Three trips round Tromsø Jul 30 2017

This article is part of the series “2017-07: Tromsø”.

It’s me who is thrilled by the North, who loves to travel to places like Tromsø or Kirkenes. It’s my mother however who has been much northerly than I was. She was in Spitsbergen/Svalbard with a cruise ship many years ago. But on the way back the route had to be changed due to fields of drifting ice and therefore the travellers couldn’t leave the ship in Tromsø. So my mother missed Tromsø on that cruise.

This year we managed to close this gap: three weeks ago my mother took a plane to Munich, another plane to Oslo and a third plane to Tromsø, where Annika and I picked her up from the airport. That’s why we’d travelled to Tromsø by car two days before.

We had four days in Tromsø, I will write mostly about the first two:

Monday, 10 July

Weather was better than forecasted and so the first thing we did after breakfast was taking the car, crossing the Tromsøysundet on the Tromsø Bridge and taking the Fjellheisen on the other side of the town. Fjellheisen is a cable car up the mountain Storsteinen (approx. 420 m), where you have an incredible view over the town Tromsø, the island Tromsøya and the mountain ranges on the neighbouring islands.

We stayed there the whole morning, enjoying the view, walking around, eating ice cream and looking at the arctic flowers that grew everywhere.

Pedicularis lapponica · lapland lousewort · Lappländisches Läusekraut · Lappspira

Viola biflora · arctic yellow violet · Zweiblütiges Veilchen · fjällviol

Finally we went down with the cable car again driving back to Tromsø and since the weather was sunny and nice we just continued driving, leaving Tromsøya again, this time using the Sandnessund Bridge. We continued our trip on the island Kvaløya (Whale island), Norway’s fifth largest island. At the western end there’s a bridge leading to the island Sommarøya which sometimes looks like like a caribbean island with it’s turquoise blue bays.

Annika and I were very keen to take a bath, but we all were hungry too, so we took a lunch first. While we were eating our fried fish, clouds approached and soon it started to rain. So much to our summer bath plans …

After looking around on Hillesøya (another bridge, another island) we drove back, this time taking the coastal way in the south of Kvaløya. Finally even the sun came back and illuminated the bright yellow blossoms of Lotus corniculatus, or common bird’s-foot trefoil that covered the sides of the narrow road.

Have a look at the beach photo above. It’s not sand, it’s corals covering this beach, which makes them looking even more caribbean – at least as long it’s sunny.

Late in the afternoon we arrived at our hotel after our first day together.

Tuesday, 11 July

After the rainfalls of the night sun came out again. Time for another trip to the surroundings – this time the island Senja, Norway’s second largest island (beside of Svalbard).

The first part of the tour was the same as the trip to Sommarøya the day before, but instead of turning right the last T-junction we turned left to Brensholmen and waited for the ferry to Botnhamn/Senja. Annika downloaded an app to pay the passage, since it was much cheaper than paying cash. As in Sweden it has become quite unusual to pay cash. The idea to start early was a good one, we were one of the last cars to fit on the ferry. Some others were unlucky – they had to wait for many hours or change plans.

Hour plan was to take a round trip on Senja using the roads 862, 86 and 861. In addition to that we planned to take some side trips.

The first side trip was special, since it led through a dark tunnel cut into the rock, that much too narrow for two cars to pass. In addition to that it was curved and bent so that you couldn’t see other approaching cars in advance. There were lay-bys were you could try to squeeze in and let others pass and I was really glad that the regular bus had left the tunnel minutes ago.

But when we left the tunnel we got “Norway in a nutshell”: Wide bogs, birch and pine forests, clear blue lakes, green meadows and fields and most impressive: big snow covered mountains, some of them looking unreachable by foot, so steep and harsh they were.

But it wouldn’t be Norway without the fjords. Sometimes the coast is as rocky as the mountains, sometimes it provides sandy beaches in beautiful bays. And finally we came to our bath, all three of us. Of course the water was cold, but the air was warm and we stayed in the water quite a long time.

We continued our round trip, again some clouds approached and again some rain drops fell. I thought we’d have to wait an hour for the ferry back, the ferry arrived simultaneously. I realised that I looked wrong when I checked the timetable, but we were lucky and found a place on the ship anyway.

On the way back we didn’t stop for taking pictures any longer. First of all the weather had become grey and dull and then we were tired and hungry. So we stopped only at the supermarket to buy some food for the dinner.

