Arctic Circling

We are ten days into our trek to the Arctic Circle and supplies are running low. The bourbon bottle is down to about one-quarter full and housekeeping hasn’t brought any fresh water in over 12 hours. On the plus side, we are now headed south and the temperature is a balmy 3º Celsius. The heat wave has caused the ice to melt sufficiently to create nearly ideal conditions for broken ankles, wrists, and the odd concussion. As we approach the North Sea our vessel is starting to pitch and yaw in the wind and waves, while passengers dance drunkenly along the corridors.

A few days ago we traveled in the opposite direction, from Bergen up to Alta. Bergen is a postcard perfect little city on the Norwegian coast, which is mostly what Norway is made of – coast, that is. Norway is one long coastline west of Finland, riven by fjords, a profusion of deep wounds between the mountains that allow ships passage to the interior and glacial waters an outlet to the seas. Downtown Bergen is on a peninsula projecting into the By fjord. The city is the second-largest in Norway, and former capital. It’s been around since 1100-something.

In the 14^th century Bergen was invaded by German merchants, a gang called ‘the Hanseatic League,” who organized everything according to the solid business principle that all trade must fairly and squarely benefit Germany. (Imagine, if you will, being invaded by a hoard of German accountants. Shudder.) Bergen bounds a pair of harbors where fish was (and is) off-loaded and trafficked. In years past the fish – cod mostly – was set out on A-frame racks to dry, and allegedly remained edible in that form for up to 25 years. (Some might argue that dried cod is never edible; I am hard-pressed to disagree.)

In the halcyon days of the 14^th century, Bergen fishermen were men, and contact with women was forbidden. The reason for this segregation is unclear, but I suspect a woman had her hand in it. The men lived in drafty wooden dormitories on the harborside which burned down with unsurprising regularity. Grown men went to out on the boats while younger fellows (as young as nine years old) stayed behind and practiced earning their Lord-of-the-Flies merit badges. One test of his mettle was to hang a boy upside down over a fire, and when suitably warm and choked with smoke, toss him into the nearly frozen harbor. The ones who survived were allowed to unload the dead fish when the boats returned to dock, sort them according to size, and hang them on the drying racks.

As mentioned, from Bergen we sailed northward past the Arctic Circle to a town called Alta. Alta is the northernmost point for, well, pretty much anything. In Germanic languages such as English “Alta” is a prefix to words indicating “high” or “elevated,” but Alta, Norway is named for a fjord named “Altafjorden,” which may have something to do with swans, or not. Check your Wikipedia. It also is not the feminine for Alto, as you Romance linguists might suspect. (“Alta, alta, mi amore!” Nope.)

Like many of the towns and cities in Northern Norway, most of the construction in Alta is relatively new – within the past 75 years or so. That’s because those pesky Germans won’t leave Norway the hell alone. The most recent invasion, AKA World War II, resulted in the Germans getting their best battleship destroyed (the Tirpitz, sister ship to the Bismark) and their butts kicked off the property. In a snit, they burned down everything on their way out of town.

Alta is a pleasant place, snowbound still in February, an assortment of frame houses and shops, with the bulk of the main downtown mall built underground. Other than spreading some gravel here and there after plowing, no chemicals are used to melt the snow/ice on the sidewalks and roads. Occasionally but rarely you will run into a building with a heated sidewalk. As is the case throughout Norway (or, at least, the parts we visited) drivers on the road will stop to let you cross any road, anywhere, any time. Some of the elderly among you may harken back to a time many years ago when such behavior was common in places like California.

Alta is also a place where new high-end snowmobiles come equipped with not one but two rifle cases, one on either side of the rear seat. On the Wikipedia list of guns per 100 people by country, Norway comes in 17^th, seven places behind Finland at 10^th. These countries have many bears and wolves and edible species of deer. In the US we have many dangerous people in our midst, gangsters and killers – often in the employ of the government – so it’s understandable that we’re number one.

Perhaps the most notable architecture in Alta is their Northern Lights Cathedral (they call it a cathedral, but it isn’t, technically) – a titanium-covered structure that spirals upwards into the Northern Lights. At least, that’s how it is depicted in the ads.

(By DXR - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=41186049)

Speaking of which, the Northern Lights are a big draw. It is a curiosity of nature that people with the inclination to travel will board a ship and cross the North Sea In The Middle of Damned Winter to experience a light show. The vast majority of these travelers were teens in the 1960s, so maybe light shows are in our blood.

Failing to observe any Auroras in Alta, we travelled south to Tromsø and thence to Narvik. Those fine places will be reviewed in my next post. You’ll learn all about the importance of Norwegian pizza and a further discussion the Northern Lights – real, or the Loch Ness Monster of Arctic Tourist Agencies?