Transport of delight Simon Courtauld sails from Bergen to Kirkenes
No, it’s not a cruise,’ I said firmly to several friends who inquired about our planned trip up the Norwegian coast. ‘It’s a ferry, and a packet-boat, which delivers goods, vehicles and people to various places between Bergen and Kirkenes.’
The fleet of ships belongs to Hurtigruten, which means ‘Express Route’, a company founded at the end of the 19th century. One of its vessels is going up or down the coast every day of the year, and it still carries post, and delivers food and medicines, to the outlying islands.
Hurtigruten calls it ‘the world’s most beautiful voyage’ – quite a claim – but when the weather is good it is hard to disagree. The Northern Lights are visible in winter, the Midnight Sun in midsummer. We chose to go at the beginning of May, when temperatures were still cold, though not freezing, there was snow on the mountains and in the most northerly towns, and it was light by 2am as we neared the end of the voyage.
Our ship was MS Nordnorge, taking almost 600 passengers and with space for 30 vehicles. There was plenty of room to move around and sit on deck or in the lounges, and in the dining room the food was better than adequate, especially at lunch, when a large and varied buffet was provided. Additionally, a small restaurant offered, at a modest extra cost, smoked Arctic char, Alaskan king crab and reindeer steak which we enjoyed one evening.
We joined the ship at Bergen, sailed in the evening and docked at Ålesund the next day. This is an undistinguished town rebuilt in Art Nouveau style with funds provided Trondheim, Norway’s ancient capital
by Kaiser Wilhelm after the buildings had been destroyed by fire in 1904. By the time we reached Trondheim the following morning, we had also docked briefly at five other ports, some of them during the night, with time enough only to offload or take on passengers and freight. In the ancient capital of Norway, however, there was time to visit the magnificent Gothic cathedral (the northernmost in Europe) and see the old warehouses on stilts along the river Nid.
It was also in Trondheim that a fellow passenger reminded me of associations with the Second World War. Churchill’s failed Norway campaign (when he was First Lord of the Admiralty) began in April 1940 when Germany invaded the country and occupied its coastal cities. Churchill’s plan to liberate Trondheim was a cock-up, with talk of him presiding over a ‘second Gallipoli’, and the Allied troops which landed at Namsos, a little
‘One of Hurtigruten’s vessels is going up or down the coast every day of the year’
further north, had to be evacuated after a fortnight. When we reached Lofoten and joined a coach tour across the islands, I saw a road sign to Narvik, the name which in Britain became synonymous with the 1940 campaign and the famous Norway Debate leading to Chamberlain’s resignation.
Several excursions are available where the ship stops for more than two or three hours, some of them – in kayaks, on quad bikes or snowmobiles – perhaps not suitable for oldies, and each costing more than £150. For most of the time we walked in the towns, and preferred to admire the stunning scenery from the ship, as it made its way through calm seas, and sometimes narrow channels, between the mainland coast and the often mountainous islands on our port side. When the sun was not shining, and we were close to the dark, forbidding cliffs, it was not difficult to imagine trolls of Norse mythology lurking there – especially when we passed the narrow mouth of Trollfjord one evening, just before midnight.
Between Trondheim and Lofoten we crossed the Arctic Circle, which was celebrated with a curious ceremony of ‘baptism’ on deck. A Norse version of Neptune, together with members of the crew, poured crushed ice down the necks of those foolish enough to submit to this freezing indignity. I have to report that I was one of them – and only because each of us was then rewarded with a shot of cloudberry liqueur. As a bottle of wine on board cost £50 – alcohol in Norway is absurdly expensive everywhere – a small free drink was very welcome.
In Tromsø, where in 1944 the German battleship Tirpitz was finally sunk by RAF bombers, it was interesting to learn that the resourceful Norwegians had used steel from the wreck in building the 1,000-metre-long bridge which crosses the main fjord to the 20th-century Arctic Cathedral. When Soviet forces liberated Norway’s most northerly towns, from Kirkenes to Honningsvåg, the retreating Nazis burnt and destroyed every building in their path.
Honningsvåg is on an island, the nearest town to the North Cape. Every spring the reindeer belonging to the nomadic Sami people (who used to be called Lapps or Laplanders) are trucked by road tunnel to the mainland for summer grazing; in autumn they swim the one and a half kilometres back to the island. Under Norwegian law only the Sami may herd reindeer and earn their livelihoods from them.
While walking round the harbour at Honningsvåg, we spotted a signpost reading ‘North Pole 1300 miles’, bringing to mind the names of Norway’s two most famous
explorers, Fridtjof Nansen and Roald Amundsen. We had seen a statue of Amundsen in Tromsø, where a Polar museum commemorates these two Norwegian heroes. From Tromsø Amundsen set out on his last journey, by flying boat, to rescue an Italian explorer near the North Pole, and never returned.
In his three-masted schooner, Fram, Nansen headed north in 1893, then left the ship after 20 months in an unsuccessful attempt to reach the North Pole on skis. Fram drifted in the Arctic ice for three years, returning to Skjervøy, where we docked briefly one evening. Nansen finally made landfall in Norway at the settlement of Vardø, our last-but-one port of call at 3am on the final morning.
The weather was perfect as we crossed the bay, past low cliffs of bare rock flecked with snow, and steamed between the islands to Kirkenes, only ten miles from the frontier with Russia. A Russian trawler was tied up in the harbour, and there was time to admire the Soviet Liberation Monument as we headed for the airport and the morning flight to Oslo.
‘The retreating Nazis burnt and destroyed every building in their path’