EPIC GOLF BENEATH THE MIDNIGHT SUN
Chris Bertram has played golf all over the world – but nowhere blew his mind like Norway’s Lofoten Links
My visit to Lofoten Links was not quite a trip into the unknown, but it was certainly one laced with questions. This was the summer of 2017 and as I set off for the Arctic Circle, I knew no-one who had been there. I had seen pictures – although even they were not as readily available as they are now – but that was it.
They were enough to pique my interest though, and wonder firstly whether it could be as jaw-droppingly beautiful in reality as it looks in the images, and secondly whether it was merely just an incredibly scenic location and not really a golf course.
I’ll re-print here my opening three paragraphs from the article I wrote on my return from Norway to answer the first question:
“The words of Bjorge Lillelien came to mind as I stood on the 14th tee. It was the Norwegian sports commentator who famously taunted notable English figures after his country had defeated the England football team in 1981. ‘Lord Nelson, Lord Beaverbrook, Sir Winston Churchill, Sir Anthony Eden, Clement Attlee, Henry Cooper, Lady Diana, Maggie Thatcher… your boys took a hell of a beating!’
“As I drank in the scene at the midway point of the back nine of this course on Gimsoysand, I thought, ‘Turnberry, Neyfn, Cape Kidknappers, Bro Hof, Old Head of Kinsale and Kiawah Island, your location has just taken one hell of a beating’.
“I have been to all six of those feted courses – and many others with spectacular settings – and each one sits in a breathtaking location. None can match Lofoten though.”
Since then I’ve also been to some beauties in Mauritius, the Maldives, and Oman. I’ve been to Ardfin in Scotland, Rosapenna St Patrick’s in Ireland, Visby in Sweden, Thracian Cliffs in Bulgaria, Brautarholt in Iceland and Aland in Finland. I’ve been to all the courses at Bandon Dunes as well as Banff Springs and Jasper Park in Canada. All are stunning. But none of them top Lofoten.”
The pictures on this page and those you can now very easily find elsewhere need no description, merely confirmation they are not the work of Photoshop. This is really how Lofoten looks.
It’s a land fit for both a Hollywood blockbuster between ancient warring tribes and a classic Scandinavian detective series on Netflix. Mystical, romantic and enchantingly peaceful, I’ve never seen the beauty of the coast melt so quickly into towering mountains. It’s as if Mother Nature left this strip of land between sea and snow-capped peaks just for a golf course to be laid down.
Well, it took a little while to arrive, because the land on which it is built has been in the Hov family for four centuries, but only in the late 1990s did it host golf holes.
That was when the father of current owner Frode Hov and a friend of his dreamt up the idea for a course. He sadly died before work began but Frode – who fell in love with golf while studying in St Andrews – took up the dream. It began in 1998 as six holes and was extended to nine in 2010 before eventually becoming 18 in 2015, all under the eye of Sweden-based English architect Jeremy Turner.
Which brings us to that second question from 2017: is it really a golf course? I can vividly remember pondering this seven years ago, sitting on a wall, eating a sandwich between rounds (more on this later on) with the July sunshine warming my face.
There are holes that highbrow architectural connoisseurs would find fault with; on such a
site, there simply have to be some like that. But they are in a small minority. Instead, the dominant majority are the very, very good ones. And then there are also the absolutely world-class ones.
I returned to Britain and entered Lofoten at No.65 in the Continental European list.
I was cautious because it had recency bias and, most importantly, emotional pulling power. And no-one else had seen it.
That was still the case two years later, but I moved it up to No.45. I had of course seen even more of its competitors by then and could compare with increasing confidence. That knowledge has developed to the point where I’ve now been to 98 of the 100, and 133 of the top 150.
So when you consider Lofoten now sits at No.5 in that list, as well as entering the World Top 100, it screams exactly how good it is.
A few others writers have been too and I’ve yet to talk to anyone who significantly disagrees with that ranking of it. Some of you will visit and think it deserves to be higher; possibly a few might find those positions a tiny bit punchy.
Either way, Lofoten is indubitably a bucket list affair, and I’d be absolutely astonished if anyone felt it was a wasted journey.
Ah yes, the journey. As I mentioned at the beginning of this piece, it sits in the Arctic Circle, so you can imagine there are no Airbuses or Boeings landing within half an hour away, six times a day. In fact, to get there, you can fly to Harstad/narvik Airport on the mainland and then make a spectacular three-hour drive through constantly Instaworthy scenery.
Or you can do as I did and fly in to the tiny airport of Svolvaer in a propeller plane from Bodo, which you reach from Oslo. From the pretty harbour town of Svolvaer – the island’s capital and now very popular with tourists – you make a 45-minute drive to Hov along twisting roads set into the foot of mountains that hug the fjords. It takes a bit of effort but is all part of the experience – in parts, it is utterly idyllic.
Playing in the Arctic Circle also adds to the experience. Just being there is pretty cool – literally, although the area is happily warmed by the Gulf Stream – and so is the fact you can play 24 hours a day in the summer (and in the winter it is Northern Lights territory).
Remember me mentioning eating a sandwich between rounds earlier on? That’s because when I visited that July, I could play golf at any time I wanted. I twice finished at 2:30am. Over three days and nights, I played the course eight times.
I’ve never played a course so intensely but the change in how I played it from first time to last was remarkable. The first time, along with Hov and greenkeeper Jerry Mulvihill, a native of Ballybunion, my shoulders were tight from looking at the hundreds of boulders that line the fairways. My ball seemed to be bouncing around on those black masses from every shot. I lost many balls.
By the third round, though, I knew where to miss and to play percentages even more than usual. The turf is not pure East Lothian links, but it’s linksy enough to let you run your ball in, and fun, creative, highpercentage golf is the way to get the most from this staggering course.
That’s not an option on Lofoten’s nowiconic 2nd, however, the hole shown above. It is played from an elevated tee to a small green in a huddle of rocks and sand. It’s a hole that is pretty much worth the trip on its own – and is your screensaver-in-waiting.
Writing this, looking again at that main image and reminiscing about Lofoten Links has reminded me that it’s time to go back.