The other days

We did it right, making the larger trips in the beginning, because the other two days it was cloudy and rainy. Time for some sight seeing and indoor activities in the city that we hardly touched the last two days.

We visited the Polarmuseet – we went shopping (kind of) – we tried to visit the Tromsø Cathedral (in vain, it was closed). We visited a photo exhibition in the Universitetsmuseet – we were on board of the seal hunting ship Polstjerna (another museum) – we strolled around in the beautiful botanical garden (hard to find!). We ate lunch or dinner at the harbour – we visited the park Prestvannet – we visited the Hurtigruten ship Trollfjord, the very same ship Annika and I travelled with last winter. Did I forgot something? Certainly!

On friday we started our road trip back to Skelleftehamn were I live, but that’s another story.

Travelling to Tromsø Jul 26 2017

This article is part of the series “2017-07: Tromsø”.

Sometimes I’m just too lazy to blog and so was I the last weeks. Today however I finally want to write about a great trip to Tromsø, that Annika and I started on 7 July, almost three weeks ago.

Tromsø is in located in the North. Very far north. It lies 344 km north of the polar circle and is the northernmost town of the world with more than 50,000 inhabitants. It has the northernmost university, both the northernmost cathedral and mosque, the northernmost brewery and probably some more northernmost things of the world.

The shortest route by car from Skelleftehamn to Tromsø leads over Luleå, Pajala, Kilpisjärvi (Finland) and Nordkjosbotn (Norway) and that’s the route Annika and I took. We had a lot of time and planned to stay overnight twice, but didn’t plan where.

The first part of the route, the E4 leading north, is kind of boring. At least you’re allowed to drive 110 km/h – the maximum allowed speed of the whole journey. In Töre we left the E4, took a break and ate in the Restaurang Roady – the first KRAV-certified sidewalk restaurant.

After lunch we continued northwards. After 50 km we reached Holgers Traktor Museum in Svartbyn, which is always worth a visit. Since it was late – we started our trip in the afternoon – we just made a short stop to take a picture and then continued our trip.

Travel currencies: 50 EUR, 50 NOK, 200 SEK

Where to stay? Perhaps we could stay with Katharina whom I met last winter. She lives in Miekojärvi between Överkalix and Övertorneå. We tried to ring her, but she didn’t answer the call. Anyway it’s just a detour of 30 kilometres so we just gave it a try. Katharina has round 20 huskies and someone has to feed them. When we arrived at her house, a man left the shed, looked at us and we were quite surprised to meet Sascha whom we met before in Solberget several times. What a lucky coincidence! So we found not only our first overnight stay but great company, too! Thank you, Katharina (abroad) and Sascha for your hospitality!

The next day we continued our tour after a nice and rich breakfast. We crossed the arctic circle and watched the reindeers.

First stop: Pajala, where a big market took place. Here you could buy a lot of things between tradition and modern age.

After two hours we left the hurly-burly and entered the car again. We crossed the Swedish–Finnish border and followed the E8 which was more construction site than main road. We passed Karesuvanto, where I was sure to meet a food store. All stores however are on the Swedish side, in Karesuando. Not a problem, if you have bread with you and then are given butter, cheese and salami as a present on the super-nice camping ground Lätäsenon Majat near Enontekiö, where we stayed overnight.

Next day we passed Kilpisjärvi near the border triangle, where Sweden, Finland, and Norway meet and soon we were in Norway. Norway is my favourite country in summer because the landscape is so varying and beautiful that even I make photos from within the car:

In Skibotn we saw the first fjord – the Lnygen – and made a break. Annika used it for jogging and I for looking around and taking pictures. I love to stand at the shore, the feet in the water, the view either on the shells or on the fjord and the still snow covered mountains. But the seagulls didn’t like me standing there and they flew some feint attacks, luckily in vain. They don’t dare to come really close.

In Nordkjosbotn we ate hamburgers for lunch. It’s not easy to get anything other than burgers and pizza in Northern Norway outside the cities, but sometimes I like fast food, especially when travelling. From Nordkjosbotn it’s only another hour to Tromsø, where we arrived in the afternoon.

Here we would stay for four whole days with … but that’s another story for another blog article. Stay tuned!

Vampires of the North Jul 16 2017

This article is part of the series “2017-07: Tromsø”.

It’s no secret, that blood-sucking vampires exist in Scandinavia. It’s another species then the half-human vampires known from countless fantasy novels and therefore there are some differences:

The bad part: They don’t dread the sunlight, they are countless and they can fly!

