No sun but artsy light anyway

June 23rd - 25th Engenes - Finnsnes

The weather forecast lead to me searching for a harbour suited for sothwesterlies preferably at a place where I wanted to stay for a couple of days. The next place over seemed a little seemed  lacking a little in the latter departement so I chose to start early to get further north to a larger place.

I motored through a this landscape with high mountains still with some snow left in often mirror flat seas. 

Sometimes there were openings in the clouds that let more of the sun through creating moods that I'm only partly able to convert to zeros and ones through my camera.

This is fairly protected area so where ever it is flat enough, i.e. most of this stretch, people have settled. Some of the houses are still lived in and the farmland used, some is converted into holiday homes and a fes is abandoned. 

The marina I ended up in lies more or less under the Gisund bride to Senja. A majestic building, but quite a noisy neighbour. 

Even if the weather wasn't the best I got different quite amazing light conditions sometimes.

The highest island

To be able to work from the boat I need excellent mobile phone coverage from the provider that my employer has chosen for us. So when deciding destination for the day I study maps showing coverage and trying to assess whether I will have problems staying connected during the day. In Harstad I lost the connection frequently despite the map showing excellent coverage and the phone showing the maximum number of bars for signal strength. 

So it was with some trepidation I chose to sail to Engenes on the island Andørja since the coverage seemed to be good but not excellent. However the day I worked from the boat there I had no problems od good speed on the connection. 

But fist I had to sail there. At first after I left the very protected waters of Harstadbotn I had good wind for sailing. From the direction I wanted to go but good wind anyhow and since I had been at the dock for almost av fortnight I grabbed the chance even if that ment tacking back and forth. The tacking let men get fairly close to the medieval church at Trondenes. In practice this is where my career as a musician ended in 1988. To be honest I was far from good enough to even imagine music as a carer for me but for fun I played baritone in a couple of marching bands during my youth. The last one was the year I lived on Måsøy in Finnmark Måsøy with at that time 60 inhabitants was too small for a marching band, but I joined the band at the neighboring island and main village of the municipality Havøysund. That year Måsøy municipality was chosen as to highlight its culture at the Festival of North Norway. so even the amateur marching band. So there I was not a very good amateur baritone player playing a radio broadcasted church concert in the highly professional main culture event of Northern Norway. I heard a rerun of the concert a couple of days later and to my recollection it we were quite good. But since I had a microphone directly above the bell of mye horn I could hear all mistakes I made.

Langlitinden hidden behind Skarstinden behind the boathouse is claimed to be the highest mountain on an island in Norway and in Scandinavia.If Norway and Scandinavia is regarded as only parts that is on of adjacent to the Scandinavian peninsula this is correct. But the island of Jan Mayen in the midle of the North Atlantic is a part of Norway and not a dependent territory, and the volcano Beerenberg that onsitxtem ost of that island is 2277 m, And even if Jan Mayen might not be considered a part of Scandinavia (or just forgotten), many regard Iceland as a part of Scandinavia and  its highest mountain Hvannadalshnjúkur is 2110 m. Thus Andørjas the claim to fame as the highest island is mostly dependent on the eyes of the beholder.

But on a wind and cloudless day it is a real gem.

On a 2d map it seems like the fjord Straumsbotn almost cuts the island in two, in reality the isthmus at the end of the fjord is over 500 m at its lowest so there is still a lot of stone to remove to cut the island in two. With more several peaks above 1000 m in a narrow fjord it is a really impressive and beautiful part of the world though.

Tjeldsundet, Harstad and a detour in a aluminium bird

 June 9th - 21st    Lødingen - Harstad (and Sørumsand)

Tjeldsundet separate the Lofoten and Vesterålen Island Chains from the mainland and had to be my route for continuing north. The Lofoten Island Chain makes a barrier for the tidal wave going up along the Norwegian coast.  There are more water "wanting" to go through the 25 nautical mile long narrows, from Ofotfjorden in the south to Vågsfjorden in the north, than actually is able to. Thus the tidal range on the north side of Tjeldsundet  is around 75 % og the range on the south and there are significant speed on the current. Thus I har to find how the current runs compared to the tides and study the tidal charts.

I found that I had to leave Lødingen at noon to get the current with me the entire trip through. Consequently I ended my work day short, I actually had to re schedule a meeting. Since Tjeldsundet makes for more protected waters than much of the rest of costal Northern Norway whilst retaining the mild winters it is rather much for the latitude on land. 

