The world's most beautiful cruise

Hurtigruten part 1
The Hurtigruten cruise line is the life blood of Northern Norway. It was started in 1893 as a way to get goods to/from all the small fishing ports in the hinterlands. Although there are roads to some of the towns, they are small and rough in many places, and difficult to traverse, not to mention very slow going since Norway has 34,000 miles of coast line. Ferry service linked the towns on the islands with the main land, but even so, service was spotty. So enter the Hurtigruten coastal ferry line with its 11 ships which ply the waters each and every day of the year providing all the goods and services without which the isolated communities simply could not exist.
Even with the daily arrivals of the ships, life here is tough to say the very least. If you look at the coastline of Norway, you will see literally thousands of miles of rugged land with fishing overwhelming the economic force. 80% of the people live along the coast through out Norway. Little places like Vardo may have a military fortification, others might have some mining interests or oil exploration, but the towns are purely and simply fishing communities at their heart. We watched this morning as pallet after pallet of dried cod was loaded onto the ship for delivery to the markets south and abroad. Without Hurtigruten there would be no market.
Therefore, there is a large debate going on in Norway now about the economic feasibility of this line. The ship is full for our voyage as it is for most of the summer months, but in the winter where there is no sun, who would want to make the journey through rough seas when you couldn’t see anything anyway what with the winter sun below the horizon most of the time. Still, every day a Hurtigruten ship stops on the way north, and another stops on its journey back south. The government has had to pump a lot of money into the company, and the debate is simply, “How much is too much.” As you might expect, the people of the north feel VERY strongly about it.
Our ship the Polarlys is a medium sized member of the line. It was built in 1996 so it has the amenities, like stabilizers to smooth out the ride in these waters which can get nasty, to say the least. We’ve had seas of 4-6 feet most of the way. Not rough for you sailors out there, but not the glass many people like on their cruise. They told of a journey this summer where an aortic storm came through and they had 30 foot waves crashing over the ship. A journey which normally takes two hours from one port to another took 13 hours. Must have seemed like 13 days to many of the passengers. Apparently………….well you get the picture.
With a total of 737 passengers, and only 439 in cabins, it certainly is a change from the mega-ships we’ve been on in the past. The other 300 are deck passengers who get on at one port and get off in another. They visit friends/relatives for a day or two and then get on the ship traveling in the opposite directions. We met a couple who had relatives at one of the ports and their family got on board for six hours today. Then they’ll get off and drive back home.
The passenger list is 98% European. There is actually another American couple on board. When they were told there was another American couple on board and we were pointed out to them, they didn’t think we were Americans because of my African bush hat. Naturally, I wore it for the rest of the day We tried assiduously to avoid them, but were put at the “English” speaking table for dinner, which meant the four of us. An hour of listening to Americanese: “It’s so much nicer on a ‘real’ cruise ship,” and “I don’t like fish, don’t they have ‘real’ food,” made us flee to the public lounges for some intelligent, interesting conversations, which we have had many.
On one stop yesterday, we saw a man with a trowel digging in the ground. I asked him what he was looking for and he replied: “Arctic earthworms.” Now there’s a topic you don’t hear on your Princess Caribbean cruise.” Seems he’s a zoologist in Sweden and he’s studying the DNA of earthworms. Another man I met this morning said his Great Grandfather actually started Hurtigruten. We had an interesting conversation about the history, but he got off the ship to visit relatives still living here in the north. Another Swedish orthopedic surgeon shared our breakfast table and we had lots of banter back and forth about life in the north. He’s done the trip before and had interesting sidebars.
While the food has a definite European flavor, kippered herring is available for breakfast, “Excellent for your health,” the doctor told me as he relished every bite, there’s certainly nothing to complain about, at least for most people. The American said that he should have just had multiple desserts and he’d be fine. Considering his girth, it didn’t appear he missed too many at the luncheon dessert table.
Carol’s eyes lit up when we went for lunch yesterday. One whole table in the round had, and excuse me if I miss something: Smoked salmon, two kinds of mussels, HUGE crab claws, snow crab, king crab, sautéed peeled prawns, whole shrimp, and whole crawdads. In addition, they had pork loins, the requisite boiled, unsalted small potatoes, gravy, fresh vegetable salad table, and lots of fresh fruit. Breakfast and lunch are buffet style, while dinner is a sit down, traditional cruise type meal.
My only complaint is that I can’t get coffee in the morning when I get up without paying for it. I NEED MY COFFEE, PEOPLE!! I can pay $4 for a small cup or wait till seven when the breakfast room opens up.
