Travels Continued

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2013

Camping on Ekerö

I’ve written a good bit about trips out in Stockholm’s archipelago(see "Sailboat Crawfish Feast" and "Kayaking in the Archipelago" a bit farther down the same page), but what I haven’t mentioned yet is Stockholm’s inner archipelago.  Stockholm is where the salty Baltic Sea meets the gigantic freshwater Lake Mälaren.  Just because there is a transition from salt to freshwater doesn’t mean that the archipelago terminates at the edge of the Baltic.  There are about 8000 islands in Lake Mälaren alone!

Carl and I visit Lake Mälaren fairly often because we live about a kilometer from the water’s edge.  In fact, our favorite running route (See "Our Favorite Running Loop in Winter") loops along the water for a couple of kilometers.  Many of our Sunday walks are out on the islands of Lovön and Kärsön, both of which are easy to get to on a bus route that goes near our apartment.  Until a few weekends ago, however, we hadn’t ventured any further out on the bus route than Lovön.

The second weekend of October seems to be the leaf-peeping weekend of the year in the Stockholm region, so we decided to go on a weekend hike to take full advantage of the colors.  We left work early and took the bus past Lovön, disembarking about an hour from our apartment (still in the Stockholm transportation zone!) on the island of Ekerö.  Much of the Stockholm region is forested with pines and spruces, but we chose Ekerö because its name means “Oak Island” and we figured that Oak Island would provide for some colorful foliage.  The island did not disappoint! 

Over the course of the weekend, we hiked a good part of the Ekerö Trail (Ekerö Leden) which weaves through farm fields, forests, along Lake Mälaren, and high up on a ridge of boulders deposited during the last ice age.  The trail was never in “wilderness” and we were never far from civilization; even so, it was a great break from city life and the idyllic countryside in all its fall glory was certainly beautiful.

At one point, the trail followed a beautiful allee leading to a historic farm.

After a first class sunset with blazing red skies,

we camped the first night in a nature reserve forest and were visited by a herd of wild boars.  They got quite close to the tent and we became a little nervous that they would pierce the tent with their tusks and/or charge us.  Not being versed in “what to do when wild boars attack” wilderness safety, we decided to remain quiet but to turn on our flashlights.  It worked perfectly—the pigs never seemed scared but they immediately started to meander away from our tent and were quickly out of hearing range.  Phew!

We stopped for lunch on a small, sunny beach and lounged like lizards in the sun for an hour or so after our meal.  It was absolutely luxurious to be outside by the water but to not be chilly.  

   

The second night, we followed a side trail out on a long peninsula jutting out into the lake.  The spine of the peninsula was quite high with a beautiful view out over the water and layers of neighboring islands.  We camped at the tippy top of the ridge where we had warm sunshine all afternoon and enjoyed a lazy few hours of wandering the peninsula, reading, sketching, and enjoying the colorful view.  Being quite easy to reach by bus, it is definitely a camping spot we intend to return to!

We lucked out with absolutely gorgeously clear and warm days—it was most likely the last short-sleeves weekend of the year.  The evenings were chilly but not cold—perfect weather for sleeping-bag coziness.  Between the gorgeous weather, the colorful foliage, and the idyllic vistas, it was an absolutely lovely and memorable weekend. 

This mushroom certainly fits in with the fall foliage!  After finding it in his mushroom books, Carl later found out that this mushroom is edible.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 19, 2013

Weekend in Göteborg

One of Göteborg's more scenic canal views.

Pre.S. Göteborg, located almost directly south of Oslo, is known as Gothenburg in the English speaking world.

At the beginning of September, my office had a Friday night End of Summer dinner and party.  Since most of the company is in Göteborg, the event was naturally held there.  Even though I travel to Göteborg every week, I haven’t had much extra time or energy left over to explore the city, so Carl and I decided to use the Friday night party as an excuse to spend the weekend exploring Sweden’s second largest city.

Naturally, there is a good deal of chatter about which is the better city: Stockholm or Göteborg.  Göteborg claims to be more of a “real” city compared to the gloss of Stockholm.  There is a good deal of discussion as to which coast of Sweden is the “front” and which is the “backside.”  People compare the dining opportunities and the coziness of the cafes.  Both cities have large archipelagos just outside their front doors, and there is a great deal of debate about which archipelago is more beautiful and more interesting to visit.  There is a distinct inferiority/superiority complex at work, with Göteborg residents too well aware that Stockholm is Sweden’s gem and with Stockholmers rarely acknowledging the existence of other Swedish cities.  I looked forward to the weekend as a way to form a slightly more informed opinion of my own regarding the merits of the two cities.  Naturally we weren’t able to explore every nook and cranny of Göteborg in two days, but we did get a pretty good idea of the city after all of our walking and tram riding.

Fact: Göteborg has about 1/3 the population of Stockholm.  Fact: Göteborg has an extensive network of trams but no subway system.  The tram stops are generally spaced quite closely together.  Fact: Although Göteborg lies quite close to the west coast of Sweden and the archipelago is nearby, it is more of a river city than a coastal city or a city of islands.  Fact: Göteborg wasn’t founded until 1619.  Fact: Due to its location between greedy Norway and greedy Denmark, defense was the primary goal in establishing the city.  Fact: Dutch engineers were invited to design the original city plan and canal system. 

A 1644 map showing Göteborg's canal/defense system.  I filled in the water blue on the right-hand map to make it a little more legible. The big body of water to the left is the river.  (Map from Wikipedia.)

Fact: Göteborg has and still has very strong business ties to Scotland and England.  Fact: A huge portion of Sweden’s manufacturing occurs in Göteborg.  Fact: Göteborg is Sweden’s major port.

All of the above factors interwork to create a city that is vastly different than Stockholm.  It lacks Stockholm’s medieval history and Göteborg has no medieval quarter corresponding to the charm of Gamla Stan.  Stockholm’s status as the political center naturally creates a different atmosphere than in Göteborg where manufacturing and shipping are king.  Inner Stockholm is much denser than downtown Göteborg, but Göteborg has a good deal of inner suburbs with a more urban feel than Stockholm’s inner suburbs.  Göteborg’s few surviving canals are appealing, but Göteborg’s landscape lacks the density and the continuity of form to achieve the enchantment of Amsterdam, and Stockholm’s grand landscape of wide open water and city islands is peerless. 

Dahlberg's copper plate drawing of Göteborg in 1690.  We visited the high defensive tower on the left, and the one on the right is the one I pass by on the train.

In a way, Göteborg actually reminds me of my growing-up-town Atlanta.  (I don’t think the word hometown really applies—it’s not my home and I don’t feel at home there any longer, nor do I have any family residing there anymore.)  Atlanta has a downtown commercial center which has its high points, but really, Atlanta is a city composed of small towns.  Each neighborhood has a center, and each neighborhood has a completely distinct feeling than other areas of town.  I know that Atlanta is not alone in this, but saying that one lives in midtown means way more than saying that one lives in Atlanta.  Living in midtown has its own set of associated lifestyles, political opinions, dress code, mannerisms, even religious beliefs that is wholly its own and that is not shared by other areas of town.  When you meet a Midtowner, you know basically what you’re going to get.  The same applies to someone living in Decatur or Buckhead or College Park.

Anyway, I think that Göteborg is very much like Atlanta in that it has very distinct neighborhoods with distinct atmospheres and associated lifestyles.  We certainly didn’t explore all of the various neighborhoods, but we did enjoy our time spent in the neighborhoods of Haga, Mayorna, and Kungsladugård.

Haga was Göteborg’s first suburb and was developed throughout the first half of the 19th century.  The wooden quarter was built just across the canal from the city limits and housed workers who couldn’t afford to build the brick/stone buildings required in the inner city.  Today, Haga is very trendy and the human-scaled streets are lines with boutiques and cafes.  Being the archi-dork that I am, I reveled in how utterly different the wooden architecture is than in Stockholm.

Although the wood buildings are designed to imitate more expensive classical brick-and-plaster buildings, the sheer number and size of the window openings in Haga’s buildings give away the artifice.  Haga’s buildings are so much more open to the street that Stockholm’s buildings (which are generally in brick and plaster) from the same period. 

Mayorna, developed in the 1880’s-ish as worker’s housing, was also utterly different than just about anything in Stockholm.

I started to get a sense of the English influence in Göteborg while walking through Mayorna, but Göteborg’s English influence became unmistakable when we wandered into Kungsladugård with its cute litte row houses.  Kungsladugård is a little younger and developed in the 1920’s, but it was also intended to house the ”working class.”

In downtown Stockholm, there is literally not a derelict building to be found, and very rarely do you see a building that ”needs a little help.” In the Göteborg’s Mayorna and Kungsladugård neighborhoods, however, I noticed a good number of slightly slipshod buildings.  Nothing derelict, but heading toward the ”needs help” category.

Starting to need a little work.

Göteborg has a couple of remaining defensive towers up on steep hills.  I pass by one of them every time I take the train in and out of Göteborg, but it probably doesn’t have that great of a view considering that it is now surrounded by train yards.  We climbed up to a different tower with a more promising view and enjoyed looking back down onto Haga. 

 The tower itself as pretty cool, too: talk about thick walls!

Göteborg naturally doesn’t have the same density of museums that Stockholm has, but we did enjoy the Viking exhibit at the City Museum and the Nordic Art exhibit at the art museum.  Even better, a $6.50 museum card gives you free access to nearly all of Göteborg’s museums for the entire year!  This is quite a contrast to Stockholm’s expensive museums where tickets are $15-20 every time.

From the collection of Nordic Art: P. S. Kröyer, Hip Hip Hurrah! Artists Party at Skagen, 1888 and  Richard Bergh, Nordic Summer Evening, 1899.  (Images from the museum's website.)

Because we never went on a cheesy canal boat tour in Amsterdam, I decided that we just had to go on a cheesy canal boat tour in Göteborg.  It was fun and extremely cheesy and it was cool to get a view of downtown from the river.  We didn’t get out in the Göteborg archipelago, and I look forward to a weekend out there sometime soon.  Maybe in the spring?  Göteborg also has a renowned design museum that I’d like to wander through.

So, my conclusion on the Göteborg/Stockholm debate?  While Göteborg has its nice aspects, Stockholm is awesome.  I am thankful that we live in such an absolutely amazingly gorgeous city!

(I’d like to note that my photos of Göteborg really don’t do it justice.  A combination of intermittent rain and a sense of languor meant that I didn’t really take many photos over the weekend.)

It seems fitting that Göteborg has an Architect Street!

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 10, 2013

Sailboat Crawfish Feast

This working thing is really cutting into my blogging time!  We went sailing with Carl’s parents two months ago and I’m just now finding the time to select photos and write a short summary.

 When Carl’s parents picked us up on the dock on Friday evening after work, they surprised us with the news that we would be enjoying a crawfish feast for dinner that night.  What a great surprise!

I had always associated crawfish with Cajun cuisine, but after meeting Carl, I quickly learned that crawfish are a Swedish delicacy as well.  Unlike Cajun crawfish, Swedish crawfish are not spicy but are boiled in a dill brine.  The dill gives a bit of flavor, but mainly you just taste the salty crawfish meat.   

Because crawfish fishing has a strictly limited season in Sweden, the eating of crawfish has become a celebrated event in the year’s calendar.  Crawfish is a party food, savored slowly with a group of good friends or family.  In order not to detract from the main dish, the only accompanying food is a baguette with Swedish hard cheese.  One drinks beer with the crawfish, and the crawfish eating and beer drinking is periodically interrupted by a shot of Swedish schnapps followed by a silly drinking song.  (Schnapps drinking and silly song singing is a common feature of most Swedish holiday feasts including Christmas and Midsummers.)

Tub of crawfish and crawfish party decorations hanging from the boom.

The rest of the sailing weekend followed on an equally high note, especially the raising of the spinnaker.  Carl’s parents have owned their sailboat for about 13 years but they had never hoisted the spinnaker because it requires at least three or four people on deck and the wind conditions must be juuuust right.  It was very cool to be pulled along but the red-and-white, cheerfully bright sail.

Carl pieced together several photos in order to show the sails in their entirety.

Thank you to Carl’s parents for another wonderful sailing weekend!

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 2013

Summer Vacation 2013: Kaying and Hiking in the Lofoten Islands, Norway

This summer, Carl and I ventured north of the Arctic Circle again and visited the Lofoten Islands, a chain of mountain-islands just off of Norway’s coast.  These mountains were created 300 million years ago (or so) when Europe collided with Greenland in the formation of Pangaea.  The collision forced 3 billion year old rock to the surface, and Lofoten boasts the oldest (or second oldest?) surface rocks in the world.  I present this factoid in an effort to express just how special these islands are.

The Lofoten Islands rise up directly out of the sea.  There is no flat-ish transition zone between ocean and mountain, just unimaginably steep, nearly vertical walls of granite.  Peaks of 3500+ feet plunge directly into fjords and into the open ocean.  Lofoten is perfect for Carl and I since Carl loves the sea and I love the mountains.  From just about anywhere in Lofoten, even high up in the mountains, you have a beautiful view of both.

Mountain view from low tide beach.

We spent two weeks on the islands.  The first was spent kayaking with my dear friend Chad and his boyfriend Tom.  After our friends departed, Carl and I spent another week backpacking our way across one of the islands.

The kayaking adventure begins.  Packing the boats and looking toward the straight we would be kayaking through all week.

Kayaking in this majestic place was a series of discoveries.  Each bay and island brought a new landscape into view.  First a beach of sea-weed-blackened pebbles.  Then a beach of white, sugar-soft sand.  Then a beach of person-sized boulders, perfectly rounded by a geologic age of wave action.  Then a cliff of bulbous rock, rounded by the scraping of the glaciers.  Then a jagged cliff where the older, glacier-ground stone fell, splashing into the sea, leaving younger, raw rock exposed.  And next a shallow, sandy shelf of turquoise water upon white sand dotted by clam shells and starfish.  Then an unfathomably deep fjord with water so deep that no glow but a solid blackness reflects up from the depths.  Then a boulder bottom swaying with a plantation of kelp and seaweed.

One day a surface so still I felt we were paddling through an ocean of mercury—reflective, but heavy, leaden.  Another day the surface was smooth and glassy and sharp—a mirror, but light and sparkly, reflections crisp as diamonds.  Another face of the sea was sloppy, with disorganized waves sloshing over our kayak in an unbalanced rhythm.  One day a biting wind, the next intense sun and only whishing for a breeze, the next sunny with a warm breeze that deceives you into thinking that you are in Jamaica instead of northern Norway.  Clear views of distant, emerald green slopes one day and hazy, smoky-blue glimpses of mysterious peaks the next.

choppy water and mercury water

The weather changes quickly in Lofoten.  At the beginning of lunch, it may be intensely cloudy with a thick fog among the alpine ridges and only a hint of sunlight behind the sullen clouds.  After lunch, all trace of moisture but a few puffy clouds has disappeared and the sun is shining brilliantly upon the landscape, enhancing the colors from grey-tinged to Ireland-green slopes and Bahamas-turquoise water.

what colors!

We had incredible luck with the weather during our trip.  When I mentioned to people in Sweden that we were heading to Lofoten for summer vacation, everyone said that they hoped that we like rain; apparently the island chain has a reputation for consistent precipitation and fog.  It had been cold and rainy for weeks before we arrived, but the first day of our kayak trip, the weather cleared, the sun began to shine, and the wind died.  We quickly became sunburned and spent most of the trip applying multiple layers of sunscreen.  Carl and I did experience a scary storm with raging wind during our hike, but after 24 hours the weather returned to being mostly sunny and agreeable.

Our group made the choice to cover less distance and to therefore have more time to enjoy and discover.  We never paddled more than five hours in a day, and given that the sun never set, we had quite a lot of time for side hikes, fishing, reading, sketching, snoozing, chatting, dining, imbibing, and off-tune singing.  Some favorite moments included watching Tom catch fish after fish:

Frying up and eating Tom’s freshly caught cod and mackerel (I never knew that fish could taste so un-fishy when it is only a few minutes old!):

Watching a pod of about 20 Atlantic grey dolphins splash around as they hunted their evening meal:

Watching pink jellyfish float by:

 

Paddling into towering Troll Fjord:

Hiking from sea level up into the mountains:

Chad is king of the mountain.

Imagining owning one of the houses with incredible views that we paddled by:

Just floating and gazing:

Swimming in the frigid artic waters (and then rinsing the salt off in an even more frigid freshwater stream):

Picking and eating deliciously wild cloudberries (and lots of blueberries, too!):

Climbing above a Caribbean blue bay and enjoying the flamboyantly colorful view:

Carl's panorama of the incredible view.

And putting on a spray-skirt fashion show:

It was very sad to end our kayaking adventure and to paddle back to civilization, but it was even sadder to say goodbye to Chad and Tom.  It had been more than a year since I had seen Chad, and while Skype is great, it’s just not the same as catching up face-to-face over a bottle (each) of wine.  I don’t know when we’ll see each other next, and I hope that we can manage to make visits a yearly event.

 

After Chad and Tom left, it was time for Carl and I to pack up our sandals and strap on our hiking boots.  On our backpacking trip, we witnessed countless breathtaking vistas.  Sadly, however, many of these vistas were marred. 

In any other country, the Lofoten Islands would be a national park.  But in Norway, the spectacular beauty of this place is just ordinary, to be expected.  It is almost as if this place, flung far out into the Artic Ocean, is forgotten or taken for granted.

The omnipresent criss-crossing of power lines is evidence of Lofoten’s forsaken status. These lines were the first thing I noticed as we drove south and out upon the island chain from the airport.  Marring landscapes of indescribable beauty, these electric lines shout of man’s inability to reason out the long-term consequences of immediate, short-term convenience.  The lines were noticeable but not toooo bothersome from our kayaks, but once we started on the backpacking portion of the trip, the power lines were hard to ignore and they were annoyingly obtrusive.

I know that Lofoten’s alpine lakes have been harnessed to provide power at least since the 60’s…  Would wealthy Norway choose to create power by raping Lofoten’s landscapes today?  If not, why are these power stations, dams, electric lines, towering power poles, and concrete water shoots not torn out?  I seriously doubt that all that much power is created in Lofoten—is the little power gained worth the maintenance through harsh, North Atlantic winters? 

I am convinced that power-pole installers are the ones who design power line systems in Lofoten.  Driving through the landscape, three, sometimes four sets of power lines can be seen, often trotting side-by-side, parallel through the valleys, and sometimes at angles and weaving through each other.  Carl and I were dismayed to follow a set of power lines up from the town of Sörvågen high into the alpine reaches of Mt. Hermannsdalstinden.  The power lines then descended the opposite pass down into the fjord.  The exact same route, fjord to town, was also accomplished by a second, extraneous set of power lines along the shoreline.  Is it really necessary to mar both the alpine and the coastal scenery of such an incredible place, just to supply one town of about 100 people with electricity stolen from a mountain lake?

What effect can a line of power poles have on a landscape so majestically vast?  True, from a distance, the lines are all but invisible and the poles light pinpricks.  But up close, they are towering monsters vying with the mountains for attention.  It is certainly no wilderness experience to hike under a long-distance, high-voltage power line.  But even at a distance, the mere existence of the power lines diminishes the feeling of wilderness, the feeling of standing up against the elements and surviving.

I cannot imagine looking at this alpine lake and saying, "hmm, looks like the perfect place for a power line..." !!!

Yes: on a normal, un-power-pole-adorned trail, I am conscious that thousands have walked the same path before me.  I am conscious that in our time, “wilderness” is mostly a mythological idea.  Even so, being up in the mountains without modern conveniences (excepting Gore-Tex and zip-lock baggies!!!) is a cleansing test of one’s perseverance and character.  The power lines of Lofoten diminish this feeling of accomplishment and transport the hiker directly back to civilization, the exact state of mind he/she was trying to escape.

Even incredible Trollfjord was marred by two generator houses and several concrete pipelines falling from high alpine lakes to sea level. 

The omnipresent power lines made me very disappointed in Norway, but we tried our best to ignore them and to focus on the natural beauty that surrounded us.  And wow, what natural beauty!

Our first hike was an out-and-back trip up from the sea, up and up and up 

So glad the trail wasn't slick with rain!

past a series of seven ever-higher lakes

Carl gazing out to the ocean and to three alpine lakes, each lake about 800 feet higher then the one before.

 connected by waterfalls tumbling over granite cliffs,

 

and up onto Mt. Hermanndalstinden.  

On the way up toward Hermanndalstinden.  Left: Djupforden and the ocean.  Right: Mountains, 2 alpine lakes, and the ocean beyond.  The goal, Mt. Hermanndalstinden, is the high peak toward the left.

Our original goal was to summit the mountain, but the trail felt overcrowded, too exposed, and dangerous so we gave into the temptation of a shorter hike and turned back.

Carl made a panorama of the view down from Hermanndalstinden.  Forsfjord is the body of water on the left, and an alpine lake 800 feet above the fjord is on the right.

We enjoyed a longer evening of swimming in our “private” alpine lake and gazing at the surrounding mountain amphitheater.  Like Sweden, you can camp just about anywhere in Norway, so it’s easy to hike or paddle away from the crowds and find a quiet, private spot.

Warming up in the sun after a very chilly swim.

Also like Sweden, you can also drink the water without having to filter first.  It still feels "dangerous" to drink right out of the lakes and streams, but it sure is nice not to have to carry the extra equipment!

Lofoten’s scenery is nothing short of epic with the rugged peaks plunging directly into the ocean.  Due to the latitude above the artic circle and to the harsh, North Atlantic conditions, treeline is only a few stories above sea level.  Steps from the shore, you rise above treeline into an alpine world of towering jagged peaks, snowfields lingering into August, and numerous glacier-bowl lakes filling the voids between the high, windy ridges.  Back at the waterside, aquatic and alpine plants exist side-by-side, creating an exotic mixture of worlds noticeable to anyone with patience to observe.  I have never been in a place where a Caribbean-turquoise sea was observable from an alpine peak.

As if the scenery wasn't incredible enough!  These lupine-y flowers were blooming all over at low elevations.

After retracing our steps and climbing down from the heights, our next destination was Bunnes Beach.  We took a ferry up Reine Fjord to the teeny community of Vinstad, and from there, we hiked over a low mountain pass to Bunnes Beach on the west coast of the island.

From the top of the pass looking back toward Vinstad and Reine Fjord.

The trail to the beach is short and easy, so the beach is a popular destination.  However, the kilometer-wide sand beach is big enough that we were able to hike a bit away from the crowd and find a secluded spot to camp.

Carl's panorama looking down the other side of the pass to the beach.

Originally we chose a spot a little closer to the towering cliff, but after hearing a few falling rocks bounce down the stone wall, we quickly moved closer to the water instead.  Carl braved the chilly waves and swam a bit, but I was too chilly in the biting wind to even think about it.

Carl's swim.  Brrr!

To minimize logistics, we concentrated our hikes in one area of the island chain and covered many of Moskenes Island’s hiking trails.  However, if I were to hike in Lofoten again, I would do it differently.  Lofoten contains numerous day hikes, but trying to string together a week of hiking without returning to civilization several times in the middle of the trip is impossible.  Also, without two cars, it is difficult to avoid there-and-back trips or trips where you end with a six+ kilometer road walk to the nearest bus stop.

Instead of trying to jerry rig the island’s disconnected trails into a week-long wilderness trip, I would take advantage of Lofoten’s trail limitations and just do day hikes from a comfy, luxurious rorbu instead.  Rorbuer are historical fishermen’s cottages.  Cantilevered over the water’s edge, the fishermen had direct access to their boats.  Cottages were seemingly haphazardly placed, but the result is a charming cacophony and a quaint village atmosphere.  These fishermen’s cottages have been restored all over Lofoten and they are now used as hotel rooms.  Talk about rooms with a view!

Rorbuer in Reine

Carl and I stayed in 2 rorbuer—one in the fishing village of Reine and one in the fishing village of Å.  Both were fairly pricy (although the rooms are really suites with living and dining areas, kitchens, and separate bedrooms), but the cottage in Reine was a much better value: spotlessly clean, exquisitely restored, tastefully furnished with local crafts pieces, and furnished with a cozy wood stove, luxurious bed linens, and a steaming, full-force shower.

The view from our Reine rorbu.

Lonely Planet describes Reine as “characterless,” but I’m not sure how that description could possibly apply to the little village.

Sure, there’s not a whole lot going on in Reine, and yes, there is still a good bit of smelly and sometimes not so scenic fishing activity going on (warehouses).  But considering the surrounding scenery, the quaint sleepiness, the fact that the town has managed to hold onto a traditional way of life through small scale fishing operations, the cute rorbuer village, and the excellent restaurant serving the local catch, I would say that Reine is anything but characterless.  In fact, I’d venture to say that the town is a good model for blending traditional occupations with a lively tourism industry while maintaining a sense of real life.   

We were not there during the cod fishing season, which is in the winter (BRRR!).  During the fishing season, cod are still hung to dry on these traditional drying racks.

After our night in Reine, it was time to leave luxury behind and go back to the beach instead.  We took the ferry back over Reine fjord and disembarked at another teeny community called Kjerkfjorden.

This time, we hiked over a slightly higher mountain pass and down into the very long (2 km) Horseid Beach.  I don’t want to discount the beauty and awesomeness of the scenery, but the most rousing part of our time on Horseid Beach was stepping into quicksand.  A freshwater stream divided one part of the beach from the other, and we ended up wanting to cross over to the other side.  The stream was only a few inches deep so it didn’t seem like a big deal to cross, so we took our boots off and stepped right in.  My first foot sank through the sand up to my ankle, but that didn’t awaken any alarms.  However, within a split second, my second foot sank immediately past my knee.  Alarm bells rang clear and without even consciously processing the information, I turned around and ran back up onto the stream bank.  We were very lucky that we hadn’t ventured further into the stream before realizing the predicament and turning around; I believe that only one or two steps further could have spelled the end.

Looking down into Horseid Beach from the pass.

We didn’t spend the night on the beach but decided to hike up to the next mountain pass and camp on the ridge.  There is a trail up to the pass marked on the hiking map, and there was definitely a visible and obvious trail to follow.  However, that trail marched straight up the very steep mountainside without any switchbacks or any consideration to the steep grade at all.  We found this to be typical all over the island.

Walks through the valleys were much easier than the nearly vertical paths up to the passes!

Trails in Lofoten are not so much constructed as created by convenience and the consensus of thousands of feet marching ever uphill.  There seems to have been very little or no trail building in Lofoten; instead, people have gradually worn paths up to reachable passes and those paths have in time, one-by-one, made it onto maps.  Once on a map, traffic increases considerably, and the path becomes increasingly worn and trampled, thus increasingly eroded and damaged.  Entire sections of hillside have already slid down, creating quite dangerous hiking conditions, especially when hiking downhill and especially when the ground is wet (which it usually is in Lofoten). 

This passive system of trail building surprises me—Norway seems like such a leader when it comes to outdoor adventure-y tourism, and they certainly have the money to create and maintain a reasonable trail system.  Why does such an unsustainable system of trails persist in Lofoten?  And why doesn’t Norway try to improve the trails, encouraging more tourism with more accessible and less dangerous trails?  Why is Norway allowing whole hillsides to fall away when a solution is so easily implemented?  I haven’t hiked elsewhere in Norway, so I don’t know if the trail conditions in Lofoten are representative of the country as a whole.  Are Lofoten’s trails further evidence of Lofoten’s forsaken status?

Despite the eroding trail and its crazy steepness, we eventually made it up to the pass.  It took a bit of stone removal to create a passable tentsite in a wind shadow, but the effort was worth being able to spend the evening enjoying the incredible views back toward Horseid Beach as well as into the next valley and Selfjord. 

The next morning was a bit rainy, so we decided to let ourselves be lazy and lounge in the tent until the rain died away.  Not only did we want to stay dry, but it also felt unsafe to be clambering on such steep, rocky trails if they were slick with rain.  However, trying to avoid the slippery trails turned out to be the least safe alternative.  Over the course of the day, the wind steadily gained strength and eventually, even our wind-protected tent shook with gale-force winds.  We knew from experience that the tent could withstand quite strong winds, but our extremely exposed location high up in the mountains wasn’t boding well.  After debating for a while, we decided that the weather was only going to get worse and that we needed to get off the exposed ridge as soon as possible.  We dismantled camp in record time and managed to pack up our things without anything flying away.

Then it was time to battle the wind as we followed the trail and made our way across to another high ridge before finally starting to descend.  As our position became more and more exposed to the wind, it became harder and harder to stand upright.  The wind consistently forced us to our hands and knees, and we walked hunched low to the ground and even crawled several stretches.  There were decided gusts to the wind, and when the gusts were at their strongest, we just huddled low to the ground.  As soon as we sensed a slight weakening of the wind, we shot ahead as far as we could until the wind blew us over again.

It was very slow going, but eventually we made it to the next saddle between high peaks.  This new ridge had no protection from the wind at all and the wind was even stronger there.  At one point, just before we crested the ridge, Carl and I both lay flat against the ground, clutching the edge of a boulder so that we wouldn’t get blown off the mountain.  I could feel the wind pushing at me, but Carl held onto me and helped me to creep up to a slightly protective crevice.  We waited there for a few minutes until the wind flagged just the tiniest bit; then we were able to crouch-run across the ridge to the wind-shaded side of the mountain.

We slowly descended the steep, muddy trail.  Even though we were now relatively protected from the wind, we could tell that the wind velocity continued to increase and that the gusts were becoming more and more frequent.  Finding a tentsite was difficult because the terrain was strewn with boulders, the entire valley was under an inch or two of water, and the landscape was quite open to the wind.  Finally, we found a tiny spot that was somewhat flat and somewhat dry and somewhat protected from the wind by two very small birches.  Even though we wouldn’t have set up camp in such an unfavorable spot in normal conditions, we were tired, soaked, and hungry and didn’t want to keep walking in such awful conditions.

Eventually we got the tent set up and dried ourselves off enough to emerge from the chock of what we had experienced.  We called Carl’s parents for the weather report, thinking that if conditions were going to stay so bad, we’d rather check into a cozy rorbu for a couple of days than keep hiking.  When they texted the weather report to us a few minutes later, we almost couldn’t believe our eyes.  At sea level, the wind was at 50 mph.  Up on the ridge, 3500 feet up in the mountains, the wind must have been nearly double so fast and strong.  No wonder our hike over the ridge had been so frightening!

Even though we were far below the ridge in a relatively protected valley, the wind kept us awake half the night with gusts that repeatedly collapsed our tent.  Unfortunately, our unfavorable tentsite was only big enough to set up the tent in one direction, and that direction was perpendicular to the wind.  Our tent is designed to withstand strong parallel winds, but the tent was no match for strong perpendicular gusts.  After a couple of collapses, we learned to sense the gusts before they became too strong and we were able to hold up the tent poles against the wind.  Eventually, engineer Carl figured out how to use one of our hiking poles to shore up the tent so that we didn’t have to be on constant alert.  

Luckily, the crazy weather was short-lived, and we were able to continue our hike the next day in better (although not beautifully sunny) conditions.  Eventually the trail petered out onto a gravel road alongside the fjord.  Lofoten has large numbers of houses with incredible views that are in need of restoration.  I imagine that it is crazy expensive to build or restore in Lofoten, but some beautifully restored houses show the possibilities. 

 

After a couple of kilometers, we turned off onto another trail.  This trail led up through a sheep pasture with a beautiful herding hut,

then up past several small lakes to a low saddle.  When we crossed the saddle, we could see our third and final gorgeous sand beach.  When we descended down into Kvalvika beach, we discovered that we were quite lucky—we happened to be there when the tide was low enough to be able to walk to the other side of the beach on the sand.  Unlucky hikers are forced to either turn back or to hang onto the chain that is bolted into the cliff above the beach.  After our scary experience in the wind on top of the ridge, I was quite thankful not to have to resist waves pounding me into the cliff face by hanging onto an iron chain.  No thank you!

Kvalvika Beach

Because we needed to catch a bus the next day, we did not camp on the beach but rather climbed out and over the next ridge.

Carl sketching our last tentsite view

After a six kilometer road walk the next morning, we arrived at the bus stop in plenty of time to catch the bus.  It took us to Å, another quaint but touristy fishing village.  After a luxurious shower and a wander around the town, we ate a so-so dinner in the village’s restaurant.  Even though our rorbu in Å wasn’t nearly as cute or well renovated as the one in Reine, we did enjoy sleeping in a real bed.

Rorbuer in Å

The real bed was wonderful, but we are also very happy with our new tent.  Lofoten was our new tent’s maiden trip, and we definitely chose well.  It is super lightweight and compact, but it is a good bit roomier than our old tent.  It withstood a great deal of rain and wind (when oriented properly!).  Carl and I have a habit of photographing our tent in each new and incredible location; here is the best of our Lofoten tent porn:

From Å, we took a bus all the way through the islands back to the airport.  We had a layover in the relatively large town of Svolvaer where there is some interesting non-tent contemporary architecture in Lofoten:

And a modern interpretation of rorbuer:

 

Our Lofoten trip was almost three months ago now.  We had a visitor immediately after our trip and after that, work deadlines took over my evenings.  Now that I have a little more free time again, I have enjoyed sorting through our hundreds of photos and rewriting my journal entries for this blog entry.  Looking back through the photos and memories, it’s hard to believe that we were actually there and actually experienced all of this.  The landscape is so beautiful that it seems more like a movie backdrop than reality.

Maybe that’s what all the power poles and power lines are doing on Lofoten: they serve as reminders that Lofoten is in fact real and not a figment of imagination.

   
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 26, 2013

Kayaking in the Archipelago

The weekend after Carl and I went sailing with his parents, we returned to a different part of the archipelago to go kayaking with two friends (we went skiing with them in Chamonix, see below) as well as their visiting German friend.  The trip was fabulous and definitely something that I want to repeat a lot over the coming summers. 

We picked up our kayaks in Dalarö Friday after work and set off paddling after a picnic dinner.  Starting so late wasn’t a problem since it was almost midsummer which means that sunset wasn’t until nearly 11pm and even well after sunset, it never gets all the way dark.  While we didn’t really want to paddle till midnight, it wouldn’t have been scary or unsafe to do so.  

Not too far from Dalarö, we found a good landing beach and a flat-enough camping spot on an uninhabited island.  The rain was very polite and held off long enough to let us set up our tents and get organized before the downpour began.  We then gathered in our friends’ huge dome tent and chatted with snacks and a bag of wine.  The rain didn’t last too long and soon we were out on a cliff overlooking the water in the background and a raging campfire in the foreground.  The continuing twilight meant that we could enjoy both the view and the campfire simultaneously.

One of the best "holywood"campfires ever

Saturday was a gorgeous day with puffy clouds and warm golden sunshine.  We broke camp after climbing to the highest point of the island 

and after everyone but me took a quick dip in the frigid water and started paddling.  I have sailed through the same area a couple of times, but the thing that I absolutely loved about the kayaking was that you’re moving more slowly and more closely to the coastline.  From the sailboat, you get a sense of what you’re passing by, but from the kayak you get a much closer view of the rocky cliffs towering above you and the curved coves beckoning you to pause and explore.  The view from the kayak was so much more intimate than from the sailboat that I felt like I was seeing the area for the first time.

It didn’t take us too long to reach our lunch/geocaching destination at the rocky tip of a jutting peninsula.  We pulled the kayaks up on the beach, 

explored the beautiful peninsula, ate lunch, and then lazed in the sun like lizards for an hour.  We eventually forced ourselves off the warm, sunny rock and into the kayaks for more exploring.

glacier carved granite and lizzards

Much of our afternoon kayaking was directly against the rather forceful wind.  We were able to make slow progress, but battling the wind wasn’t nearly as relaxing as the morning paddle.  Eventually we found a perfect camping island with a good beach to pull the kayaks up onto (unfortunately we discovered too late that the beach was infested with biting ants).  The island provided flat, soft camping spots under the trees and a long peninsula of flat rock facing the sunset.  Sadly, the clouds moved in so we didn’t get too much of a color show, but another campfire and the watery view interspersed with island upon island made up for the lack of vibrant sunset colors.

The sun was thinking about setting around 10pm; the resulting colors around midnight.

We all slept well and long padded by all the cushy pine needles, so we started the next day relaxed and slowly.  Before getting out of our sleeping bags, Carl and I held a memorial service for our tent, remembering all the wonderful adventures that it has faithfully provided shelter for.  Our next adventure will be in our new yellow tent, so we are retiring our 15-year-old blue tent from active service.

On our Sunday paddle back toward Dalarö, we stopped at an island fortress.  

storming the fortress

Dalarö Skans was built beginning in 1656 to protect one of the two deepwater channels leading into Stockholm from the Danish navy.  Like just about everything in military history, the fortress was outdated before construction was finished and even though it was used as a military post until 1854, it never saw any action.  The fortress is perched upon a high point of the islands with clear views in every direction.  A star-shaped wall surrounds the central circular stone tower.  

 

The public can wander inside the wall to the base of the tower, but the tower itself was disappointingly off-limits.  We enjoyed lunch in the wind shadow of the tower and after finding another geocache, we eventually pushed out in the kayaks for a last, down-wind paddle back to Dalarö.

lunching and geocaching

The wind was so strong at our backs that we practically didn’t need to paddle at all in order to complete the last few kilometers of our journey.  After unloading the boats, we celebrated a great and successful trip with a beer outside of one of Dalarö’s many cute bar/cafes.  It was then back to Stockholm, but the sadness in heading home after a great weekend outside and away was muted by the knowledge that a longer summer adventure is just around the corner.

THURSDAY, JUNE 13, 2013

Sailing to Nassa

Carl’s parents have recently put their sailboat in the water for the season, and last weekend, Carl and I joined them for a couple days of sailing.  Sailing is naturally extremely  dependent on the water, so our pick-up location and destination is always a surprise.  This time, Carl and I took a bus to Boda, about an hour from downtown Stockholm.  The bus dropped us off at a dock and Carl’s parents were waiting with the sailboat nearby.  When we appeared on the dock, they motored over to the dock and Carl and I jumped on board with our bag.

Because it was late afternoon, it was too late to start sailing, so we motored about half an hour to a beautiful bay off of Gällnö, an island that I previously wrote about (see "Two Weekends in the Archipelago" here.)  As usual, Carl’s mom prepared an amazing three course dinner with hand-ground tapenade and elderflower cocktails for the appetizer, smoked pork loin with a mouth-watering mushroom sauce for the main course, and a cheese platter for desert.  Dinners on the boat are all-evening affairs (as the gourmet food deserves!) and by the time we finished the cheese course, the sun had actually set.  It was the first time that Carl and I have been awake for sunset in quite some time!

After a nice breakfast the next morning, Carl and I decided that the sunny weather and relatively warm water temperature of 64°F called for a dip.  The water was refreshing, to say the least.

The wind was perfect to head way, way, way out in the archipelago to Nassa, a group of islands that are now a nature preserve.  Nassa is a special place—partly because of its geography, and partly because it is so hard to reach.  The islands are fairly small, ranging in size from about 5 feet in diameter to maybe a quarter mile in diameter.  Vegetation is sparse, but some stubby pines and birch dot some of the islands.  Heather, blueberry bushes, and grasses cover the more dirt-covered areas, but large swaths of the islands are bare, bulbous granite.  

on the way in

Part of what makes the area so special is that the islands lie so close together, but the channels in between are quite deep, allowing large sailboats to navigate into the center of the grouping.  When you’re boating through the channels, sharp granite cliffs tower above you and are so close that you feel like you could touch them.  Anchored in one of the central bays, you feel very protected.  But once you climb atop one of the towering cliffs, you can see how lonely this little collection of islands really is, far, far out in the big, black Baltic.

Unlike many of the islands closer to Stockholm, Nassa can only be reached by private boat and there are no ferries that go out that far.  This limits the number of people in the area, and even though Nassa is very popular with boaters, there is a distinct feeling of being on the edge of civilization.  There are a few historical farm/fishing buildings on one of the islands, but  now that the area is a nature preserve, further development is not allowed.

I have been out to Nassa one other time, in 2006, on my first sailing trip with Carl and his parents.  I loved being there the first time, but I found that I connected much more deeply with the place this time around.  Perhaps now that I have seen more of the archipelago, I realize how different and special Nassa truly is.  Or perhaps familiarity breeds appreciation.  In either case, this trip to Nassa was utterly magnificent.

Carl took the dinghy to explore one of the larger islands.  We climbed up and around and did a circumnavigation of the island, stopping frequently to enjoy the views and take photos.  We climbed up onto one granite plateau and were greeted by an unexpectedly large animal—we’re actually not sure what it is, but it was probably some sort of mountain goat/big horn sheep/something.  How such a large animal can survive and breed on such a small island with no fresh water source other than rain puddles is a mystery.  Carl’s parents didn’t believe us when we told them about the animal, and even after we showed them the photos, they were still dumfounded.

A second long and delicious dinner filled Saturday evening, but we were in bed a bit earlier than the night before.  After all that sun and fresh air, I was amazingly exhausted and slept like a log most of the night.

Sadly, the weather turned overnight and Sunday dawned cloudy and rainy.  As soon as it started to seriously rain, I disappeared below deck and left the sailing to Carl and his dad.  With the rain and clouds came colder temperatures, and I spent most of the day huddled on the sofa with my ski coat and a blanket and an outdoorsy magazine.  My lot in life was chilly but dry; Carl’s dad’s lot was far worse—out steering and navigating in the cold rain.  We were all thankful, though, that the rain let up in time for us to get to the marina and unload the boat.  It was a bit of an anticlimactic end to a wonderful weekend, but I am grateful to have had the opportunity to get out to Nassa again!

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