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.