The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
Switch off and hear the Arctic Silence
A choice of new electrically powered adventures helps Sarah Marshall savour noise-free northern Norway more sustainably
Three hundred years ago, philosopher George Berkeley posed the question: “If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound?” Academics have debated it ever since – and alone, high above the Arctic Circle, knee-deep in snow on the remote Norwegian island of Vengsoy, I asked myself the same thing.
As clearly defined as its serrated mountain ridges and tapering fjords, this part of the world has a distinctive sonic landscape: snowflakes crunching underfoot; wind whistling through pine needles; icicles melting with the hypnotic plod of a metronome. And when all that abates, there is sheer nothingness – known as Arctic Silence.
In a world where noise pollutes so much of our lives – at times as toxic as fumes – silence is something to cherish. The European Environment Agency suggests at least 10,000 premature deaths can be connected to noise exposure each year. Human activity is also responsible for a cacophony of whirring motors and pulsing radars in our oceans that can often drown out communication between sensitive marine mammals.
Fortunately, there is a growing shift to switch off and create space for silence in northern Norway. Leading the way is Icelandic-born entrepreneur Agnes Arnadottir, who launched the hybrid-electric sightseeing cruise company Brim Explorer in Tromso, Norway’s gateway to the Arctic, at the end of 2019 and is now back up and running after a pandemic pause.
“My grandma is 80 and says this is the ugliest ship she’s seen, but I think it’s beautiful,” she beamed when we met in the city days earlier. Stepping aboard MS Brim, a sleek, glass-panelled catamaran that would not look amiss in a St Tropez marina, I agreed with Arnadottir. Comfortable chairs lined large windows – polarised to enhance colours and elevated to avoid any obstruction from passengers walking around the outside deck. Spread across two levels, the 100-person boat seemed more a chic, gliding observatory than a rugged, wave-smashing vessel, but it was also built to survive the harsh weather this far north.
“I wanted a boat where you wouldn’t have to wear clumsy insulation suits,” said Arnadottir, who has a maritime pedigree: her family, who ran Icelandic whale-watching company North Sailing, have a history of retrofitting tall ships with electric engines. With Brim Explorer, she and co-founder Espen Larsen-Hakkebo wanted to set a new standard by creating a user-friendly, environmentally sound and aesthetically stunning proposition.
During a night-time Northern Lights Cuisine Cruise around Tromso harbour – one of three Brim Explorer tours available in the winter – I watched the lights shiver in the chilly water. Ahead of us, the city’s Arctic Cathedral shone like the point of a perfect star as we sat down to a five-course tapas dinner prepared by chefs at Tromso’s Clarion Hotel The Edge. Salmon sashimi, cod and herring all featured on the locally sourced menu. “We don’t want to market ourselves as sustainable,” insisted Arnadottir, who chooses business partners who share her philosophy. “We just want to show that we are.”
Costing around €5million (£4.2million) to build, helped by a €700,000 subsidy from the Norwegian government, the hybrid-electric MS Brim is the sum of several eco initiatives: recycled aluminium was used for approximately 50 per cent of the construction and the hull of the ship.
This green engineering is accompanied by a responsible approach to viewing wildlife, which I witnessed on one of the boat’s wildlife-themed cruises the following day. Pulsing jellyfish, somersaulting sea otters and scarlet starfish danced across a large TV screen in the panoramic lounge – a vibrant contrast to the monochrome scenes outside. The footage was captured by an underwater Blueye drone deployed on one of Brim’s fjord excursions close to Tromso.
Between November and early February, when whales migrate to the area, MS Brim heads further out to sea. Orcas
and humpbacks are drawn by herring that overwinter along Norway’s north coast, although their lack of fidelity to one spot makes whale watching a precarious and unpredictable business.
“Originally we designed a fully electric boat, because when we started the design phase 18 months ago, the whales were much closer to Tromso,” explained Arnadottir. Since then, the herring have shifted 56 miles north to fjords around Skjervoy, necessitating a faster hybrid diesel engine to make the three-hour journey. Defying a bleak snowstorm, we embarked on the long trip.
Solemn skies sucked any colour from the charcoal-streaked mountains and viscous waves swirled like liquid metal. But even in the darkness it was impossible to miss the onyx-black dorsal fins and beaming white saddles of orcas, slicing like skimming stones through the gloom. Curious pods slipped between fishing trawlers, rigid inflatables and tourist ships, but when our engine cut as we switched to electric power, they headed our way.
