The Perfect Trip: Norway

The Perfect Trip The Perfect Trip xxxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxx The perfect trip Take a winterNorway journey through Arctic Norway in pursuit of the northern lights WORDS ANTONY HAM | PHOTOGRAPHS PHILIP LEE HARVEY November 2010 43 The Perfect Trip ARCTIC NoRwAy 1 HURTIGRUTEN Your trip mapped out Best for coastal Sail into the Norwegian wilderness where you can hunt for crabs in Jarfjord, go cruising sledding in Karasjok and maybe catch the northern lights along the way mileS iNto your trip 0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 Ferry from tromsø to Kirkenes takes 39 hours. 2 JARfJoRd Best for catching To travel from Tromsø to Kirkenes in the dinner warmth of a Hurtigruten passenger ferry is to ease gently into the northern Norwegian wilderness. The jagged ramparts of the mainland and islands unsoiled by human 3 sNow hoTeL footprints drift past, an endless drama wrought in ice and snow. 1 Best for an unusual hurtigRuTeN sleeping experience Along the route, villages shelter in the Best for coastal deeply fissured shoreline. As the ferry cruising draws near land at night, nothing moves. King crabs, the world’s largest Moving closer, the welcoming glow of crustacean, abound in gas-lantern light in home windows Norwegian waters. Join a king crab safari for a closer look – beckons. As the boat drifts back to sea, the and taste – of this giant. retreating pinpricks of light along the shore resemble isolated outposts somewhere close to the end of the earth. It might be cold but the That these villages, the world’s Kirkenes Snow Hotel will northernmost inhabited settlements, Start by taking a Hurtigruten amaze you with its intricately survive owes much to the Hurtigruten ferry from Tromsø to Kirkenes sculptured surroundings. You’ll and take in the dramatic need to wrap up warm! fleet. The boats may possess cruise-ship scenery along the way. comforts – bars, a restaurant and open-air Jacuzzi – but their primary purpose is to 2 keep viable Norway’s Arctic north. ‘Sometimes the Hurtigruten are the only 3 way to get supplies to these villages,’ says 1 Kjell Jonassen, captain of the Hurtigruten’s 4 6 5 MS Midnatsol. ‘We’re the artery that keeps this part of the country alive.’ Captain Jonassen is still awed by the Arctic landscape: ‘Even after many years, it is still beautiful to me. I’ll never tire of it.’ 4 kIRkeNes Best for winter speed FURTHER INFORMATION 6 karasJok l Cabin accommodation in a Hurtigruten for the trip Best for traditional life 5 dog-sLeddINg from Tromso to Kirkenes costs from £267 per person, Best for Arctic full board, based on two people sharing wilderness (0844 448 7601; hurtigruten.com). The NortheRN LIghTs A tranquil landscape of dense forest and remote lakes, the Pasvik River Valley is best The indigenous Sami people explored on an exhilarating have lived in this region for snowmobile ride. more than 2,500 years. Visit a traditional Sami hut for an Dog-sledding is the perfect way to travel. Lead a team of ELLMER insight into their way of life. ELLMER Z huskies deep into the forest, NA Elusive and unpredictable, where you can admire the NA Z TI : TI : the aurora borealis can be : N stillness of Norway’s interior. N TIO difficult to catch sight of. But TIO A if you’re lucky, you might just A see this magical light show. ILLUSTR ILLUSTR AP AP The Hurtigruten’s maiden M M voyage was in 1895 – they have connected the villages to the outside November 2010 world ever since 45 The Perfect Trip Arctic NoRwAy 2 KING CRAB SAFARI (KIRKENES) Best for catching dinner mileS iNto your trip: 423 0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 Beneath the freezing surface of Jarfjord, the boat like a clumsy congregation of east of Kirkenes, the red king crab stakes penguins, grateful that they won’t be asked a strong claim to be Arctic Norway’s most to leave the relative warmth of their polar unusual inhabitant. A creature of protean suits. After what seems like an eternity, ugliness that seems to have emerged not Lars emerges in a chaos of crab legs, from the gentle waters of a Norwegian fjord pincers and human arms. but from some Jurassic epic, the king crab ‘The biggest one I caught weighed 8kg and everything about it seems founded on and was almost my height, at around gargantuan economies of scale. 