The good part: You won’t turn into a vampire yourself when they bite you, they are much smaller and they are easier to kill.

But sometimes you come too late to prevent the vampires attack …

This mosquito died in Miekojärvi between Överkalix and Övertorneå, where Annika and I stayed overnight on our tour to Tromsø.

It’s summer Jun 11 2017

When you look out of your window and see long green grass in the urgent need of being cut, where 4 weeks ago a snow shower covered the whole garden with white …

When you go along the river Skellefteälven and finally other flowers started to bloom than only tussilago …

When nights are no dark nights any longer and it will take many weeks until you can see the first stars again …

When you paddle on the river Skellefteälven, barefoot, just with t-shirt and shorts, not with a drysuit as three weeks ago and you even enjoy becoming wet by some breaking waves, because it’s so refreshing …

… then it’s summer in Northern Sweden.

And summer is more than welcome after the long winter. By the way, summer solstice is just 10 days away.

Sundew Jun 8 2017

Finally all the snow and ice is gone, even in the shadows of the forests and on the cold bogs. Only in the Mountains of the North the winter is still visible (123 cm in Katterjåkk yesterday) and sensible (-9.2 °C in Tarfala some days ago.)

Here however the days are warm and mostly sunny. Today I visited a bog after work and as I expected, many, many thousands of sundews grew on the wet patches and the dark mud. I always was fascinated of these carnivorous plants. In Germany they are seldom and under conservation whereas in Sweden they seem to grow everywhere, where the ground is wet and boggy. And that’s a lot of places.

From winter to summer in seven days. May 21 2017

I hardly can remember the intense snow fall a week ago, when I look at a day as today.

Today in a nutshell: sun, shorts, temperatures between 15° and 22° C, sandals, blue sky, t-shirt only, ice cream.

It looked like early spring with only some of the birches starting to come into leaf but it felt more like high summer with today’s temperatures.

Annika and I have been in the “Arboretum Norr” today, just five days later as last year. Last year we could see many different species of flowers, this year only some, mostly Tussilago and Alpine Penny-cress, the two flowers that use to bloom first in the season. No wonder, April and May has been colder than last year. But today warmth attracted many butterflies, such as this European peacock.

And Tussilago is a beautiful flower anyway.

103rd February May 14 2017

Today morning was the 103rd February. It has been so cold and snowy the night and morning that I refused to call it 14th May.

Some random photos, taken between 6 and 7 o’clock where temperatures had started being above zero again:

Gåsören in the distance, half hidden in the snow

It took the sun some time to melt away the late snow, but this evening most of the snow was gone and I was content to call today’s date 14th May again.

Winter is finally gone. Winter is gone? Well, if you’ll look at the photos below you see that most of the lake Rudtjärnen is still covered with ice and that due to the cold temperatures this evening even the open parts starts to freeze over again.

But hey, that’s part of Spring, too. So I just say: winter is finally gone! Am I right? We’ll see …

Abroad north – climbing the mountain Roßkopf May 7 2017

I’m at Arlanda Airport, waiting for my flight to Skellefteå. I’m longing home to Skelleftehamn but my thoughts are still in Germany, where I visited C. and O. – two fantastic friends who live in Munich – yesterday.

Since the weather promised to be good, we decided to make a tour near Spitzingsee in the German Alps. We soon realised that all lifts and cable cars were closed and so we decided to climb the mountain Roßkopf (1580 m). It won’t be so hard, it’s just 500 meters up and then down the other side to the Albert-Link-Hütte, which is famous for its Kaiserschmarrn!

There was not much snow round the lake Spitzingsee (1084 m) but you could see, that some slopes and mountain tops were still quite white. Anyway I thought that it wouldn’t be so much. The Roßkopf is hardly 100 meter higher than the Feldberg were I’d been the Sunday before.

I had to smile about the man that went down the grass covered ski slope with huge ski boots, shouldering a pair of skis. Did he find any snow to glide down more than ten metres, I wondered. Well, I might have been wrong …

We started going up the grassy slope, partly following the way, partly just going up. There were some leftover snow fields to cross, but mostly we went on bare ground, looking at the countless flowers. When we went up the first slope we turned left and soon the way was completely covered with snow.

We carefully avoided the places round the little brooks and stream to avoid getting wet feet. Anyway I guessed that the snow was round 50 cm deep – more than expected.