Unanimously, all 100 passengers fell silent as we listened to the whales breathe. “We have a name for this,” whispered Arctic biology student Theresia Ramn, who had joined MS Brim for the season. “It’s an orc-asm,” she grinned.
There is no conclusive evidence to prove that orcas are attracted to – or even aroused by – electric boats, but peace and quiet certainly heighten the pleasure for spectators. And the trend is catching on: from May, when MS Brim shifts to the Lofoten Islands for the summer season, a second Brim Explorer vessel, Bard, will operate day tours in Svalbard with the Norwegian cruise company Hurtigruten, while Arnadottir hopes to launch a solar-powered expedition ship within the next five years.
Despite being an oil and gas rich nation, Norway is making great progress with green technology – particularly in the transport sector. Thanks to a series of government incentives (including interest-free loans and free parking), it has the world’s highest per capita number of electric cars.
Tromso-based tour operator Pukka Travels uses Tesla Model X electric SUVs for several of its trips and the high-spec, futuristic automobile has plenty of novelty appeal. For a morning snowshoe hike on Kvaloya, a 40-minute drive from Tromso, our guide Debbie Portrait flicked through the dashboard touchscreen to illustrate our route. She then brought a flickering fireplace up on the monitor, tapped it to trigger seatspecific whoopee cushion noises and programmed the car’s falcon-wing rear doors to “dance” to a rousing symphony orchestra with an accompanying headlamp light show.
But aside from the obvious environmental benefits – and passenger entertainment – it’s the joy of floating like a ghost along empty roads that really sets the experience apart: tuning into the crunching snow, shattering ice and unmistakable Arctic Silence.
Leaving the car, we climbed to a viewpoint overlooking the waterside village of Ersfjordbotn, my broad snowshoes leaving a trail of Yeti-sized tracks. At the top was a metal post box containing a notebook and pen. Norwegian mountaineering tradition dictates all hikers should register their visit as a safety measure, but I suspect its only purpose now is posterity.
Pinched purple by a savage wind, my face crumpled like a paper ball, sinking my eyes into weary hollows. Physicists claim it’s impossible to hear fresh snowflakes fall; their very structure, in fact, absorbs sound. But when gusts subsided, and my muscles relaxed, I was sure I could detect their meditative cascade.
When it comes to the aurora’s aural power, however, scientists are willing to listen. According to several academic researchers, charged particles emit an electromagnetic hiss during strong solar storms. I took their word for it on a Tesla Northern Lights tour later that evening, when the famous green ribbons were no more than a faint whisper in the sky.
Unlike Tromso’s popular bus tours, which are known to chase lights across the Finnish border, the five-person Tesla cars can’t travel that far. A onehour charge will take you 186 miles, so instead we explored the nearby coastline, weaving between islands on a search for patches of clear sky.
While much of Norway’s terrestrial jigsaw is linked by bridges, more than 130 public ferry routes connect remote patches of land. In 2015, the world’s first all-electric ferry was launched in Sognefjord and in 2020 a zero-emissions, self-driving boat was piloted in Trondheim. During my final few days, I travelled as a foot passenger from Belvik to Vengsoy, a small fishing community 22 miles north of Tromso, where 80 inhabitants are scattered along about four miles of road. “Forty years ago, there were only trails,” explained Maria Johansen, whose father owns the island’s fish factory. “When my grandmother was a child, she’d sleep at school if the weather was too bad to walk home.”
Although she has since moved away, Johansen runs Vengsoy Rorbuer: three self-catering fisherman’s cabins clustered along the shore. Sleeping up to six people each, the oxblood-red wooden frames are modern, cosy retreats, so new that the smell of sweet pine lingers in every room.
Sitting indoors watching snow crystals stack on windowpanes is irresistibly relaxing. If Arctic Silence defines a place without distraction, its presence resonates loudly here.
“Several years ago, whales came right into the harbour,” Johansen said, as we walked along the water beneath trellises laden with drying cod; hundreds of headless bodies hanging like silver chimes. Later, sitting on the ferry heading back to Belvik, I realised my hair and clothes reeked of fish, forcing me to shuffle shamefully into a corner.
I needn’t have worried, though. Whether it’s down to Norwegian good manners or simply a shared appreciation of silence, nobody said a word.