170cm,’ recalls Lars. ‘Others have caught This is the world’s largest crustacean crabs that weighed 15kg, and were almost and the seven king crabs introduced two metres long.’ here from the North Pacific by Russian But size matters little when it comes to scientists in 1961 have multiplied at an eating the crabs at the end of the safari. astonishing rate. Every year, each female ‘The most important thing is that they’re king crab gives birth to around 10,000 boiled in seawater,’ says Lars. ‘That way, surviving offspring and there are now you can taste where they come from.’ 20 million in the Barents Sea alone. Such figures have alarmed FURTHER INFORMATION environmentalists, but Lars Petter Øie, l Arctic Adventure runs four-hour king crab safaris for who has been diving these waters for more £136 per person, including lunch and cold-weather than two decades, is more cautious: ‘Even clothing (arctic-adventure.no). after so many studies, the Norwegian l Rica Hotel Kirkenes This place has modern rooms, government can’t decide whether the crabs some with views over the town. You’ll appreciate the are a problem or a resource.’ under-floor heating in the bathrooms in the depths of Lars has plumped for the latter. a Norwegian winter, and there’s a good restaurant Undeterred by formidably sub-zero winter (from £140; rica.no). temperatures, Lars and his crab safari team l Kirkenes Snow Hotel (see page 48). regularly dive off the side of an inflatable Zodiac to a depth of 25 metres in search of Lars Petter Øie (above and left) has dived for crabs. They invariably do so accompanied the world’s largest by the audible gasp of the paying crustacean, the red king customers on board who shuffle around crab, for over 20 years 46 November 2010 November 2010 47 The Perfect Trip xxxxxxxxxx 3 KIRKENES 4 SNOWMOBILING (KIRKENES) SNOW HOTEL Best for winter speed Best for an unusual mileS iNto your trip: 423 sleeping experience 0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 Cut through the snow mileS iNto your trip: 423 A narrow finger of land surrounded by snowmobiles make a visit deep into the in the Pasvik River Finland and Russia, the Pasvik River valley’s heart possible, with stop-offs at Valley, home to wolves, 100 400 500 700 0 200 300 600 wolverines, brown Valley is one of the most quietly beautiful some of the cabins en route. Travelling at bears, elk and relatively of all northern Norwegian territories. up to 60 miles an hour, they are a rare Coming in out of the Arctic night and into rare birds including the Quiet, that is, until snowmobiles cut combination of exhilaration and solitude: the Kirkenes Snow Hotel is like stepping Siberian jay, pine a swathe through the snow. the wind rush of cold night air with the into a giant igloo. You are hit less with a grosbeak and redpoll The dense fir-and-spruce foliage, prospect of a glimpse of the northern sense of warmth – it is minus 4°C within blanketed in snow and interspersed with lights; the sun-kissed snow of twilight; and – than an awareness of the blue-hued tundra and remote lakes, stretches for the ringing silence of the remotest country perfection of snow and ice, created by more than 60 miles south of Kirkenes, the when the engine is switched off. nature and sculpted by man. westernmost extent of the great Taiga A popular perception of snowmobiling Every year in a frenetic three-week burst forests that reach far into Siberia. as a pursuit restricted to the young is at the start of winter, Ronny Østrem, a Throughout, secluded wooden cabins dismissed by Hans Hatle, a former former airline pilot turned co-owner of the inhabit the frozen lakeshores and forest Norwegian army officer who trained hotel, and his team fashion 25 tons of ice clearings, telling in microcosm the story British soldiers in winter warfare and who and 15,000 cubic metres of snow, working of this once-disputed frontier territory. now leads snowmobiling safaris: ‘Age is no around the clock to be ready for the first In the mid-19th century the Norwegian limitation. Our oldest snowmobiler was guests in mid-December. It’s a Herculean government, eager to colonise with people 93, and he was an excellent driver. More task and, says Ronny, a race against time: a terrain it owned in name only, offered important than a person’s age is to ‘The rooms shrink by about one centimetre free land here to impoverished farmers remember to bring your driver’s licence, every day as the snow compresses, so the from the south. In an apt metaphor for lower your shoulders and have fun.’ hotel gets smaller and smaller until it starts Norway’s transformation into one of to melt in the spring. Then we have to wait Europe’s wealthiest nations, the spartan FURTHER INFORMATION for winter to start all over again.’ huts that they built now serve as l Barents Safari (barentssafari.no) and Radius Where the Kirkenes Snow Hotel differs comfortable country cabins for the Kirkenes (radius-kirkenes.com) run three-hour from others of its kind is in its personal well-to-do of Kirkenes.

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