Arctic Living

They make freezing hell look so good

Rocky beach combing

This whole country is fucking bullshit gorgeous.  Top to bottom.  It's phenomenal.  Our first stop in Norway was right up the very top in a place called the Lyngen Alps.  We were 70 degrees latitude north.  That is very far into the Arctic Circle - I think the mainland of Antarctica is 70 degrees south.  Northern Norway is wild and completely stunningly beautiful.  So beautiful that you just can’t believe your eyes.  Incredible jagged mountains with glaciers spilling out of carved rock bowls right on the wild and rocky coast of the Norwegian Sea.  We travelled specifically to stay in a random little sea house with a grass roof.  How can you not love a house with a grass roof?  They seem to be a thing here too, everyone is digging the shit out of having a lawn planted on top of their houses.  

Chilly

Sometimes I like to just randomly select a location without knowing jack about it – just Air BnB search an entire country (within the narrow perimeters of your available budget) and go to the best one you can find.   This one really was the best.  As we arrived, the sun was low in the sky at 10pm at night and was slowly sinking into the sea right in front of the house.  It sat alone sticking out on the coast, perched on the edge of a pointed rock beach.  The inside smelt like wood, and all the chairs were covered in fluffy white sheepskins, plus there were a couple of reindeer hides tossed casually over seats (they actually shed a lot of hair, I'm still picking it off my clothes).  There was a wooden pine-smelling sauna downstairs, and  a fireplace in the lounge room with piles of chopped wood.  The kids basically spent 3 days feeding the fire and blowing it non stop with bellows - having a fire in the house was a totally new experience for these winter deprived youngsters, and I've since discovered that they are definitely pyromaniacs.  But by far the highlight was the view from the lounge room.  After looking at the rooves of other apartments for the last 3 years it was kicking goals for Africa. 

Arctic Summer Living

The pyros with their new favourite toy - the bellows

My 3am face says it all

90 days of weird unsettling twilight

The sunset was meant to be about 11pm (according to the weather app), but it never really moved on from dusk. It was literally Dusk to Dawn in about 10 minutes.  The bedrooms had bloody skylights so they never got dark either.  At first we were really excited about constant light, but after days of body clock confusion we felt really seedy.  It was like when you’ve been at a dance party all night long and try to go to sleep the following morning, but your head is all over the place.  The midnight sun messes with you.  Even when we had dark curtains in th next Air BnB, somehow the light gets inside your brain.  

Imagine the opposite though - The Polar Night.  Some of the locals told us that it’s constantly dark for 3 months - December, January, February.  Imagine that – not seeing the sun at all for 90 days.  Apparently when the faintest glow of sunlight appears on the horizon again some time in February everyone breaks into wild celebration (as you would)  They have festivals in the streets with everyone going bananas.  There is one Norwegian town, Rjukan (in the south), that because of it's location in a deep valley, it doesn't see the sun from mid September until late March (WTF??).  However, in true Norwegian 'shit-together style' they constructed a giant mirror on top of a hill to reflect sun into the valley.  Everyone was super stoked, as you would be I guess.  Fascinating shit.  Don't forget though, that the Norwegians have the northern lights to get them through the winter.  Lots of them sit around in outside hot tubs and watch the sky show.  Sometimes the lights come every single night in the Arctic Circle.

Who needs the sun?

Look at their mirror inspired happiness!!

The next Air BnB - not bad

After leaving Lyngen and our little grass roofed dwelling, we drove 2 hours south, and stayed for 3 nights on a fjord just outside the most northern city in the world – Tromso.  Incidentally it is as cool as - Norwegian style, they can't bloody help it.  It has a full underground road system – roundabouts, lanes, carparks, all located below the city.  They also have full GPS satellite and Internet reception deep underground (told you - total shit together).  They must need it in winter - it gets well below zero (-10 degrees Celsius), and inland it can get as low as 30 degrees below.  It seems like theres a lot of snow as well, but no ski mountains - which means no resorts and no floodlights for day skiing during the pitch-black mid winter months.  Apparently when it gets a bit lighter, everyone just hikes up the mountains wherever they feel like it and skis down.  No cable cars, no lifts, no rope tows, no trails.  Just free style.  Theres no way I could ever do that.  I once hiked up a mountain in Japan when the lifts weren't working and dripped a river of sweat everywhere and had to faceplant the snow for an hour when I finally made it to the top.  I nearly called Search and Rescue just to massage my hammies.  The Norwegians do it for fun.

Sunset in front of our place

Stay back Fatty

There are also some pretty hefty Troll rumours up that way, and that's no wonder - they're just sitting up there in the dark for months freaking each other out.  Trolls or jötunn (*giants) feature widely in Scandinavian mythology  as do the Huldrefolk - hidden folk.  In some stories they are described as monsters with a particular fondness for human flesh (excellent!), while some stories describe them as not being particularly hideous but instead they are old and strong but kind of thickies (I'm going with these bad boys over the flesh eaters).  I don't think your average person on the streets believes in mythical creatures like the Icelanders do, but there are certain concessions to the widely held belief that Trolls live in a mountain behind Tromso.  Apparently the trolls turn to stone when the sunlight hits them, so they must really dig the winter up there.  Also lightening is said to kill them and people believe that the absence of trolls in this day and age is a reflection of the accuracy of lightening strikes.  Ok then.....  

Is that over 5% alcohol content my excited Viking reveller? 

Excessive drinking cannot explain these tendencies for fairy tales as Norwegians live in an alcohol prison.  You can’t drink publicly (except in bars obviously) – even drinking on your own balcony is a no no.  Buying alcohol from the shop is extremely complicated - basically you can only buy wine and spirits at special government owned shops before a certain time (6pm during the week, and 3pm on Saturdays, no buying in Sundays).  Beer has it's own set of rules again.  You have to plan your boozing in advance. Imagine needing a timetable and a list of instructions every time you felt like having a drink?  It would be so annoying.  And it’s expensive, really expensive.  My husband made the fatal error of drinking about 10 beers on a night out in Oslo a couple of years ago.  He neglected to realise before he got the bill that they were $25 a glass.

The marble penis equivalent of the natural world

It was time to head further south - goodbye to the eternal day, hello to more retina burning scenes of natural beauty.  The next stop was the Loftoten islands - an incredible archipelago connected by bridges and tunnels and stretching for hundreds of kilometres.  While still in the Arctic Circle these islands have a freakishly warm climate, and are without a doubt one of the most stunning places on the planet.  Your eyes get overwhelmed with the beauty of the place so that it becomes a bit much - sort of like when you’re at The Louvre in Paris or the Prado in Madrid.  You see so many incredible treasures that you become irritated by the over exposure to beauty.  You walk into another hall of treasures, and you’re like “Another fucking 10 foot ancient Greek statue of Neptune??  Seriously? - Carve something else - a giant frog,  a chicken nugget, anything....there's only so many carved marble penises you can handle in one afternoon.  Well, The Lofoten Islands are the natural version of that over exposure, as is Norway in general really.  It just keeps getting more beautiful.  My eyes can't take it - they need to be reset by seeing something trashy, like Kimmy K in a leopard skin latex bikini, or else something repulsive like a used bloody condom on the floor of a filthy public toilet.  Fjords get fucked! No more waterfalls, no more!  But of course there was more.....there's always more.

I'd rather see Kardashian snatch