Above the Line of the Arctic

We found trees. And houses and villages, towns and cities. And more than that - people. We didn't expect to find the area above the Arctic Circle so densely populated. We certainly didn't expect to find thriving communities with tourist information offices, Nissan dealerships and museums. In fact, we were so certain that we would be entering a sort of no-man's land that we stocked up on fruits and vegetables at each city thinking it would be our last opportunity before the tundra. But there always seemed to be some other place with a Mini 1000 or a Rimi supermarket.

So when does the landscape change to those endless kilometers of grass and snow? Pretty high up. It wasn't until we passed Alta today that we started driving across flat grasslands and saw our first reindeer.

Norway's west coast is jagged. It looks like it was cut with a knife, the pieces taken out, and water pushed in. These deep fjords that creep into the land do so all the way to the very top. I wasn't expecting the roads to wind as they do around finger after finger of these inlets. So often we could see where we wanted to be, straight across the water, but it would take more than an hour to get there. And all along these fjords are fishing villages with their tall wooden racks of drying Arctic Cod. I didn't expect to see them sprinkled so liberally above the Arctic Circle.

The bigger towns and cities weren't expected either; Alta - with a population of 16,200 and Hamerfest (home of the Royal and Ancient Polar Bear Society) with 9500. What I did expect to see were mountains and these are everywhere. Tall, snow capped peaks that looked as if they were chiselled with a gigantic axe and pulling vertically from the sea. Heading north on E6 we had seemingly endless views of rugged peaks.

The area of Norway called Finmark has a surprisingly mild climate. That was unexpected too. Although it is on the same latitude as Siberia, Greenland and Alaska, the gulf stream insures that it has a long ice free coast. Summer temperatures here can reach +25C and winter along the coast is only around 0C. Only one town in Finmark is situated in the Arctic climate zone which sees an average temperature below +10C in the summer.

The island of Mageroya was where the scenery began to change; taking on more of the untouched wildness we had been expecting since we crossed the Polar line eleven days ago. Once we passed the town of Honningsvag (population 4000) where the ferry docked and passed the giant visitor service center where the bus loads of tourists stay, we drove into a world of Sami tepees (lavvos), Earthen homes, grazing reindeer and endless polar mist.

Our destination was Knivskjellodden (71 11' 08" latitude), a point beyond which there is only Arctic waves and one slightly more north, and a lot less crowded, than the highly touristy Nordkapp (71 10' 21" latitude); touted as being the northern most point you can drive to in Europe. Knivskjellodden, however, is not reachable by car. It requires a 9 km hike which begins over petrified trees. But it also requires visibility, at least greater than twenty meters. And twenty meters was all we had.

At an elevation of just over 300 meters, Mageroya became covered in fog. The drive along E69 toward the top was totally unrevealing of the landscape. Occasionally, through the white air, I could see areas of thicker white - large patches of last years snow. On the road I saw dashed white lines - our only guard rail from the sloping scree on both sides. And once a patch of brown tundra grass and water. But I couldn't tell where the water came from or where it went -a puddle, a lake, the ocean?

When we reached and located the parking area, we took a short walk out into the mist to determine the condition of the trail. The rock markers were too far apart to see one to the next though and after finding four we turned back only to work just as hard finding them again. But we were finally experiencing the Arctic we had dreamed of. Whether we made it to that one point out there didn't seem to matter. We were on the edge of a continent, above the Arctic Circle. Despite the sound of tour buses passing somewhere out in the fog, it was truly mystical.