Norway 2022/23 – 9, Turnabouts and changes

Tags

Arctic Circle, Bodø, Harstad, Hurtigruten, Hurtigruten museum, MS Trollfjord, Risøyrenna, Vesterålen

On Friday 30th December, three busfuls of passengers got off at 08.00 at Harstad to take a drive through the lovely Vesterålen islands, and to meet up again with MS Trollfjord two stops further on, at Sortland at 12.30. At that time, I was due to get off there for a bus ride to Stokmarknes in order to have a decent amount of time in the Hurtigruten Museum before reboarding the boat there at 15.00. I had a late breakfast as I didn’t know that I’d get any lunch, and took away with me the means to make a cheese sandwich and an apple.

The day before we had been told we would, hopefully, pass along the Risøyrenna, the 4.8 kilometre Risøy Channel.

It had been dredged and opened in 1922 to allow the Hurtigruten ships through, giving them access to its eponymous stop, and other places on the Lofoten Islands. It was narrow, and part of a beautiful passage. The channel was 7 metres deep, our boat having a draught of 5.5.

At 10.10 we were invited up to deck 9 to observe our passage through.

When I arrived:

I missed most of the opening English introduction, but did catch that we were hovering to see whether it was going to be safe to go through, given the very strong winds. Heinz then embarked on a long spiel in German.

After a minute or so I saw and felt that the boat was making an about-turn of 180 degrees. Heinz broke into English to explain that the captain had decided that the very strong winds meant that, especially with so little difference between the boat’s draught and the depth of the channel, it would not be safe to proceed. We would go straight to Svolvær, arriving at 12.55, via Harstad, missing out Risøyrenna, Sortland, and Stokmarknes. And this also meant we would not be seeing the entrance to the beautiful Trollfjord, after which the ship was named. But here’s an account (subject to permission) I’ve just found by, apparently, a North American, of their passage through the channel in 2014 at a different time of year.

A screen map showed us to be on our way back to Harstad.

We had to go there to pick up the turned-back passengers who had left for the Vesterålen excursions, and to deposit those ‘ordinary’ passengers who were due to leave the ship at one of the three ports now being missed. They would be bussed to their destinations. Later in the afternoon it was announced we would not be calling at Svolvær, but would go straight to Bodø, missing out Stamsund as well, arriving at 22.00.

All these changes meant that the trip to the Hurtigruten museum on which I was booked would not happen, nor for others, from Svolvær, three hours of horse-riding, nor another fishing village visit, nor an evening trek.

Back at Harstad, it was time for a twilight tour around the promenade deck, 6, before I returned to my cabin and had my picnic lunch. When going round deck 6, I always started on the starboard side and worked anticlockwise.

It would appear that Harstad is flourishing economically.

The English-language daily briefing was bought forward 45 minutes, to 14.15.

The team had clearly hastily remade the ‘slide’ to amend the time of arrival, normally 02.30 the following day.

We would be crossing back over the Arctic Circle tomorrow.

Hege sought to reassure those of us who had been on the northwards journey that there would be no ice down the backs the following day, instead we would be invited to take a dose of …

That’s Heinz grinning at the anticipated ‘pleasure’.

A short presentation about life on the ship followed. It’s a good job there was no space for questions – I would have had far too many.

A film taking us around the lower decks was fascinating.

I can’t remember why I went up to deck 8, but for the Nth time I saw progress on the two jigsaws. One had been completed. I saw two people on the very final morning desperately trying to get the last 50 or so pieces in position before disembarkation.

At 16.30 an additional talk was programmed, the history of Hurtigruten, a sort-of replacement for the visit to the museum. It has been interesting to learn that ‘hurtigruten’ was sort-of lower case, an idea, an integral and essential part of Norwegian culture, less the name of a company, more a description of the journey. It means ‘express route’. It has been exploited by many companies over the years, but at its heart is Richard With’s initiative. The Hurtigruten Group finally came together in 2006. (Additional information from Wikipedia, inter alia.)

The afternoon was scattered with exchanges of emails with my French friend, Christine, I knew she would be following the ship’s progress on an interactive map, MS Trollfjord being ‘TF’, which, at the time of writing, is at the northernmost tip of Norway, on her second full trip since the one being described here. At the least Christine would be puzzled when she saw it way off the appointed route, so I kept her up to date with the various tergervisations. (There was also a mystery of a missing ship which apparently was going to be waiting for us a Bodø, but wasn’t and disappeared from the map, but that was never solved.)

Some time in the evening, it was announced that because of the extremely strong winds, the ship was now travelling more slowly, and we would not arrive at Bodø until 23.00. That was still 3.5 hours earlier than the official schedule. I have to say, other than feeling the gales up on deck 9 in the morning, I was very little aware of the winds. Perhaps the occasional need to steady oneself when walking around the ship, but that was all.

