Trip to Lofoten Islands - 6.-11.4.

At night, we crossed the polar circle by bus. But we could not go to the monument indicated by this sighn since the snow was too high. It had covered the monument.



The day we had to travel back to Trondheim, the rain started. So we had had great luck with the weather throughout our trip! :-)

... and biking with some very good bikes we rented there. On Lofoten Islands, there is a village, whose name consists of only one letter: it is pronounced "O".





The next day, we went hiking...

... since weather is rather changing there.

We left exacly at the right time...


While waiting for the boat, I collected colorful shells for Sybille and whoever else will be interested.

Some people have summer houses at this nice spot. There is only one lady who lives there permanently. But she does not like visitors as one told us. So, we did not visit her. ;-)

Then we went back.



The valley was connected to the fjord! All the others did not see what we saw. I was very happy that we had riked this climbing.




Antonio, a Spanish, and me decided to climb a bit higher until the snow and ice level started to have a better overview.




See the color of the water and how small the people are as compared to the overwhelming mountains!




As we came there, the weather started to clear up.



New day, new activities. Our group went on a boat trip to a beautiful beach.

The rest of the dry fish is mainly exported to Southern Europe, and there mainly Italy. I expected the local fishermen to be rather poor. But as one young man told me, this is not at all the case since the sold fish is very expensive.

I walked around a bit to see how the village looks like and came to a fish processing "company" (very small-scale). Amazing how big these fish heads are! I came to know that they are eaten - in South Africa, they are seen as something delicious and therefore very expensive.


Finally, we arrived at the red cabins called "Rorbuer" in the small village Reine.



It was very interesting. For example, the guide told us that it was no problem for women to become a Viking at that time. If she wanted to, she was allowed to start to learn how to fight, to fish, to sail,... However, if a man wanted to do more female activities like sewing or housework, he would have been excluded or even killed. That is because at that time, the male gender was seen as something more valuable.
After the guided tour, they supplied us with soup, bread and drinks, which was perfect as it was rather cold outside.

Then we went to the Viking museum in Borg. It is an old building, from which they found parts during excavations and rebuilt it.

Good to have bought a proper rain jacket.

Below the fish that is hangig for drying. The seagulls are always thankful.


The fisherman had just finished hanging up fresh fish when I talked to them and took the picture. Some colorful dots in the landscape - maybe one of the reasons why people in Norway wear many different bright colors when the weather is bad.

Having landed in Svolvær by ferry, we drove to a typical fisherman's village. That means very calm, only a few houses and a lot of fish (and fish smell! ;-) ... like on nearly whole Lofoten Islands) all around.
Even if the weather was cloudy and a bit rainy, this did somehow match the rough landscape.

The weather forecast for the trip did not look that promising when we left Trondheim. We went by bus and ferry, which took us in total maybe 20 hours or so. But as the sun gently shining through the clouds indicated already at the very beginning on the ferry, we would be very lucky...