The landscape so far is, to put it mildly, stark. We haven’t seen a tree for two days since we left Kirkenes. Lots of rugged cliffs, hills of maybe 500 ft elevation, and rocky coast lines. It would certainly be an isolated life for people here. The doctor told me that if the government allows the line to go under, then Norway will experience what Sweden has, and that means a steady stream south to the cities, and life in the north will die as they know it today.
We’ll make 35 stops in the next five days. Most are for ½ an hour, some for only fifteen minutes. Just time to load/unload goods and a quick walk around town to stretch the legs. The towns usually have between 1,000 and 3,000 inhabitants, but today we get to Hammerfest and will stay in port for about four hours. The towns seem like the sleepy villages they are. Few people on the streets and little general signs of life as we would think.
The government does put a lot of money into the north. They built a three mile tunnel under the sea to reach a town of 3,000 people who would otherwise be cut off. Another one is 5 miles long and there are thousands like that linking the islands with the mainland. Americans had a fit about the “Bridge to nowhere,” Here, it is a necessity and nobody really objects to that expenditure. It seems that Norwegians are very proud of their Northern lands.
So it’s not like they are unfeeling to the needs of the territory. One lady told us that the government needs to provide more help. I asked her what kind of help they needed, “More sun.” she said laughingly. It must get really bleak here in the winter.
We’ve had nothing but cold, drizzly weather on the ship so far. People keep apologizing for it, because we’re not seeing it at its best. Our reaction is that this is more realistic and gives a truer picture of what the people have to deal with up here. The outside temperature is about 5-10 degree Fahrenheit and it’s summertime. If it was a sunny 65 degrees, I think our reaction would be: “Hey, it wouldn’t be so bad living here.” As it is, we simply shake our heads and say: “If it’s like this in summer, just imagine what the people have to put up with in the winter.”
The low clouds and fog hang over the mountains creating a certain gloominess and foreboding aspect to the landscape. I can’t help wonder what lurks behind the passes and mountain tops. It is truly beautiful in its own right, but a dark beauty. Not your generally accepted photo-op. But the ship keeps plowing onward into the unseen.
After several small villages as ports, we finally stopped at a “large” town. Hammerfest. With 7,000 people living there, it actually resembled a city, rather than a collection of houses with a grocery store. It is the northernmost city in the world, and seems very much a going concern. It has a liquid natural gas terminal where they freeze the gas to 165 degrees Celsius, and even without my calculator to make the change to Fahrenheit, I know that’s cold. By doing so, they compact the gas to 600 times its normal density. They then ship it to………..Miami. Seemed really strange, when told that.
On one of our stops, Vardo, they informed us that it was actually further east than Istanbul, which was really a mind blower to me. It is also the equivalent to Salem, Mass, in that they have had their own witch history and actually burned 84 of the supposed evil-doers at the stake.
Beylewag was the little Norwegian village where they filmed Karen Blixen’s story “Babbette’s Feast,” even though she was Danish and it was supposed to be a Danish village. The starkness of the village could not have been more perfectly portrayed.
Carol saw whales bobbing and weaving their way through the water which was a real treat.
Up here in the very north, the mosquitoes are so vicious that in the spring when the calves are small the reindeer are transported by the Norwegian Navy to small islands where there aren’t any of the nasty things. There the calves can grow with the spring grasses away from the constant biting. In the fall when the calves are bigger and stronger, the herds actually swim back across the straits to the mainland on their own.
The Yin and Yang
Woke up this morning to a gloriously bright day with nary a cloud in the sky. I could walk around the deck without a jacket or hat, and just in time for we’re getting into the “really pretty part of the journey,” as they call it. Actually, it’s all been great for us, but things have certainly changed.
Large cities and towns with all that that entails now mark our stops. City squares, kids’ parks, the hum of cars in the streets, and a general sense of life rather than mere existence fill the field of vision.
Most of the towns and cities have very little old architecture. That’s not because of a lack of Norse imagination, but represents that fact that the Nazis trashed the entire Norwegian coastal towns on their retreat. Hammerfest, for example, was entirely burned to the ground, except for the cathedral which was saved when two German commanders disobeyed orders and saved it. So, all the towns are post 1945. No old parts to the cities exist.
I’m going to send this out as is. Since I couldn’t send while we were on the ship, I had to wait until we reached Bergen to email this and the whole cruise thing would wind up being more than I wanted to have in one single outpouring.
So here’s hoping everybody is doing well, and that life as we know it continues. Ooh, that sounds like a subject for the next part.
Live large and prosper,
Carol and Jim