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Published: July 26th 2015
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We arrived in Hammerfest this morning at 6:00am, earlier then planned as our next stop is Murmansk in Russia. Yesterday we were advised that in Murmansk they are holding a naval parade and if we are not in the harbour before 6:00am tomorrow we will not be allowed to enter. We are not sure what this parade involves, whether we will see it, whether it will mess up our tour plans, or what. It could be a fun day. As everything had been bought forward we had to leave the ship at 7:30am if we wanted to do or see things in Hammerfest.
It is a really lovely small town and they claim to be the northern most city in the world. However Honniingsvâg disputes this as they are further north but they do not have a population of over 5,000 to claim town status. The fact that they both call themselves cities is i guess to us laughable but in Norwegian they do not distinguish between town and city, or so i was told. In the UK I think you have to have a Cathedral and in NZ it used to be a population of over 30,000 to be
a city. Just saying!
Hammerfest is situated on the island of Kvaløya but does have road connection to the mainland and does have one thing to claim fame over.. That is that in 1891 they became the first urban settlement in Northern Europe to get electrical street lights. The invention was bought to Hammerfest by two of the town's merchants who had seen it demonstrated at a fair in Paris. My morning consisted of a walk up a very steep hill, via a zig zag path to the top of Mt Salen (which made me puff somewhat), to go see a Sami camp which now is a tourist showpiece of the way they used to live, as now they live in cabins. We were with a Sami family of Father, Mother, and youngest child a son of eighteen years. The two older daughters live elsewhere, one married and having a baby any day, but was a solicitor, and the other at uni studying biology. It was interesting to hear of their earlier lives and married years, and about how things have changed. We were given some dried & smoked reindeer meat, and polar bread to try, and
also some cloudberries. After walking back down the hill we went to the Royal and Ancient Polar Bear Society in the Town Hall. I can now proudly say that I am a life member of the society and have a certificate to prove it, which says that “In recognition of my outstanding achievement of reaching the top of the world, viz this town, and the coast thereto adjoining” I have been bestowed life membership as signed by the Mayor. In saying that I am not sure if they hunt polar bear or they protect them. It is just that the building was full of stuffed animals including polar bear, and every other arctic creature you could think of.
With all the changes, we sailed from Hammerfest early at 1:00pm and we were in the Norwegian Sea for a while but I think now that we are in the Arctic Ocean as we near North Cape in about half an hour. It is till partly cloudy, apparently Norway is having a really bad Summer. They say “at least it is not snowing”. it is only 9C as I write this at 3:00pm. We lose an hour over night as we
head into Russian time and that is probably not helping with our needing to get to Murmansk earlier then planned.
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