Travelling on the Coastal Ferry - headed all the way up through the Norwegian Fjords, crossing the Arctic Circle to the far North Eastern corner of Norway, close to the border with Russia. This is a 12 day round trip, catching sight of the Northern Lights(Aurora Borealis).
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| Route of Havila Cruise with stops from/to Bergen |
How to get thereThere are plenty of options to get to the starting point at Bergen. However there is only really one way of seeing the fjords, which is by boat. Various cruise companies operate part of the main routes but only 2 run the route of the old ‘mailboat’ connecting the cities,towns and villages along the coast. Before 2021 only Hurtigruten ran this service, but there is now a major rival - the Havila Krysruten line. Havila built a brand new fleet of 4 ferry/small cruise ships which are excellently equipped to high hotel standards. These ships are powered by low emission engines. These are very quiet with no smelly fumes. The engine includes an electric motor, as an auxiliary to its main natural gas power.
BERGEN
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| Bergen seen from Floyen Mountain |
ALESUND
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| Alesund- Art Nouveau architecture |
The town was largely reconstructed following a fire in 1904. The old Apothecary houses the Jugenstil Art Nouveau centre with a beautiful interior and displays.
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| Alesund-Jugenstil Art Nouveau Centre |
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| Alesund- view from hill overlooking the town |
TRONDHEIM
265 miles north of Bergen. The City is set in one of the flatter and more fertile agricultural parts of Norway.
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| Trondheim- Nidaros Cathedral Trondheim’s Nidaros Cathedral was 230 years in the making and finished in 1300. It was built over the site of the patron saint of Norway, King Olaf II. It is the most Northerly medieval cathedral in the world. A plot by the Norwegian heavy metal band ‘ Mayhem’ to blow up the cathedral was foiled in 1993.  |
| Trondheim -Bakklandet river walk |
There is a lovely old town walk down by the river.
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| Trondheim - Munkholmen island |
Munkdolmen, Monk Island is just off the coast at Trondheim. It has a chequered history, first as a Viking execution site, and later as a monastic base. Severed heads were placed facing the mouth of the fjord to ward off invaders then in later years faced to the town to discourage criminal activity by the City’s people.
Arctic Circle crossing point
The first 10 min stop of the day is at Ornes, a pretty village with a good coating of frost.
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| Ornes - early morning stop |
BODØ
550 miles from Bergen
A town just inside the Artic Circle. Come here in December and you can guarantee you won’t see the sun, and in June no night sky! Unfortunately the town was heavily bombed during World War 2. There are a number of street murals adorning the modern buildings.
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| Bodø - wall mural |
Our boat the Havila Castor was so quiet with no smelly fumes/smoke - it’s got an electric motor with battery charged up while docked in port, and topped up with natural gas whilst at sea.
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| Havila Castor cruise ship/mailboat/ferry
The boat stops at lots of little towns and villages to deliver goods and transport local people across the very challenging terrain. A 12 hour road journey between neighbouring villages is reduced to a 2 hour ferry trip. Finnsnes was our last stop before Tromsø.  TROMSØ 750 miles North of Bergen. Our arrival 2:30 pm was at Sunset. Tromsø is the largest northernmost city in the world. Its university is also the northernmost and has a student population of 16,000. The city is home to the Northern Lights observatory.  The Polar Museum tells the story of the local economy, culture and the Arctic adventurers that set out from Tromsø - including Roald Amundsen, the first man to reach the North Pole. 
Entering the Barents Sea, ice free all year round due to the effect of the Gulf Stream.  HONNINGSVÅG This is close to what the Norwegians call the North Cape and describe as the northernmost point of Europe. However it is on the Magerøya island not on the mainland. We are definitely at the top and headed East towards Russia!  To facilitate tourist traffic the island is connected by a 4 mile tunnel. The island is home to large herds of Reindeer in the Summer and they swim across the channel in the Winter to the mainland. They left before we got here, so pretty good at judging the weather.  The Pub and most other places shut up on a Winter Sunday. The dockside direction board pretty much sums up what’s here. Apparently the place is heaving with thousands of cruise ship passengers and other tourists in the Summer. They weren’t here when we passed through. Thankfully the Christmas Shop was open, nice and warm and well stocked. 
 KIRKENES The town is at the top right hand (north easternmost) corner of Norway and a few kilometres from the Russian border. It is further east than Istanbul. We turned round here to begin the journey back to Bergen. The boat has travelled 2,500 km (1500 miles) on the Northern leg of the round trip.  During the Nazi occupation the town was a major base for naval and air craft, and it was heavily bombed. The town’s population sheltered in an underground cave (entrance pictured above) during 300 air raids that destroyed all but 13 houses. The town was liberated by the Russians in 1944. War monument shown below.  
HAVØYSUND Early morning stop for handful of local travellers getting off/on and usual cargo manoeuvres.This is one of the 65 stops made by the ship on the complete round trip.    HAMMERFEST A naval base during the Nazi occupation, subjected to heavy bombing in 1944 then razed to the ground by the retreating Germans, leaving the chapel as the only building left standing.  The town is the location of the Struve Geodectic Arc(marked by the monument as an UNESCO heritage site), a meridian used in the 19th century to measure the flattening of the Earth at the poles, and not a competitor with other meridians starting from Greenwich used to navigate, and to measure time across the world.  A tunnel built in 2003 connects to the nearby island of Melkøya which is now completely taken over as a natural gas terminal and processing plant. Gas reaches the island from a 104 mile long pipeline from the Barents Sea oilfields. Liquified Natural Gas(LNG) produced on the island is then exported to world markets, and is used as the main power source onboard our ship. The island is now probably one of the ugliest in the world according to our ship’s crew. Although farms and fishermen’s houses were removed to accommodate the industrial facility, new occupants have now moved onto a man made cliff on the island - nesting members of the endangered black-legged kittiwake, making it one of the largest colonies of the species in the world.  Tromsø, which we visited on the Northbound leg and will return to briefly this evening, has recently established ‘Kittiwake Hotels’ to attract the birds to nest in similar man made cliffs away from buildings where they can become a nuisance with their constant noise and smelly droppings!
