Chilling in NORWAY
A new cruise will explore the wintry charms of the Nordic country
“Look up!” I shouted. “Northern lights!”
My companion couldn’t hear me over the roar of our all-terrain vehicle, which we’d ridden through a hailstorm and snow showers on our way to the tippy top of mainland Norway, the remote North Cape.
It was probably a good thing she couldn’t hear me. As the ATV’s driver, she needed to keep her eyes on the icy road. As the passenger, I only had to hold on tight and enjoy the celestial show. The trancelike dance of faint green light high above made me feel relaxed and peaceful, the opposite of what I expected on this adrenaline-spiking ride well north of the Arctic Circle.
Then again, this whole journey — travelling up and down Norway, in the freezing cold — unleashed a lot of unexpected feelings. The common thread running through them: I don’t hate winter after all. I was just doing it wrong.
On this March trip with other journalists, all of us invited to preview Hurtigruten Norway’s new North Cape Express winter cruise, which will launch this coming September, I learned how to embrace the season, not dread it like some character in “Game of Thrones.”
“I really learned how to do winter well in Norway,” Kari Leibowitz, author of the upcoming book “How to Winter: Harnessing Your Mindset to Embrace All Seasons of Life,” told me after my trip.
An American psychologist and Fulbright scholar, she spent a year in Tromso, a.k.a. the Gateway to the Arctic, researching what Norwegians think about the coldest, darkest time of year. (Her tips: Wear lots of wool and adopt a Norwegian attiit tude.) “They have a culture and mindset — and the infrastructure — for appreciating and enjoying winter,” added Leibowitz.
Instead of dwelling on the inconveniences, Norwegians focus on the season’s opportunities. Winter is a chance to go skiing and ice fishing. Read Nordic noir by the fireplace. Take a quiet walk in snowy woods. Or, in my case, ride a loud ATV to the North Cape, the northernmost point in Europe accessible by car.
The ATV adventure is one of dozens of excursions bookable on the North Cape Express, an “elevated” cruise from the company that’s been transporting freight, locals and tourists along the Norwegian coast for 130 years. The itinerary, launching on the freshly revamped, 500-passenger MS Trollfjord, will mark the first time Hurtigruten regularly sails to and from Oslo on voyages spanning nearly the entire shoreline of Norway.
Unlike the company’s long-running coastal cruises, the North Cape Express will make fewer but lengthier stops along the way. That means more time for exploring, whether it’s racing across the milky-white landscape on a snowmobile, snowshoeing to an ice-fishing hole to catch your next meal, or drinking a cocktail at an igloo hotel by the Alta River.
Winter is prime time to chase the northern lights in Norway, and during my visit I saw the spectacle more than once. While the visual experience didn’t match the mindblowing photos I’d seen, there was something undeniably special about being outside at night, watching what looked like a thin cloud get greener by the second. Seeing the polar lights dance by the Big Dipper made me feel small, in the best way. For a few moments, I almost forgot was -11 degrees Celsius. Almost.
Cold weather and I don’t get along. Growing up in Chicago, winter was something I suffered through until temperatures thawed enough for me to get back to my happy place, outside. That’s not how Norwegians roll. The al fresco lifestyle is so ingrained in their DNA, they have a word for it: friluftsliv.
“The direct translation is ‘openair life,’ ” Leibowitz said. “The most simplified meaning is this idea of spending time outdoors, every day, and making that part of your life … it’s seen as natural and healthy. They get outside in all weather.”
In Oslo, the end point of our trip, I saw rosy-cheeked children hold an outdoor bake sale. Restaurant patrons sipped coffee and wine at sidewalk tables, their chairs draped with reindeer pelts. People carried cross-country skis onto Metro trains, en route to some of the 2,600 kilometres of groomed trails reaching deep into the urban forest.
The most memorable cold-weather-won’t-stop-me sight unfolded in the city centre along the Oslo Fjord, where bathers ventured out of floating saunas for a quick dip in the frigid water.
I stood on the banks and watched a couple of women in bikinis dive in. They let out high-pitched squeals, as if giving voice to Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” (versions of the painting hang nearby at the new National Museum and at the Munch Museum across the narrow fiord). The women laughed as they climbed out of the water, while a few tourists, looking vaguely horrified, filmed the scene.
But I must have caught friluftsliv
fever because 24 hours later, on my last day in Norway, I was the one standing on the floating sauna’s platform, in my bathing suit, ready to go for a winter swim.