Being a tourist

Despite our late night in the Arctic Cathedral we get up very early this morning for a bus ride from Harstad through Vesterålen. We’re abandoning the ship and will join it again in four hours' time in Sortland. After an unexciting tour in the early morning of Harstad’s roundabouts, an office block or two and a high-rise block of flats that was built to get the town’s population high enough to be allowed a liquor store, we get to the thick-walled, medieval Trondenes Church. I am very surprised that we are expected to participate in a ten-minute service in German and English before being allowed to look round. Even more surprised to learn that the Church of Norway is supported by the state and until recently clergy were civil servants.

A short walk over ice brings us to a museum where, philistine that I am, I am most entranced by the roaring fire in the middle of the entrance hall and the lights in the café looking like coffee cups on saucers (extra).
 
Snowy Vesterålen with its pink skies reflected in fjords is absurdly lovely. Our guide points out grazing reindeer (well, two grazing reindeer) and sea eagles. At a stop where sea and fresh water meet we are told that we can take as many of the huge quantity of mussels under the bridge as we want. Although, like Norwegians, we are free to roam where we like and forage where we like, none of us does.

We are travelling down one side of a long fjord and take a short cut from Melaa to Flesnes on a small ferry where we are served brunost (a curious brown cheese with a caramel taste) on waffles. I am feeling more and more like a tourist. Just before we go over the long bridge that will take us to Sortland harbour the bus pulls over and our guide points out our ship heading towards the bridge. As we cross the bridge, the ship hoots. We look down and there are crew members on the prow waving at us. OK – I am now 100% tourist.

But there is more to come. A space becomes available on an evening ride on Icelandic ponies in the Lofoten islands. I don’t much like horse riding – the first time I ever rode, aged 12, the horse slipped in mud and fell over – and the last not very happy or comfortable time was, I thought, my last ever and good riddance. But, you know, along a beach... perhaps with northern lights… So I go. I will make my peace with horses and bid them farewell kindly. Getting on is as ungainly and alarming as it ever was, but riding on the sand under astonishingly bright stars is an excellent way to end.

Back on the ship my son and I go up on deck to follow the faint aurora on the horizon. We chat and get very cold. I check the activity with my camera and it gets more active then quietens down. But I will stay up all night if necessary. After a couple of hours I go inside to put hand-warmers in my boots. When I emerge a few minutes later the lights are dancing and my son has disappeared. I yell above the engine noise for him and he comes running out of the door towards me. Such kindness – they’d started just after I’d gone inside and he left them to find me.