Beyond the polar circle…

That’s it! We are less than 100 km away from the North Cape, but to make this adventure last longer, we have decided to stop before so as not to arrive too quickly… 😜 A week to return to Norway and the Atlantic one last time, before moving to the sea from Barents for the last kilometres…

If we wanted to compete with all those vanlife photos on Instagram, the place where we spent the weekend was undoubtedly the ideal place… We just had to look out the window to have the view of our small lake that, in the wind, rippled slightly or reflected the slightest little cloud like a mirror… We never got tired of looking at it… 🤓.

Beyond the polar circle… (1/07/2024)

Well, as expected, the weather over the weekend was a bit variable. But since the sun doesn’t set here, there is always a moment of blue sky between two showers, even if it is in the middle of the night… 😁

We took advantage of one of these moments to take a walk to another lake, 4 km away, and took photos of the signs that indicated the distances to the nearest towns (we must add 2 km for the distances from Marvin). .. A dream!… 😋

This morning, we took the road north again to reach the village of Jokkmokk, and even a little further up, to the edge of the Muddus National Park. Today, finally, we had our typical Swedish photos of reindeer crossing the road… First two, and then a whole herd, just before reaching the park. The advantage of having such straight roads is that you can see them from afar and have time to stop and prepare for photos… 😁

But the main event of the day, besides Marvin’s half-cleaning, which was really needed (we didn’t have a telescopic handle to brush the top! 😜), is that today we passed… the Arctic Circle!…

So we are officially in the polar region, beyond 66º 33′ 4″ N latitude, in other words, in the northernmost 1/6 of the planet (that is, the 5 main parallels – Antarctic Circle, Tropic of Capricorn, equator, Tropic of Cancer and the Arctic Circle, from south to north – divide the planet into 6 equal parts and we are in the northernmost one)! Well, yes, it is an arbitrary line, but for us it is highly symbolic and mythical. From here, we enter polar territory, the sun no longer sets (in summer), the forest gradually begins to fade and gives way to the tundra, and we are only 900 km from the North Cape!… Almost there! !… 🍾

A little thought for our neighbours from Borda 8 who will also cross the polar circle in a few days, in Canada (but hey, we were first… 😜)

For a little anecdote about the polar circle, see the photo of the site’s sign, which explains that, in fact, the polar circle is not always in the same place and varies according to the oscillations of the Earth’s axis… Well, at a speed of 180 km every 40.000 years, we have time to prepare for shifting the parking lot and the sign that marks the current location… 🤣

In the middle of nowhere (2/07/2024)

We have arrived at Vittangi, a small village of a few dozen houses (784 inhabitants in 2010) on the banks of the Torne river which, a little further east, heads north-south and serves as the border between Sweden and Finland. No need to say that we are a bit in the middle of nowhere since, this morning, we passed through the last major city in the Arctic zone (the others, like Murmansk, in Russia, are not on our route…). Around us is just taiga, this boreal forest that we see changing over the kilometres.

Here, around Vittangi, the forest is much sparser, with large grassy and/or swampy meadows, and many more birch and fewer conifers than 200 km further south. Little by little, the tundra takes over…

Rainy day today (it’s been raining non-stop since last night, which explains the few photos), so we stopped in Gällivare to do some shopping. Not really remarkable in terms of architecture (the northern cities are quite ugly, in fact, with a series of rectangular buildings of 4 or 5 floors and all grey, a bit like a Soviet suburb), Gällivare is the last big city we will cross before the North Cape. That is, in case of any mechanical problem during the next 1.000 or 2.000 km (round trip), this is where we will have to come back. It’s better not to think about the tow truck bill… 😜

And since visiting an already gray city when it rains is not very exciting, we continued our route towards our destination for the day. In fact, for a moment, given the weather and the excellent condition of the road, we thought that maybe we could skip a step and reach the border, but then we thought that tomorrow, with sun, it will probably be just as nice, around here, than what we have seen in recent days. So it’s probably worth not going too fast… We have plenty of time to get to the North Cape…🤓!