On a smal peninsula out into the narrows lie the old trading post Sandtorgholmen. This is one of the oldest trading posts in Norway with the first written record from 1321 AD. The oldest building on the site is an earth cellar from around 1550. Today the trading post is run as a hotel and from the sea it looks really idyllic. 

As I left Tjeldsundet the wind really picked up and I started to worry about docking. In the end and with som help I managed to docking the downtown guest harbour ok. The lady who helped me informed me that there where visitors mooring in their boat club just south of the city that weren't as rolly as, so I moved there. And in the end the boat was docked there for almost two weeks. Beside waiting out weather I received a text message from the municipality at home about scheduling Corona vaccine. So I jumped on a plane and flew down south (actually I walked, took a bus, a plan, a train and another train and walked some more to get home). I stayed at home for five days before flying back ready to continue my journey.

Harstad has long ship building traditions, the original Rulten was built here in 1907. Now active shipbuilder is left in the city itself. However there are several "monuments" of the shipbuilding past all around the city.  On Rødskjær just north of Sandtorgholmen inside the municipality but quite a bit outside the city Selfa Arctic is building glassfibre fishing boats of the in Norway very common size between 10 and 15 m. Selfa Arctic build the first electric fishing boat in 2015 and today they offer an electric drivetrain in all their models.

Several of the slipways and dry-docks of the former shipbuilders are in use today maintaining ships. An oddball in this context is this former Norwegian Navy frigate Bergen. According to wikipedia she was sunk as an objet for training with submarines in 2007. Clearly she is not sunk, even if she in the dry-dock technically might be on the bottom of the sea.

Piloting for 301 years

 June 8th - Tranøy - Lødingen

Sailed from the old pilot station in Ofoten and crossed the inner part of Vestfjorden to the "new" pilot station at Lødingen. The former Costal Administrations supplytanker and now museum ship MS Gamle Oksøy was there as the centre point of the celebration of the  the public pilot service 300 year anniversary (that had to be postponed one year due to Covid). 

The public pilot service was established by royal decree from king Fredrik IV (of Denmark-Norway). 

Piloting in Norway was regulated much earlier than that. In king Magnus VI Lagabøtes State Law of 1274 there where rules about piloting the ships of the Leidag (navy) - since that law almost exclusively is a written combination of the two main regional laws of Gulating and Frostating the rules are probably even much older than that. Further old traces of piloting in Norway can be found in the city law of Bergen of 1276 that demanded that captains of merchant ships are responsible for using a pilot and the costs thereof.

But from 1720 state pilots became civil servants that had to prove their competence and swear loyalty to the king.

Behind the look out for the pilots I found this old kiosk. I don't know anything about it just find it cute.

Art, lighthouses, whaling and cod liver oil island

 June 7th    Skutvik to Tranøy   

The last meeting of the day went a little over schedule so to save some time so departure was fairly late. To save some time and with open water with no interfering traffic I decided to bake pizza for dinner under way. My oven doesn't really get warm enough for pizza but it's close enough to make a tasty boat baked variant. 

While the dough was rising I had the chance to admire the unique Hamarøyskaftet (613 m) up close from the sea.

As I approached the harbour and was preparing fenders and ropes for docking I saw a dinghy floating away. So I had to try to rescue it. After a couple of attempts I managed to get a towline attached and could return to my docking. With a dinghy awkwardly attached the boat did not behave the way I'm used to. But other than needing som more maneuvering than usual docking went well. 

In Tranøy a whaling boat is lifted onto land and converted to a pub. This day a preserved whaling boat MS Nybræna was docked together with a preserved "normal" fishing boat. Nybræna became known in 1992 when activists trespassed and tried to sink the boat. It was saved and continued on whaling for many years. Today it is touring the coast selling whale meat (Minkywhale) and promoting whaling from the Norwegian whalers point of view.

 After observing the neighbors I took the bike and biked to the lighthouse after which the village is named. The lighthouse was automated in 1986 and depopulated in 1991. Since 1993 however a cafe and lodging has operated in the living quarters and boat hose of the old light house. The light house was listed in 1997. 

The lighthouse has become somewhat famous for the moody light and views of the mountains of Lofoten and Steigen. Today it was to hazy to admire the mountains but the light could be enjoyed.