Next day would be New Year’s Eve.

Norway 2022/23 – 4, Christmas Day, Første Juledag

Tags

Arctic Circle, Ørnes, Bodø, Bodo, Første Juledag, Hurtigruten, MS Trollfjord, Ornes, Saltstrømmen Maelstrom, Svolvaer, Svolvær

Happily this was, in all respects, a quieter day than the previous one. Indeed, you would scarcely have known it was Christmas Day, except that the female members of staff were again in glitterised versions of national costume (which had slightly diminished the effect of bad cop’s reprimand the day before).

Around 07.35 we were invited to the top deck to observe the crossing of the Arctic Circle. Given that it was dark, and that we were on a moving boat, this was the best I could do for a picture of the monument, despite the fact that a bright beam from the ship was directed at it.

The vast self-service breakfast counter catered for all nationalities, and more I suspect. I had settled by now to a daily bowl of muesli with fresh fruit salad, and a boiled egg. Two tanks of eggs bubbled away in hot water, hard-boiled kept, according to its thermometer, at 54 degrees C, and soft-boiled at 48 degrees. As they say, you learn something every day. Egg cooking temperatures is not something I would have expected to learn on a Norwegian cruise.

I shared a table for that breakfast with a long-retired Norwegian. He told me, in his very broken English, that he owned 18 ships, that his two sons ran the business in Bergen, that he had lost his wife to dementia eight years previously, and that he did this cruise every Christmas. Why on a Hurtigruten boat, I asked, not on one of his own? Because his boats did not cater for passengers. I think I believe him on all details. He wasn’t the only person I met who who repeated the experience every year at this time. We talked a little about Norway being a rule-taker in the EU without being a rule-maker, but his English was not up to a deep conversation on the matter. I just got from him that the Norwegians had difficulty in forgetting the war. (And my goodness was I going to learn in the following days how much they had suffered.)

When the boat stopped at Ørnes for 10 minutes, I walked round deck 6.

And took a couple of short videos as we moved off.

At 10.30 it was time for the Arctic Circle ceremony, but only after a prize-giving. During the previous day’s briefing, Heinz had invited us to estimate the exact time we would cross the Arctic Circle, entries to be in by 22.00. (My guess was way out.) The winner was presented by the captain with a flag that had been flying on the boat. (There were too many people in the way for me to get a decent picture of it when it was unfurled.) He had been just 18 seconds off. When asked how he was able to be so accurate, he replied that he felt he was a bit of a cheat as he was an experienced mariner.

Heinz, the winner, the captain

There was no way I was going to take part in the Arctic Circle ceremony, despite the small glass of spirits which would be given to participants as a reward afterwards. Before I had set off, a Norwegian-English friend had told me what it was: an ice cube down the back. Here’s J’s instinctive reaction after he had undergone it.

I had another fascinating conversation at lunch, with H, the Indian doctor from ‘our’ table. He had a wonderful tale to tell of his ambition to learn English from a very young age, bribing his older brother to take him to a library in a town some was miles from his village so that he could go to a library, in due course refusing to follow his family’s business ambition for him, but training to be a doctor, making a wonderful marriage, arranged by his parents because he had been unable to find a wife for himself, (a condition of his family’s support to emigrate to the US), then practising all his life as a doctor in New York, where he still lived. His wife had not been well enough to accompany him on the cruise. His sole ambition was to see the Northern Lights and once that had happened he was happy.

At 14.00 the ship stopped at Bodø – minus 2° C. Because it was Christmas, there were only two excursions happening – normally there would have been perhaps half a dozen. These two were a hike with the expedition team, and a sightseeing tour of the town including the nearby Saltstrømmen Maelstrom . I had not booked for either, and I was even a little nervous, after the previous day, of stepping of the boat during the two-hour stay, so I contented myself with another stroll around deck 6 in the Arctic twilight.

Speedboat for use in emergencies

At 16.00 local time I was able to listen in my cabin to our new King’s Christmas message, live on BBC Radio 4.

The English-language briefing at 17.00 told us something about…

… where we would be the following day for four hours, and the single excursion which would be available this Boxing Day, a husky tour. There was then a presentation on the ‘Northern Lights, Myths and Legends’, plus some tips about seeing and photographing them. Apparently if you are not sure as to whether what you can see is just a cloud or the Lights, point your camera at it and they will show green if they are the latter. So all those wonderfully coloured pictures you see are only best photographically. The tip was to be useful the next day.

We had a stop for one hour at Svolvær at 21.15. I overcame my reluctance to leave the security of the ship, and was so glad I did. My short walk in the snow was magical.

(The whiteness in the background is snow-covered mountains.)

I have managed in the previous pictures to remove the most of the yellowness that my camera added to the snow, but have been unable to do so for this brief video.