So, for a change from the lakes, that night we slept in the woods, near an old ski jump that was apparently abandoned quite some time ago. Vittangi really has nothing famous, except for a curiosity that still remains unexplained: it is the place in the world with the most cases of Congenital Insensitivity to Pain (CIP or congenital analgesia), an extremely rare genetic condition in which affected individuals do not feel (and have never felt) physical pain. Because feeling physical pain is vital to survival, CIP is an extremely dangerous disease, and it is common for people who suffer from it to die during childhood from inadvertent injuries or illnesses. Burns are among the most common injuries. The global incidence of the disease is approximately 1 in 125 million, and in the village of Vittangi alone there are 40 cases (i.e. 5% of the village population).

Since Vittangi also saw the coldest month ever recorded in Scandinavia in February 1985, with an average of -27.2°C, for once 5% of the village’s inhabitants had an advantage over the rest… 😉

PS: Those who know Ikea’s famous meatballs with cranberry sauce will know that it is a typically Swedish dish. To further our integration, today we prepared some “Ikea style” blueberry meatballs ourselves! 😍

Borders… (3/07/2024)

We are back in Norway, after a double leg today. The impatience to reach the North Cape is increasing, so we decided to skip a step to reach Kautokeino, the first Norwegian town after the border.

Before getting there, we passed through Karesuando, the last Swedish village before the border, with its end-of-the-world atmosphere. In Karesuando‘s only store one can find everything needed to survive in the tundra. In addition to a small grocery store with some canned goods and frozen reindeer legs, one can also find everything you might need for DIY, fishing, hunting (including air rifles and knives long enough to cut through a moose), camping, fishing and hunting clothes, as well as thick wool sweaters and socks to face the rigours of winter, multiple types of cans of beer and other energy drinks, tobacco and snus (something similar to tobacco, typically Swedish and prohibited in the rest of the world), a mini-pharmacy, all the basic chemical products (including the one from Marvin’s water tank that we had resigned ourselves not to find before returning to Andorra) and, with just the push of a door, a mechanical workshop, a service station and a 300 kW charging station for electric vehicles. All this in less than 100 m² and more than 200 km from the nearest town! On the porch, firewood and some elk antlers hanging on the wall. It’s probably a cliché, but this is exactly how I imagine a store at the end of the world (well… the charging station, I hadn’t imagined but… it’s still a plus, at the end of the world 😜! ) …

Otherwise, a long time ago, when the borders of the Scandinavian countries were drawn, the Swedes and Norwegians were probably about fifty kilometers wrong. As a result, when they realized it, there was a horizontal strip left between the two countries, which did not belong to anyone. The Finns, who were watching this from their little corner, took the opportunity to say that if no one wanted it, the strip in question would be theirs… This is the only logical explanation for this strip of Finland about 50 kilometres wide, wedged in between Sweden and Norway… 😜

So today, we crossed two borders (instead of one), but this is actually the only way to return to Norway from Sweden since, in any direction, all roads from Sweden to Norway pass through this bit of Finland first… But hey, that doesn’t really count. Our real entry into Finland will be during the descent, in a few days!…

And well… we once again encountered the “joys” of Norway, such as a total absence of forest tracks and parking lots where packed with motorhomes. That night, we slept in Kautokeino, on the banks of the river of the same name, which we would follow the day after to its mouth, north of the town of Alta. Where we stand, the river widens to form a lake, the Suohpatjávri, and we even have our own little private sandy beach, facing the lake. On the other hand, if we look through the other window, there are already 3 motorhomes and 1 van. The parking lot is large, no doubt, but it still feels like a campsite (especially since some locals are testing a type of snowmobile that also rides on water). It’s full of people… and noise! But hey, we’ll make do… We know it will probably be like this for the next few days, until we cross the border again…

Running after beauty… (4/07/2024)

We left the tundra and our gigantic plateau at 300 m altitude to return to the shores of the ocean. A few hundred kilometres higher on the coast than where we left Norway, but there are also fjords around here and these mountains still covered in snow that fall into the ocean.

To get here, we traveled almost 200 km of a practically straight road, which crosses an area where only stunted birch trees grow. Only in the last kilometres before the ocean, in the descent, did we find a coniferous forest. The main attraction of the route (except if one is passionate about birch trees) are the reindeers, which cross when they want and, preferably, when a vehicle passes by (even if not many pass by!…).