In 1903 a public pilot service mainly to serve the iron ore ships going to and from Narvik was established in the area  The pilots station was moved to Tranøy in 1907 and was operational there until the late 1950ies. The publicly employed and midle income pilots and boatswains built villas in the village in styles not usual in northern Norway.

Around 2000 the inhabitants of Tranøy raised funds to buy and keep Harald Bodøgaards sculpture "Stjerner som fisker i himmelen" (roughly stars that fish in the sky (or heaven)). This lead to the establishment of a sculpture park owned and financed by the villagers and supporters. Today there are sculptures spread around and just outside the village. 

Like this "Kystkvinner" (Women of the coast) by Ingun Dahlin.

Hamarøy through 5000 years

 June 6th Nordskot - Skutvik

With a breeze blowing the boat towards the dock I needed quite a bit of engine power against the forward spring line to get the bow out enough for me to be able to clear the dock. To ad to that the wind came in the direction I wanted to travel so it became a day of motoring.

Both the islands and mainland have a fair amount of strandflat here so people has made homes (or rather farms) along the waterline all along the route. with the historical mixed economy between fishing and farming that was the norm all along the coast it was natural that small maintenance slipways was established when boat size increased - such as this quaint one at Engeløya.

After tying the boat up for the day I decided on a whim to bike to Ness and got a surplice visit to a area with a long and rich history. The Ness area has been inhabited since the bronze age. It is located at one of the most powerful tidal currents in Europe and the area on the inside have quite an early spring, offering a long growing season and for the latitude rich farming. Together with a portage over the low Uteide it was possible to sail or row through the current and avoid passing the open waters needed to get to and from the Ofoten area otherwise.

In the viking age and in medieval time there Ness was the main base for cheiftains. Most famous is Håkon Raud. During the late Norwegian civil war era duke Skule Bårdsson had sent a war-party of varbelger northwards to get control over the important export of fish. Håkon Raud got message of the war-party ravaging at Leines in Steigen. In very quick order he mobilized a force of seven ships (probably 200 - 500 men) and set sail toward Leines. They arrived at dawn to an unprepared war-party that had stowed their weapons onto one of their ships.   The war-party was killed and by that the main force supporting duke Skule in his quest to replace king Håkon Håkonsson and thus in effect ending the civil war era.

The importance of Ness has since dwindled into a very nice but remote place. With wetlands, tidal basins and small lakes and relative warm climate the area is also of significant location for wildlife (mostly birds) and flora.

And on top you get a nice view of the backside of Hamarøyskaftet - with is quite a characteristic landmark. And a challenge for people inclined to ascend mountains not suited for ascending.

In the search of the perfect spot for midnight sun viewing

 June 5th Bodø - Nordskot    

June 4th is the first day with midnight sun in Bodø and skies was clear so I decided to sail to Nordskot where I had a fabulous sunset in late July last year.

On the way up I had a nice upwind sail. From the weatehrforcast I had calculated that the sail would be easy and on the same tack the entire way. In reality wind direction changes quite much and within half an hour I sailed the same course on both port and starboard tack and back to port tack. 

A bit before I came to the dug channel (very unusual for that to be necessary in Norway) the wind died. So I had to start the engine earlier than the narrowness of the du channel had forced me to anyway. 

At Nordskot there where wind again (unfortunately since it made the boat push against the dock and be unquiet during the night)

Nordskot, or more exact the old trading post at Grøtøya just outside Nordskot, used to be the last stop on the mainland before the fishermen going to Lofoten crossed the open Vestfjorden (when the weather was not ideal). 

The old trading post was owned and run by the same family (Schøning, originally Hartvigsen) between 1690 and 1923 the main islet and building was owned by the Schøning family until 2013. 

But I came for the midnight sun.

Summer in the city

 June 1st - June 4th   

Bodø is infamous for biting winds and rain - they even glazed the Main Street to keep shoppers out of the wind (or rather in from the wind). But this week was warm and almost windless and perfect for strolling the city and enjoying outdoor restaurants.

Nice sunsets too - one of them topped up with a pretty wooden ketch - looking like a Colin Archer - but I didn't get the name and thus I don't know the history of the boat.

Walks on the mole seemed to be a favorite pastime for many - me too. On the mole there where this artwork of stones pierced with holes. Made for testing my skills in hyperlocal focusing.

On Rundholmen, that the mole is connected to, this bench intended for sitting on when slowing down and letting your thoughts mature. It seems like there are bad climate for mature thinking in Bodø though.