Halfway

From Fauske, we took the ferry to Lofoten, while the weather was still quite grey, wet and cold. We found a nice spot at Kabelvåg camping, centrally located on the islands.

After one night of sleep, it was time to celebrate the 40th birthday of Gijs with a nice breakfast and after that, we went to visit Lofotr, the viking museum, with an impressive, newly build long house and a viking boat. Unfortunately, we couldn't help rowing the boat, as the season hadn't really started yet, but we did have the opportunity to shoot a few arrows.

The next day, we went to visit the local aquarium and spent a relaxing day on the campsite. On our last Lofoten day, we went to visit the former fishing village of Å. Close to Å, we got directed off the road, without any explanation. Turned out that the Norwegian king and queen where visiting Lofoten on that exact day. Å was one of the villages that was well know for stockfish production: cod dried in cold air. The complete village is a museum, with several old buildings, like fishermen houses (small living spaces with small beds!), a former factory to produce cod-liver oil, the post office, boat house and much more. The stockfish museum didn't accept card payments, so we weren't able to visit that one, unfortunately...

After Lofoten, we decided to move a little bit more north, towards Västerålen, close to Andenes, a great place for whale watching. The first day on again a very nice camping spot, the weather was still very bad, with very high wind velocities (proven by a facebook movie of a caravan been blown of a bridge on Lofoten that same day...). So, we visited Spaceship Aurora, a disappointing museum, with an interesting movie about Aurora Borealis (Northern lights) however. The second day, Gijs and Ilan decided to go for it: a whale watching tour in the late afternoon. A Swiss camping neighbour did become really sea sick that same morning, so Inge was very glad that Gwyn was too young to join. Before the trip, we joined a very interesting tour in the whale museum, learning a lot about whales and their habits (only males here, the females stay in warmer waters around the equator, a whale skeleton showing the size of the animals,...). Our whale watching trip was quite succesful: no sea sickness (although a lot of people did get sick) and we saw 3 whales from close by, and a dozen others from a distance!

With this absolute highlight, our trip in Norway came to an end, bringing us back to Sweden. Perfect planning, with some luck, as this was also the halfway point in time. An unusually long drive brought us to Kiruna, a town with an interesting story: since 1890 has iron been mined next to this town, with a lot of succes, but part of the town does become uninhabitable over time. Result: the company (government owned) pays for the build of a new town on the other side and about 1000 houses will be demolished; about 20 historical houses will actually be moved. The visit to the mines was a very impressive experience!

In the late afternoon, we went to the 'summer part' of the Ice hotel in Kiruna. Part of the hotel, and the bar, are preserved during summer. We had a drink (alcoholic drinks work best in ice glasses!) in insulating clothes and, when leaving, experienced the outside temperature as being warm!