After leaving Tromso, we headed to Hammerfest (at 70 degrees and almost 40 minutes north.) We hit the ground running, first visiting the Polar Bear Club museum. Sidney was inducted into the Royal and Ancient Order of the Polar Bear (a club exclusively for those that have visited Hammerfest), and was number 224,124 to join. I wonder how many of those are less than four years old!
We then walked around town, going past the Cemetery church (the only building in town to survive WWII) and the new church. The new church's architecture is inspired by the fish drying racks seen in the fishing villages that dot the coast.
Our next event was a ferry ride out to several island locations to see some of the fishing villages. The ride was just over two hours and provided an interesting insight into what life in one of these villages is like. There is no other transportation than boat out to the villages, and the boat doesn't seem to come very often.
There are also no grocery stores in the villages. Or gas stations, or anything else except houses, maybe a fish processing facility, and the school. I guess that is one way to make sure your kids have nothing to do but chores and studying! Interestingly, we say a camouflage Land Rover at almost every stop. I cannot imagine what life is like there in the winter when there is no sun for two months!
Another thing we saw while on the ferry ride, as well as from town, is the Snovit Liquefied Natural Gas facility built by Statoil. For readers of National Geographic, a large picture of this plant was featured a few months ago in their article on the Arctic environmental issues. It is an impressive facility, in that is is the most northerly LNG facility in the world and the first to process Barents Sea natural gas. Snovit is the Norwegian word for Snow White, but the plant hasn't quite lived up to the name. There have been some issues which have resulted in the town getting covered in soot a couple of times, and of course some have argued about the impact it has on the Arctic as a whole.
After we returned and had dinner, we walked back over to the hotel and happened to see another boat named after Sidney. This one was a sailboat out of Germany named "Orion." For those that don't know, that is her middle name.
Sidney and Kimber stayed in the room and went to sleep, and I went out for a little walk to see what the midnight sun was like. It was a bit overcast, but this picture overlooking Hammerfest was taken at 12:34 a.m.
We got up the next morning and set out on a hike that was to take us to the top of a mountain overlooking the city as well as some of the islands. We saw several reindeer, including this group. Their antlers are in felt right now and they are shedding last year's winter coat, so they are quite striking in appearance. We also saw a fox, and I was able to get a quick picture, but it was not blog-worthy.
The landscape was beautiful in a desolate sort of way. There are several lakes that have been dammed and are used for hydroelectric power. There are also cabins occasionally, though these don't seem to be wired to take advantage of the power. The hike was easy - a steady climb up a gravel road - but the weather turned on us before we could get to the top. Rain set in and the temperature was quite cold. We were dressed appropriately in Gore-Tex jackets and pants, and Sidney in her rainsuit, but her feet were cold and we decided to head back.
We had dinner at a kebab restaurant called Popeye and must say it was fantastic. The gyros were HUGE and delicious, and the owner, after finding out I spoke Arabic (he is Iraqi), and that Kimber is an engineer (he is also an engineer), gave us our meal for free. He was very kind and again, the food was delicious!
We returned to the hotel and settled in, as our flight to Kirkenes this morning left early.
Kirkenes is about as far east as you can go in Norway. It is close to the Russian border (about 40 km), and actually has many roadsigns in both Norwegian and Russian. I must say seeing a roadsign for the road to Murmansk was a bit odd. Even stranger was seeing a Cooper Tire sign on a local gas station here (for all you Findlay-ites!)
We also saw this roadsign, indicating distances from here to some other European cities. It is actually a good indicator of how long Norway is. As you see, it is over 2600 km to Bergen (which is north of Stavanger), and that is over halfway to Rome! Kirkenes actually lies as far east as Cairo, Egypt.
The weather was very nice, so we went for a walk and enjoyed the outdoors. We stopped at a Sami Culture Center which is also the site of the Snow Hotel here in the winter. Sidney got to pet a couple of husky pups, but they were closing, so we headed to the regional museum. About half of the museum was dedicated to the WWII history of this area (which was eventually leveled as part of the German Scorched Earth retreat plan.) It was interesting to see the Soviet involvement with the partisans in Northern Norway, as this is often ignored by "our" version of history. The major feature of the exhibit was a Russian WWII fighter.
We had dinner at a Chinese restaurant in town, and then headed back to the hotel to get ready for tomorrow's flight to Honningsvag and the North Cape. We plan to be at the North Cape for the Midnight Sun, so hopefully that will be the main feature of our next post!
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