Velkommen til Lofoten!
At the start of the 2018 autumn holiday, we flew to Lofoten. This is a group of islands off the coast of Nordland, in the far north of Norway. The Lofoten are located above the Arctic Circle. It is a mountainous, cold, spectacular place and, let’s be honest, absolutely not a place for those who are sensitive to the cold. But we were up for it. And we have to say: Sterkt anbefalt! (That means ‘highly recommended’ in Norwegian, and of course that sounds a lot cooler right away).
We were given a rental car at Evenes airport, to take us on a long but breathtakingly beautiful route to Å, at the very tip of the island group. The mountains here rise vertically out of the sea, as if a titan once tried to arrange them neatly and then halfway through thought: ‘Oh well, this will do.’ All around us we saw fjords, peaks and the occasional stretch of water so blue it looked like it had been photoshopped using an Instagram filter.
During the week, the weather went from pouring rain to snow and back to sun again. Sometimes in just 10 minutes. Autumn is a bit of a hit and miss; Will there be sun? Will it snow? Will it rain non-stop? Or will the wind blow us away? We got a little bit of everything. Fortunately, the rental car was already equipped with winter tyres with studs, which made us feel safe.
From Å we travelled very slowly back to the north of the Lofoten. We spent the night in rorbuer – traditional Norwegian wooden fishing huts that have been converted into holiday homes. In the summer you would probably have to sell a kidney to sleep here, but in the autumn they are surprisingly affordable and widely available via Airbnb.
Even though the weather behaved like a toddler that had been given too much sugar, we decided to go for lots of walks. Because all the roads are at sea level, this means in practice that you first have to struggle uphill for an hour, after which – if you are lucky and the clouds have cleared for a moment – you are rewarded with a view that will move you to tears. So you just have to grit your teeth and bear on, but then you are rewarded with the most amazing panoramas. All those steep mountain paths were quite challenging for Tessel, 5 years old. This was the first time she was not allowed to hold on to our hands the whole time, but had to hike independently. This often led to a bit of grumbling (‘Mummy, why do we have to go uphill all the time?!’), but in the end she bravely held her own. We suspect that somewhere deep inside her lurks the soul of a true mountain hiker. Or that she simply has an iron will to earn snacks during the breaks.