This morning, in fact, we were reading two articles in the press about tourism: one on the BBC on “how to be a better tourist”, which puts an end to the (erroneous) notion that tends to separate “tourists” (folksy, travelling in groups, without respect for anything or anyone and with a tendency to superiority in relation to the places he visits) and “travellers” (great and noble, heir to the great explorers and who, supposedly, seeks experiences more than selfies). The article, which cites a recently published book on the subject, concludes that we are all tourists, in one way or another, and that it is everyone’s responsibility to become a “better tourist”, for the good of the environment, the local populations and the tourist industry itself…

The second, a newsletter, began verbatim with: “Overexposed to stimuli, we tolerate less and less, during our explorations, crossing dull places. No need to look far for the origin of this quest for epiphany: a paved hiking section, a route with a portion in an industrial zone or a climbing spot stuck to a highway always looks less good in a Adventurer CV (Instagrammer, that is). The real question is elsewhere: wouldn’t we benefit from integrating these gaps, to remove this pressure of the “top shot”?”

That’s what we were thinking about during these kilometres today. The landscape was monotonous, but no less beautiful or interesting. Mind you, it wasn’t as “photogenic” (read “Instagrammable”) as a herd of reindeer or a squirrel crossing the road right in front of Marvin. And yet, thinking about it, it is part of a whole, of a continuity of ecosystems that we have been following for more than 13.000 kilometres now and that has taken us from the Mediterranean scrubland to the Arctic tundra. This landscape is what we came looking for, the one that tells us that we are reaching our goal, and that there are only a handful of fjords left before reaching the North Cape…

This said, when we arrived at the small peninsula where we settled for that night, it was hard not to fall back into the Instagram trap. We were alone in the world (a luxury in Norway, as already mentioned) on a small rocky outcrop in front of the Alta Fjord, with snow-capped mountains and two large islands in front of us. It was a beautiful day, which around here means bright sun and enough wind so that mosquitoes can’t fly, but not too much to bother, and temperatures around 20ºC. Given that the site offered a 360º viewpoint and that the weather forecast for that night was good, we would undoubtedly have the opportunity to see a real midnight sun and perhaps some dolphins in the fjord (there seem to be quite a few over there)… There is no need to run after beauty, over here… It offers itself to us, in one way or another…

One last fjord (5/07/2024)

As predicted, and despite a very small downpour around 8pm, the sun shone all night (allowing us to keep Marvin’s battery at 100% for 24 hours! 😁). This is practical for solar panels, but not so much for temperatures. This morning, when we woke up, it was already 16ºC outside. Almost a heat wave under these latitudes! 🤓

About twenty kilometers from Alta, the E6, which we had been following for some time, continues east and then heads back down towards Finland. We then took the E69, the last road we will follow. GPS is no longer needed at this level, as the E69 is literally the only road left to the North Cape. There is no other option than to follow it, along the coast, from one fjord to another…

Today’s route took us to the east coast of Norway (the country has two small east coasts, one in the south and one in the far north). So we definitely left the Atlantic Ocean behind (at least for this trip), and went to the coast of the Barents Sea…

The last 200 km before the North Cape do justice to their geographical location: the trees have disappeared and all that remains is an immensity of grass and rocks, with the sea on both sides. With the clouds this morning, everything seemed even more “apocalyptic” in this perfect end-of-the-world landscape…

Our goal for the day was to arrive just before the tunnel that will allow us to pass under the Barents Sea to reach the island of Magerøya (where the North Cape is located). On this peninsula next to the Porsangerfjorden fjord (one last fjord for the road… 😉), and something so rare in Norway that it is worth mentioning, we found a track that leads to some abandoned and half-destroyed bunkers, at the bottom of a cliff. The track is in very bad condition and therefore we might be able to sleep alone tonight! 😜 But after 1,5 km on the track, we found ourselves surrounded by a herd of hundreds of reindeer! They were everywhere, of all sizes and all colors (including quite a few albinos). So, in order not to bother them, we stopped before reaching the end of the track (there was a lot of mud ahead anyway, and we probably wouldn’t have been able to pass, so…).

So… to make the fun last a little longer, today we won’t go to the North Cape (it’s very close, on the other side of the tunnel), and so, we’ll publish another post just about it! 😜

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SURROUNDED by reindeers, 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.