Far North Norway
I got to spend 5 weeks in Norway in the Fall of 1999 and see a really beautiful country and also meet many really nice and friendly people. We were in Oslo, Kirkenes, Vardo and Vadso. To get to Kirkenes, we flew on Wideroe Airlines from Oslo and stopped in the cities of Tromso and Alta. The plane had to dive steeply to hit runways located between high mountains and the ocean. Our plane tried to land twice at Kirkenes but could not land because of very dense fog so it backtracked to a small town called Lakselv and they put us on a bus. Our bus drove us for several hundred miles to get to Kirkenes, and we saw the north coast of Europe from a bus – it was a good way to see some scenery. We saw mountains, the Barents Sea, fjords, reindeer, other wildlife, but not many people.
I scanned in and put in a picture from a postcard as it was view of an old fort in Vardo seen from the air that I could not take. Vardo, Vadso and Kirkenes are all part of the county of Finnmark and are roughly 300 miles above the Arctic Circle – so it gets dark and stays dark all winter.
Most of my trip was with Brent and Brian. John joined us later.
Click on any photo to see a larger view
Herds of reindeer running beside the road, we were in Lapland and reindeer run wild and are also raised much as cattle are in Texas
We did a lot of hiking around northern Norway, but our hikes did not seem to last too long because of the cold and the deep snow. But we did have to take our pictures
Brent and John arriving for work. This was my first time on a helicopter – that is a good way to see reindeer and a quick way to get to work
Shopping in downtown Kirkenes, the hat looks goofy but it was warm and was in style. See the Russian writing on the shops. I bought some souvenirs and stayed away from drunken sailors walking around
I turned 40 while I was in Norway and we had a big party and drank a lot of beer, vodka and aquavit – but then we drank a lot of beer, vodka and aquavit every night
During my stay, I drank a lot of beer from a brewery in Tromso. The beer was called Mack Ol, and the brewery is the northernmost brewery in the world, about 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle. When I left Norway, I packed six Mack Ol beers in my dirty clothes and brought them home so that my family could drink them at our Thanksgiving Day in November 1999. I took better care of those six beer bottles than I did of my laptop and all of the bottles made it home unbroken!
More hiking pictures – we had to be very careful that we did not walk on ice and fall into a lake, also had to watch how far away we went from camp
I spent several days in Kirkenes, Norway. The first time I had ever stayed in the Scandic Hotels. I have since stayed at Scandics many times and in many places.