TROMSØ On return here we arrived close to Midnight, and decided to take an opportunity to attend a special concert at the old Tromsø Cathedral.  This was built in the 19th century, and is the only Protestant Cathedral in Norway made of wood. In addition Tromsø has a very modern Arctic Cathedral built in 1965, which is Evangelical Lutheran, and also the Catholic Cathedral of Our Lady.  LOFOTEN ISLANDS This is a dramatic island grouping with steep mountains rising to nearly 4,000 feet, and sheltered bays that are favoured by cod and other fish for their winter/spring spawning. 70% of Norway’s fish catch have their breeding grounds in this relatively small part of the coast. The area has some of the strongest maelstroms in the world, which are tidal or deep sea eddies/whirlpools that are strong enough to damage or destroy small ships. STOKMARNES  The town is home to the Hurtigruten museum telling the story of the original mailboat service(pictured). The museum is built around the complete hull of the 1956 Finnmark Hurtigruten ship, and also includes the passenger part of the 1912 ship that started off the mailboat coastal express. We are following the same route as these mailboat/cruise ships, which is now shared between the original Hurtigruten line and our ship line Havila.  SVOLVAER The sun does not set here between late May and mid July, and does not rise above the horizon between early December and early January. We have at last managed to catch the Northern Lights here. 
The globe pictured marks our crossing.  Sailing smoothly down the long fjords running North to South on the Norwegian coast which give good protection against the Atlantic waves.  This section of the coast, Helgeland, is considered to be one of the most scenic in Norway, with a coastal drive,the KYSTRIKSVEIEN, designated as a National Tourist Route. It involves ferry crossings as the road tracks between ocean and mountains . NESNA A small village with mail/cargo drop and a handful of local travellers embarking/departing.  SANDESSJØEN The transportation hub for the Helgeland region, with local ferries and an airport offering Summer connection to Oslo. The town is close to the Seven Sisters mountain range(pictured)  VEGA ISLANDS This island group has been awarded UNESCO World Heritage status for the agricultural/fishing traditions of the islanders which include sheltering eider ducks which nest leaving their down for the islanders to collect. The eiderdown is used in exclusive duvets.  Eider Duck Photo by Peter Prokosch https://www.grida.no/resources/12180 BRØNNØYSUND A very pretty setting for this village stop, with farmland surrounding the coastline, fringed by the mountains. This is at the southern end of the Kystrikveien coastal drive. A little way south is Torget Island with a large peak which is pierced by a large eroded hole 100 feet high. 
Return here timetabled for early morning, so most things closed, including the Rockheim, Norway’s National rock and roll museum which was a shame. Trondheim has a large number of museums and other attractions for the visitor, and this is the former capital of Viking Norway. We had a good chance to see at least some parts of the city on our outward trip a week ago (see earlier post).  Rockheim photo: Harald Øren - Wikipedia The good thing about the return journey is that we got to see places that we did not see at all on the way up because we passed through in darkness - like the Helgeland coast we went past yesterday. The ship is moving through its schedule of stops continually day and night. Today was cloudy and not much scenic to show so here’s a photo of cages holding salmon from a fish farm yesterday. We’ve also passed a lot of these today. Each cage holds from 80,000 to 200,000 fish. There are increasing concerns over the health and welfare of these fish and the impact on wild fish. The singer Bjork is leading a campaign against the expansion of fish farming on the Icelandic coast by Norway‘s fish farming companies.  KRISTIANSUND The town makes a lot of salted cod(an acquired taste) and also services a lot of the North Sea oil industry’s requirements, including the recreational needs of its workforce with its bars, restaurants and accommodation. It has a chaotic and historic still functioning boatyard museum, the Mellemværftet (https://nordmorsmusea.no/en/visit-us/kristiansund/mellemvaerftet/).  This includes a blacksmith’s workshop with all the clutter accumulated over many years.  The town is spread out over 3 islands interlinked by bridges and ferries. There is a very handy free ferry service - the Sunbåten (https://www.sundbaten.no/en/timetable) - that shuttles between the islands, a round trip that takes 20 minutes, and takes only 10 minutes walking to reach from the Coastal Express Ship terminal.
 In addition to the funicular ride we took when we started our trip, we also went to the UNESCO world heritage old town and visited its Bryggen Museum to learn about its history. The town has had repeated fires requiring almost complete reconstruction on numerous occasions over the course of a thousand years. The last major fire was in 1955. 58 wooden buildings have survived in the Bryggen district since 1702.  Staying overnight in Bergen we were able to visit the Cathedral for Sunday Service. A church was first founded on this site a thousand years ago, with previous buildings burning down several times before the current cathedral structure was formed in the 17th century.  We also went to the Kode museum which has 4 galleries showing a variety of art, silverware, antiques, including the Edvard Munch(‘The Scream’ artist) gallery and a children’s art workshop. There are a number of other museums and local attractions, which together with the bars and restaurants make Bergen an attractive location for a short stay. That’s it. 12 days, 3,000 sea miles, 65 port stops, sea speed max 16 knots (18 mph). Norway’s Fjords and Northern Lights trip - happy travelling. |