A case of conscience…

We already talked in a previous post about the problem of overtourism in Norway. The days went by and, despite the country being truly spectacular, we felt increasingly worse due to the lack of respect shown by many vans and motorhomes towards the local people. So this week, we made a decision and changed plans a little…

After a weekend in our forest, isolated from the world and dreaming of musk oxen, we finally decided to return to civilisation and, in the process, towards the coast.

From troll to troll… (24/06/2024)

Our route today took us to the town of Molde, on the shores of the fjord holding the same name: the Moldefjorden. But first we went through two of the most touristic sites in Norway: Trollveggen and Trollstigen, respectively the Troll Wall and the Troll Path.

Let’s start with the first one, Trollvegen, which is nothing less than the tallest vertical rock face in Europe, with about 1.100 m from its base to the summit of its highest point. At its steepest, the summit ridge overhangs the base of the wall by nearly 50 metres (meaning the mountain has a concave angle). It is quite impressive, seen from below, although it is also a bit difficult to realise the proportions, given the limited perspective, since the mountain in front is almost as vertical as the Troll Wall…

And since trolls are apparently very popular in this region, from the Troll Wall we went to the Troll Path, Trollstigen in Norwegian, another of the iconic tourist places in Norway. Well, okay, it is a fairly winding and steep road (10% on average), with a difference in altitude of about 700m between its lower and upper ends, but… the truth is, without wanting to show off, we went through equal or steeper roads when we made our tour of the Pyrenees, hey!?…

But hey, let’s be fairplay, Trollstigen is THE emblematic road of Norway, where any tourist worthy of the name must pass to be able to say: “I survived Trollstigen“… The only problem is that… the 11 sharp turns of the famous road were not really designed for modern tourism. When it was built in 1936, the road was expected to support only a few hundred vehicles a year, most likely horse-drawn. However, in 2012, an average of 2.500 vehicles were already transiting the Trollstigen each day during the peak of the tourist season, or about 161.421 vehicles per year (the road is closed in winter). With the tourism boom of recent years, the numbers skyrocketed, to the point that the road was closed first to buses and then, finally, to all vehicles, since the beginning of this year. So we walked up to the viewpoint, at 852m altitude. The truth is that for us the closure of the road was good news since it allowed us to walk on our own to the viewpoint. Frankly, and considering the number of buses and motorhomes parked in the lower and upper car parks, our theory is that, even if the official reason cited is the risk of rockfall, we think that the mayor of Romsdal was simply fed up with having to send the emergency services or the police every time a bus or a motorhome got stuck in a bend and decided to close the road to have a little break!… Furthermore, he did it without a planned reopening date (which seems a bit contradictory since, in the event of a rockfall, protection nets are installed and one knows more or less when a road can be reopened…). In any case, the decision of the mayor of Romsdal seemed very correct to us and allowed us to take a pleasant walk, in complete peace of mind…

We then headed to the town of Molde, on the peninsula that forms the Moldefjorden. A completely different landscape from the weekend, with steep mountains falling into the dark waters of the fjord, islands everywhere and, in short, this image that one has of the fjords of Norway… We settled at one end of the peninsula , with views of the fjord and the still snow-capped mountains of the mainland on the other side. One last night by the ocean before returning inland the following day…

PS: Today we broke a new record, that of the lowest altitude during a route: -101 m (that is, 101 m below sea level) in the Fannefjordtunnelen, which allowed us to reach Molde passing under a fjord…

Along the coast (25/06/2024)

Today was a coastal route along the Atlantic Ocean that, here, takes the name of Hustadvika. The Norwegian Atlantic coast has the particularity of being very rugged, and not only because of the fjords. The oceanic part, a bit like in Greece, breaks up into a series of increasingly smaller islands, which end up disappearing into the ocean. Most are too small or too low to be inhabited (the tides can be strong around here), but some larger ones have small fishing villages or isolated houses. In these cases, ferries connect them, like a bus service between two towns.

But along the coast, between the town of Bud and the city of Kristiansund, these confetti islands are so numerous that, instead of a ferry, the government decided to build a series of viaducts “hopping” from island to island over a few kilometres to connect the two cities. This is the Atlantic Highway (or Atlanterhavsvegen in Norwegian). Over 8,5 km, the Atlantic Highway passes eight viaducts, including the most important, the Storseisundbrua, with its 23 m arch over the ocean. And to finish in style, upon reaching Kristiandsund, the road plunges 250 m under the ocean in the Atlanterhavstunnelen (or Atlantic Ocean Tunnel) to cross the 5,7 km Bremsnesfjorden.

The road is impressive, but the landscapes around it are even more, with the clouds reflecting in the quiet waters of the fjord and the waves of the ocean just off the other side of the road. Another submarine tunnel (the Freifjordtunnel, this one not that deep, only -130 m) and a ferry later, we were back on the continent heading towards Trondheim, the third largest city in the country, where we spent the night…

A case of conscience… (26/06/2024)

A few days ago, when we arrived in Norway, we talked about how horrified we were at so many vans and motorhomes everywhere. I think it is also appropriate to clarify some concepts that apply to Norway, as to the rest of the Scandinavian countries, and that contributed to our decision today.

In Norway (as in Sweden or Finland), free access to nature is a right enshrined in the constitution. It even has a name: allemannsretten. The only condition (or almost) is to respect private properties and a minimum distance of 150 m from any house or chalet (and leave no trace of your stay). Quite logical… Free camping is therefore allowed as long as these rules are respected. The same applies to motorised vehicles (vans, motorhomes, cars, etc.). In practice, this means that we are free to spend the night wherever we want, as long as we stay at least 150m away from the nearest inhabited area. Motorised vehicles are authorised to park and spend the night wherever they want, as long as they stay on the already marked roads and tracks (that is, one cannot go into the middle of a forest in a 4×4 to spend the night among the moose). It seems just as logical…

The issue is that in Norway, due to the country’s orography, there are practically no forest tracks. There are roads, some passing through kilometers of forests, but there are no dirt tracks like in other countries. The result is that the spots available to spend the night are often limited to more or less wild parking lots along these roads, with some exceptions in certain areas. This explains why these few available spots are literally filled with vans and motorhomes when night comes.

The place we stayed two nights ago, for example, was one of those car parks, in a pretty forest, right at the end of the Molde peninsula. A very nice place where locals come to walk, walk their dogs or enjoy a summer evening eating in front of the fjord. We were alone when we arrived, with only two local cars parked there. When we returned, after about an hour’s walk, two motorhomes had parked and the local cars had left. Two hours later a car with a roof tent arrived and parked behind us and the next morning, when we woke up, we had another motorhome in front of us. No car could enter the parking lot anymore…

Let’s be clear, we do not pretend to be alone in the world and we know very well that in summer people go on vacation and that we will meet many tourists everywhere. What shocks us above all is the lack of respect (and civility) of the majority of these motorhomes, who never seem to think about the local people before parking or not somewhere. On several occasions, we arrived at a parking lot already occupied by one or two vans. On each of these occasions we considered that parking there, in addition to these vans, would be a lack of respect towards the locals, who also want to be able to use that parking lot. But apparently we are the only ones who think like that… Norwegians are very friendly and we never had any sideways glances or comments, but that is precisely what we want to avoid by respecting the local people and being as discreet as possible, for all those who will come to Norway after us…

We are close to Trondheim and, from here, Norway gets “narrower”, as does the number of roads going north. There are between 1.500 and 2.000 kilometres left to the North Cape, and doing this route in Norway would mean traveling with a “herd” of motorhomes with which we would coincide in fewer and fewer parking spaces, along a road that, after a while, will be the only one that reaches the North Cape. Really, this is not the idea we had or the memory we want to have of Norway…

So today we decided to “migrate” to Sweden… Our hypothesis is that perhaps there will be fewer tourists there (we are already much further north than the Swedish tourist area), and given that the country has no fjords, it has more “dry land” and, according to the maps we consulted, more tracks, paths and other possibilities to be a little more isolated… Doing part of the trip through Sweden will also allow us to avoid about 500 km (the earth is round and the projection of the maps is sometimes misleading…🤓). Further north, after Tromsø, we will cross back into Norway for the last few hundred kilometres to the North Cape…

For our first night in Sweden, we chose the Tännforsen, the largest waterfall in the country! Well, in width maybe, because in height, we are far from Niagara falls, hey… 😜 Otherwise, the landscapes are as beautiful on this side of the border, with kilometres and kilometres of forests, lakes and… everything we had in Norway except the fjords, really… 😁

Let’s hope our hypothesis is true and we can feel a bit better here. Otherwise, in the worst case, we can always cross the border again or try our luck in Finland… 😜

The call of the forest… (27/06/2024)

First day 100% in Sweden. To start the day well, we practiced Swedish lifestyle. After a coffee next to our waterfall, we went to the nearest town (in this case, the Åre ski resort, one of the best known in Sweden, or even in Scandinavia) to stop by the bageri (the bakery) and buy two kanelboller (cinnamon buns). Well, if we were really Swedish, we would also have had muesli, salmon toasts and other things for breakfast way too healthy for our diet… 😉 Or we would have had a coffee with our kanelboller to have a fika, that is, a coffee break with a pastry, something that Swedes love…

From there, we headed to the Systembolaget, a true institution in Sweden since it is the only place where you can buy alcohol. Supermarkets can sell any drink with less than 3.5% alcohol (basically beer), but all others are a state monopoly and can only be bought in these special stores, the Systembolaget (literally, the “system companies”). .

Sweden has a somewhat complicated relationship with alcohol. In the 19th century, alcoholism was considered a major problem in Swedish society, which was estimated to drink five times more than today. From 1910, the so-called abstinence movement appeared, motivated mainly by religion. Its objective was to purely and simply abolish the distillation of alcohol for personal consumption. Instead of outright prohibition, a compromise was reached with the “Bratt system,” which included the rationing of alcohol and the nationalization of its production and sale. Although rationing was abolished in 1955, local alcohol outlets were converted into a state-owned company that still exists today: Systembolaget. The goal remains the same: to control and reduce alcohol consumption. The prices, by the way, also go in this direction. It is a similar system to that found in the other Scandinavian countries, as well as in Canada.

With our pantry full, we only had to refuel Marvin (with water, AdBlue and gasoline), and travel about 240 km northeast, which allowed us to discover the Swedish roads (super wide, super straight and in super good condition), and the category of more “local” roads, which are actually dirt tracks, unpaved but so compact that you can drive up to 70 km/h on them (as indicated by the traffic signs).

In terms of landscapes, the region is quite “hilly”, at about 400 m altitude, and 99.9% covered by forests… From the top of some hills, you have the impression that you can see half of the country, and that everything is covered with trees! Squirrels must have a good life in Sweden…

Before continuing our journey north, we settled for the night on the shores of the Ströms vattudal, a large lake of 146 km², so branched (and elongated) that it extends from the central part of Sweden to the border with Norway… There, we enjoyed a beautiful Scandinavian summer day on the shore of our lake (up to 26ºC announced today, and days last 24 hours here so, these sunny days surely last!… 🤣), before things change again (some rain forecasted for the weekend)…

PS: Yesterday, Marvin made a friend at the waterfall parking lot… A large expedition truck that we ran into again today on the road…

Rudolph the reindeer (28/06/2024)

If this post had a soundtrack, it would undoubtedly be the Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer song. We are officially in the northern part of Sweden, also known as Lapland (Swedish Lapland). Although Lapland is most often associated with Finland, it actually extends to Norway, Sweden and Finland, as well as Russia’s Kola Peninsula. It is the land of the Sámi, one of the last semi-nomadic indigenous peoples in Europe, and it is also the land of the reindeers, since the relationship between the former and the latter has a long history…

But, let’s start at the beginning. We spent the last two days under beautiful sunshine, with temperatures close to 27ºC. But that, around here, comes at a high price! Water everywhere and two days of heat, and… mosquitoes and other flying or crawling bugs literally exploded! Marvin’s mosquito nets hold up, but we can forget about nights under the stars, on the shores of a lake (well, since we are very close to the polar circle and it is daylight 24 hours a day, there are no stars anyway… 🤓) . The good thing is that our photo trap works all the time without infrared, and therefore, we have colour photos any time of the day or night, like this hare that passed right in front of the camera last night… No trace of the moose that had left its mark in the mud, right next to where we were, however…

Yesterday, while we were looking at the map to prepare our route for today, we found a place where there seem to be quite a few brown bears… That was all it took to convince us that this was the ideal place to stay! 😁

So here we are, 200 km further north in Lapland, next to a small river that actually has all the numbers for bears to live around here. Everything is perfect, and in the photo the only thing missing is them! 😜

As we said, Lapland is the land of the Sámi. It is also reindeer territory since ones do not exist without the others. In Sweden, there are approximately 25.000 Sámi (88.000 in all of Lapland. Actually, to be completely correct, we should say Sápmi when talking about the region where the Sámi live, the term “Lapland” being considered offensive because it is linked to “colonization”). They live mainly from herding reindeers and also from the benefits they get from nature. Hunting, fishing and traditions, in a way. The fact is that, according to the official website of the Swedish Ministry of Tourism, leaving Lapland without having seen a reindeer is almost impossible, since there are more reindeers than inhabitants in this corner of the country!

And indeed, just installed on the bank of our small river, it was not a bear that came to visit us but a reindeer!… Well, okay, in the heat of the moment, and the time to open the mosquito net to try to take a photo , it was gone as quickly as it had come… 😁

We will surely see others, given that Swedish Lapland has 240.000 km² and that we will travel through it to the northern border of the country. And as an anecdote of the day, the Sámi are one of the last semi-nomadic indigenous peoples in Europe. Families follow their reindeer herds and therefore move from the mountains (in summer) to the valleys (in winter), and vice versa. A very threatened way of life since, in addition to economic development and the resulting sedentary lifestyle, the Sámi also have to face a more insidious enemy: climate change and its dramatic consequences on winter temperatures. The successive warming and cooling destroy the soil and favour the appearance of thick layers of ice that prevent the reindeers from digging in the snow to feed. The Sámi must therefore find new resources and even dig the ground themselves, instead of their reindeers. Not really the most viable technique in the long term… Unfortunately, there is no solution for the Sámi to survive, at the current rate of our carbon emissions… In a few years, we will undoubtedly see them in souvenir shops or “reindeer farms”, where tourists will come to take a selfie with a reindeer or a Sámi in traditional dress before leaving without really knowing that a few years ago, these people were still one of the last nomadic peoples in Europe…

Lapland Safari… (29/06/2024)

The Swedish Ministry of Tourism’s webpage says that the best way to see a moose is by car, as they are most likely to be seen along roadsides. Today we can confirm that it’s true! Of all the emblematic animals of Scandinavia, we were still missing the moose, but here we are, it’s done! And it was indeed at the side of the road that we saw our 5 moose today…

On the other hand, for the photos, we will have to content ourselves we what we can find on the internet, because… as the web page of the Ministry of Tourism also says, moose are super discreet, and by the time we realised we were seeing one, he had already gone into the forest!… 😁

Our route today was marked by quite a few wildlife sightings. It seems that after the heat of the last two days, today’s coolness pushed the animals outside… After our two moose on the side of the road, a little further, a mother ptarmigan was patiently waiting for her offspring to cross, just there, in the other lane, a few centimetres from Marvin’s wheels… Here again, at 80 km/h, impossible to stop for photos. Still happy that the chicks did not pass under the wheels!… And then, on the last 10 km of dirt track to come to the banks of the lake where we are installed, more moose, in a clearing… In short, a real Lapland safari!…

We also made a supermarket stop in Storuman, the “big” local village and, by chance, we came across a festival in the village, with its funfair, its sandwich stands and its mini-market of local products, without forgetting a mini-exhibition of old American cars. Actually, when you think about it, the villages and people here are quite similar to those in remote areas of the United States or Canada. Villages are more like communities, meeting at church on Sundays or during festivals like that of Storuman today. It must be said that given the distances between cities, it is better to be able to count on your community in the event of a problem…

The attitude of the people also recalls that of remote villages in North America, with this appearance of rough-hewn lumberjacks, a cap permanently screwed on their heads and walking shoes on their feet. Two stands at the Storuman festival were of a quad bike dealer, and the other of a wetsuit shop that had set up a giant aquarium with trouts in it, so potential buyers could try their products… On the road, we also see a large proportion of pickup trucks (and quite a few American brands, in fact), and many houses also have old trucks or huge tractors parked next to them. It’s the pioneer spirit, no doubt. When you live around here, you’d better be equipped and ready to live in self-sufficiency, while contributing to your community for the day you need it, in return…

In this “hyper-masculinised” universe, with guys who seem to have come straight out of the forest where they spent the day felling trees (or killing moose), in front of supermarkets, we have seen several times station wagons with the trunk open and filled to the roof with beer cans. In fact, one of the attractions at the Storuman festival this morning was an arm wrestling contest in the trailer of a truck transformed into a stage for the occasion. In itself, nothing very different from the strength competitions organised by the Basques or the Scots, but in Storuman, the two opponents must have been, at most, 10 years old! They start training future pioneers early, in Lapland!… 😁

All this is in no way a criticism, but just a reflection on the fact that, under these latitudes, life is undoubtedly less easy than in the city center of Stockholm, and that all this is reflected in the way people live. The pioneer spirit that pushes back boundaries and conquers new territories, in some ways…

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IN Sweden, as anywhere else, LEAVE NO TRACE!

– Always travel on public ways and respect the signs.
– Limit noise and interfere as little as possible with wildlife.
– Respect the other users.
– Leave rocks, plants and other natural features as you found them and respect historic sites.
– Take your waste with you and throw it into the appropriate containers, in the nearest village.
– Do not camp inside protected areas and do not make any fires.