack took on a more carefree appearance, and Tom needed about 25 minutes and 30 questions to turn bread, mayonnaise, salami, and cheese into sandwiches.

We did our usual Trondheim introduction, and were granted some truly exceptional weather. One modification to our usual itinerary is I was free from the usual restraints of social civility, and was able to fully bully our guests into paying $30 for a pickled herring buffet they would absolutely not enjoy.

Tom, dammit, look at the camera

For the rest of our Lofoten group, the instructions were to meet us in Bodø, which you may remember from an earlier post of ours. When we were there last, Bodø was pretty abandoned, a bleak, Arctic town that was almost, but not quite, in a really pretty spot. It seems Bodø is one of the few places in Norway that I prefer in summer — everybody was enjoying the long days, there was a critical mass of activity in the restaurants and gathering spaces, and the rocky mountains had greened up. Meeting us there were friends Walker and Margaret, and Erica and Eddie.

Sunday

Our first full day in Bodø had a lot of logistics, where we had to pick up rental cars and get to the ferry that goes between Bodø and Moskenes; from Moskenes, we did the short drive to our rented rorbuer in Reine.

Rorbuer are from the Lofoten Islands’ fishing heritage — rough cabins, painted red, to provide a simple indoor space for fishermen until they head out the next day. Now, they’re rarely used by fishermen, and they’re set up a little nicer for tourism instead. Not everything in the Lofoten has made this transition, though; cod, and particularly the technique of drying cod in the dry winds of the islands’ winter and spring, remains the centerpiece of the islands, as was immediately apparent to the eyes and nose.

We’re limping to the finish line of this sabbatical, sock-wise

That afternoon, we tried a nearby hike; it was a little sketchy, and we ended up deciding we weren’t really comfortable with it. Nevertheless, it was nice to get a sweat and some altitude, before a dinner of the very fish hanging outside.

I had come with eight pieces of Norway-themed garbage from a Trondheim gift shop to be distributed through some as-yet-unplanned contest/system/lottery; this turned into a far-too-complicated daily event in which someone would have earned the right to be that day’s “Great Decider,” and steal gifts from those who had been cast into “The Pit,” all of which was overseen by Tom as “The Cosmic Scribe,” who made grand pronouncements and wore something stupid on his head. In the end, it proved to be a pretty fun way of reviewing each day.

Monday

Monday, we woke up to the sound of the workers cutting down the fish from the drying racks outside, where the fish had been hang-drying since February; apparently, we had scheduled our trip perfectly, with the opportunity to see, wow, that’s really a lot of fish, without having to smell it all week.

Our goal was to alternate physical days with more relaxed days; Monday, we did a hike to Munkebu. I had spent a lot of time momming/abusing my warm-weather friends so they would be prepared with warm clothes (“you’re going to the goddamned arctic, you’re going to want socks!”); naturally, their first hike was probably the hottest we’ve been all year.

Tuesday

We woke up to some very different weather, with low clouds misting the mountains.

Most of us took this day to drive around and see some more of the islands. We started by heading south to the un-Googlable town of Å, where we encountered the Tørrfiskmuseum (Stockfish Museum). We were happy to pay the 50 NOK; inside we found an extremely talkative owner/docent who happily showed us movies starring himself, and talked extensively about many, many things, only some of which were stockfish. Also, there were a lot of fish heads.

Despite the best efforts of the entertainingly unfocused owner, we found answers to a lot of questions that had come up ever since we had come ashore to find racks and racks of dried fish. The cod come to the Lofoten in the winter to spawn in the warm ocean currents, where they are caught by the tens of thousands of tons. Once brought ashore, the heads, bodies, and tongues (they aren’t really tongues, they’re sort of wattles) are separated from each other. The bodies are tied together by the tail, and the heads are strung together like beads; they are all then hung from racks in the dry wind. Over the next several months, the fish dry completely and undergo some mild fermentation. In June or July, the stiff and crackly fish are cut down from the racks, separated by grade, and exported.

The best fish are shipped to the Mediterranean, where it is rehydrated and sold as bacalao; the heads go to Nigeria, where they are made into soup. The tongues are sold separately as delicacies (good article here about the children who cut the tongues).

This remains huge business in the Lofoten. Pretty much every flat piece of land was covered in wooden fish racks.

Our curiosity sated, we spent the rest of the day driving around the ridiculously beautiful islands as the clouds lifted.

Wednesday

The Fourth of July! Naturally, every good July 4th requires two things: a beach, and a cookout. Even though we were in the Arctic Circle, it seemed important to make these things happen. So, we rented two guides and some kayaks, and planned a trip to Bunes Beach. The day was cloudy and chilly, requiring drysuits, but also providing some amazing shifting mist for our trip.

I had told the kayak company that our group’s kayak experience was “varied,” which overstated it a bit; our group’s paddle over was meandering and required many reminders from our guides of which end up the paddle should be up, but it was nonetheless stunning.

We pulled in to the shore, got out of our drysuits, and walked the easy hike to the beach.

After the kayak back, the only thing left to do was a hamburger and pølse cookout on some Norwegian single-use grills with some Isbjørn beers.

Thursday

One of the nice things about this trip was the slow mornings, and after Wednesday’s all-day kayak-and-beach adventure, we were glad that we’d scheduled Thursday’s activity to start at 1pm. The night before had featured a cake for dessert that seemed like it would make a pretty good breakfast, which had unfortunately been left in the other cabin. So, the morning started with a Viking raid on the other cabin’s kitchen.

A Viking

We took a boat cruise of the Lofoten Islands, which included a trip to the “world’s strongest maelstrom” (exaggerated here by Edgar Allan Poe) and a tour of some bird islands. It’s become clear to us that if you run a tour company in the Arctic, it’s best if you provide clothing for your participants, even in the summer. So this trip provided one last opportunity to wear an “Arctic onesie.”

The cruise was followed up by a now-daily beer run, after which we had drinks on the dock amidst the midnight sun.

Friday

The walk to Ryten, one of the most beautiful hikes I’ve ever done. One last treasured blast of cold air from Norway.

The gifting on this last night ended with everybody taking a shot of Möller’s Cod Liver Oil, an economically and medically crucial export from the Lofoten (it was disappointingly fine).

Observant readers may have noticed the increasingly horrifying facial hair on Matt Mackenzie’s face. My phone has a “cutout” feature, which resulted in this bit of existential horror: