Heaven

Around 7am we reach the Arctic Circle, one of those many arbitrary marks on globes, like the Greenwich meridian. Except that this one isn’t arbitrary. Every bit of land and sea within the circle experiences at least one 24-hour period a year where the sun does not rise and one where it does not set. We’ll have to go a bit further for our days of no sunrise as we’ve missed the solstice by three weeks and at this time of the year sunrise and sunset are growing further apart quite rapidly. But lines matter and some passengers celebrate the transition by getting someone who has dressed up as a troll to put ice down their back. I prefer the simple maths and magic of it.

Despite that, the sea seems to want to offer up its own parallel markers (extra).

Around mid-day we reach Bodø and leave the boat for a walk, first along a beach with gritty washed-up lumps of Norwegian coral from the deep-sea reef between here and the Lofoten islands. I had no idea that cold-water coral existed but there are plentiful brain-like spheres, 2-3cm in diameter, strewn over the sand. Then we walk slightly inland to some Viking graves. They are not marked – there’s just a mound and the snow and the birch trees and a faint lapping of water to connect us to our forebears, lying quiet in the ground.

By the time we reach our third bay the fallen sun is turning the sky and the sea pink (extra) and us dark, and we head back to the ship.

Stamsund glows out of the darkness (extra). Just over 1,000 people live here and a Hurtigruten ship (with 500 or so people to feed) calls in twice a day, delivering packages and collecting local produce, either for use on the ship or for delivering to larger settlements. I am stunned at the level of infrastructure provided to enable small communities to thrive.

Over the PA at dinnertime I hear the word Nordlys. Food? Pah! I pelt. Through the dining room, along the corridor, sidestepping anyone waiting for the announcement in English or German, and up the stairs to the deck, dodging around everyone slower or less determined than I am. The rest of my family soon catches up and we watch lights streaming from the horizon to the boat (extras). For 30 minutes I stare at the sky as I rest my camera on the rail, pressing the shutter again and again. There is no chance of a picture unmarred by movement but I am not interested in a trophy photo – all I want is something to convince me later that I really did see this.
 
Back in the dining room I say to one of the waiters that they must be used to losing their clientele mid-meal. No. Apparently lights this early in the evening are rare.
 
At the hour’s stop in Svolvaer we have too much exuberant energy to stay on the boat. I am still apprehensive of the ice and walk very gingerly but my ‘children’ (both fully fledged adults) cavort in the snow.
 
Once we have left the lights of Svolvaer we can see the glow in the sky again and we stand frozen (in every sense) to the outside deck watching the light try to get comfortable on the horizon. Every now and then it shrugs, rolls over, stretches an arm or a leg and tries to go back to sleep. But it is too restless. Around 11.30, just as we reach the mouth of Trollfjord where the captain is due to show off his ship-manoeuvring skills while the crew use the boat’s strong searchlights to show us the fjord's steep and narrow beauty in the dark, Nordlys wakes up (main picture and extra). There is a bizarre tussle between the searchlight that everyone tries to ignore and the dancing going on over our heads.
 
 
Several people who I’ve told (see yesterday’s blip) about the Aurora appearing to the human eye as grey with only faint colour have been very surprised and asked it it’s disappointing. I’ve taken most of the colour out of my blip and last extra to try to show how they actually look and I don’t think anyone could possibly experience this shimmering overhead as disappointing. I could barely breathe out. But I can’t find any pictures on the internet of the lights the way we see them, and many seem to have the saturation whacked right up. It's not necessary.


Apologies to those who experience a bit of déjà lu here. I indvertently posted some of today's text yesterday – now deleted from yesterday.