Days 19-22: Norwegian coast on MS Spitsbergen


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Europe » Norway » Northern Norway
October 20th 2016
Published: November 6th 2016
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The next four days gave a succession of stunning landscapes and small-town walks, punctuated by several excursions in larger towns, occasional on-board diversions, and two sightings of the northern lights on our first and second nights. Unfortunately they turned up when clouds and a full moon were around, so not the stunning display of the tourism docos, but fascinating all the same. The boat has an announcement regime that ensures you don’t miss them. Apart from those, the highlights really are the beauty of the land, water and sky, which can be seen in the photos (of which there were plenty, much reduced here) and require no further description.

The boat accommodates 350 – we reckon no more than about 250 on this trip. Just one other Australian couple that we met – most people were German, US, British or South African. We spent a bit of time with Gene and Mac from Maryland, a husband and wife whose names when spoken sound as if they should be wife and husband respectively. Mac and Helen were well met, as Helen had been the only enrolee for a horse ride, which was thus in danger of cancellation until Mac, who is in her mid-70s and an erstwhile occasional rider, decided to throw caution to the winds. The two of them hugely enjoyed a night excursion whereby they set off at one port with a driver who took them across to an island where they rode Icelandic horses (yes, them again) for an hour or so by the light of not much of a moon. They were under the supervision of a young woman who seemed to get the balance right between heart-racing excitement and reassuring safety for older people. She delivered Helen and Mac back to the driver, who met them at the other end of a long beach and took them on to meet the ship at the next port, where they were greeted by a slightly relieved Gene and me. Photos of that adventure are expected before long from Mac.

Another couple we met were Diane and Michael from Orkney, who were in our view not as thrilled as they might have been when we told them that Orkney was our favourite place in all the world. They were more like, well, at least someone’s got a bit of taste and discernment. Anyway, they were great company, Michael a taciturn old seafarer who had been all over the world, and Diane a voluble bundle of bone-dry and sometimes black humour, who was aware that sadly her mind was just starting to succumb to Alzheimer’s or some similar condition.

On our second night out we stayed up late for a trip to a midnight concert in the Arctic Cathedral at Tromso. We discovered how frosty it is at that time of night! The cathedral itself is a beautifully simple thing in a triangular prism shape, with – as we discovered – unbelievable acoustics. The concert comprised mostly folk tunes in classical settings, performed by a trio of soprano, piano and flute. The singer opened by entering unaccompanied from the back of the hall, and some perfectly controlled ultra-quiet notes could be heard everywhere inside it.

Another onshore highlight was the Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim – apparently the biggest in Scandinavia – which is a visual feast both outside and in, and boasts not one but two remarkable organs: one smaller but much older, said to have been played by Bach while visiting his organ-building mate Joachim Wagner, and the other a behemoth of nearly 10,000 pipes. A few notes played on either would have been a bonus, but sadly no. On the exterior, there is an amazing gallery of saints carved in relief on the front wall, while a statue of St Michael fixed on the cathedral roof was given the face of Bob Dylan by a whimsical sculptor around 1970. Trondheim as a city is a beautiful thing in itself, and we were sorry not to have a bit more time to view it other than from a bus window.

From the boat our views consisted of a constant parade of massive cliffs, island clusters, fjords, dawns and dusks in various shades of orange, many varieties of bridge (most towns were settled around long and slender inlets) and settlements both rustic and industrial. The small size of the boat was a great boon in getting us close to all of these things. Perhaps the highlight was Trollfjord, a place with a spooky, dark and narrow feel that I am disappointed not to have captured better on camera.

A minor drama occurred on our second-last day when we went out under the impression (due entirely to my inattentive arithmetic) that we were on a 75-minute stopover when it was in fact only 15 minutes. Now, we had all been warned when we embarked that the boat didn’t wait for latecomers. After strolling along the docks of a small maritime town for ten minutes we heard the boat’s whistle blow. I rushed back to see the gangway lifted and ropes being untied. I gestured frantically as I approached, fortunately the officer in charge had mercy on us, and so we were instrumental in setting this Hurtigruten vessel eight minutes in arrears. Despite a record number of abject apologies in a short space of time we were given a little lecture by an arrogant young pup (Trainee!!) who obviously wanted to big-note himself in front of his captain. “It happens all the time”, whispered a dock-hand.


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