Some skiers approached, effortlessly gliding downhills. We went up until we came to a place with another ski lift. It was closed too. Shall we take the longer but flatter snowy way through the forest or just go uphills? We decided for the latter knowing that we could take as many rests as we wanted. We saw some skiers, but no one on foot as we ourselves.

Two worlds in the mountains. C and O ascending the slope in the backgtround

Well, we managed the slope, but it was hard work and we rested more than once, before we continued plodding through at least knee deep snow. But it was worth it. When we stood on the mountain saddle that leads to the Roßkopf we had a gorgeous view onto the much higher mountain tops in the South.

We went to the Roßkopf were we met some other hikers without skis or snowshoes. We learned that there would be no really easy way down but we soon made up our minds about our way down.

Skiing – the superior type of locomotion

The first steps went well, then we landed in a large patch of much deeper snow. My legs disappeared completely in the wet snow several times. It was easier however to glide down there than on the lower parts of the slope, that were partly snowy, partly grassy and partly covered with slippery clay. None of us managed to go down the whole way without slipping.

I didn’t expect that so much snow would have been left even on the less high mountains in the beginning of May. So I took a picture of me myself being stuck in the snow. It might be a bit overexaggerated perhaps …:

Soon we arrived less steep terrain where we just could plod through the snow again. After another fifteen minutes we were in the land of Spring again.

But when we looked up we could see the land of Winter. That very land that we touch just half an hour before.

So – much snow left in the German mountains. But how about home? Will I still have snow in my backyard in Skelleftehamn? I don’t know. I’ll see it in some hours.

Valborgsmässoafton abroad Apr 30 2017

Valborgsmässoafton, the day before the Walpurgis Night is a quite important feast in Sweden and uses to be celebrated with a big bonfire.

Personally I connect the 30 April and the 1 May to last seasons snowfalls. It snowed on 1 May 2014, it snowed on 30 April 2015, so it didn’t surprised my that quite a lot of snow fell in Skelleftehamn today – round 5 – 10 cm.

But something was different this year.

I’m not in Skelleftehamn. Nor am I in Sweden. I’m about 2000 km south-southwest in Freiburg near the Black Forest.

I love mountains because you can look far and I love snow. After hesitating a bit – I can be quite lazy! – I picked myself up, packed some clothes, equipment and food, walked to the main station and took the train to High Black Forest to “climb” the Feldberg, Germany’s highest mountain outside of the Alps. The Feldberg has been already free of snow this spring, but the cold weather with high precipitation brought a lot of new snow to the mountain tops this week.

But today it promised to be warm and sunny.

Already from the train you could see some of these snow-covered tops and patches of snow everywhere, but the trees were green and many flowers were blooming. The same in Feldberg-Bärental, where I left the train and started my hike. The path itself was bare of snow, but the slopes beside the path were covered with wet snow.

Soon I arrived at the Feldsee, a lake formed by the last Ice Age. Here I made a short stop, drank some water, took some photos and continued up through the forests, where the path not only got much smaller, but much snowier as well.

I went up the snowy and slippery path through the forest and came first to a Hotel with a parking place. That’s exactly those things I don’t want to see, when I’m outdoors to enjoy nature. Anyway it was just a short interruption, now another way climbed uphills. I wasn’t alone at all and so many people had used the same way before me, that it was almost completely snowless.

Soon (but a bit out of puff; we don’t have mountains in Skelleftehamn) I approached the first top. Not the Feldberg but the Seebugg (1448 m). I guessed that the very top of the Feldberg itself would be quite crowded and took a rest between these two tops.

You see the rubber boots? Quite good for snow but too warm when not cooled by the snow. I put them off while resting right after having taken this photo.

But the Feldberg (1493 m) was near and I continued my tour on the broad snow-ploughed street-like way.

From the top I had several views.

First of all I saw many other people. Then the snow covered slopes other white mountains nearby. Behind them the green springlike lowlands.

And far away in the south I could recognise the faint snow covered mountains of Switzerland, some of them are almost three times as high as the Feldberg!

Many people had sneakers on or flat shoes, but down jackets that I considered much too warm. Since I had left the forest I only had a t-shirt on because I found it really warm, even on the top. On the other side I was probably the only one with rubber boots on today. They belong to my usual baggage, while mountain boots don’t. Anyway the rubber boots have one advantage when combined with a waterproof camera. You can make pictures like these:

Feldsee – snow covered mountains and swimming fish

You might have guessed it. This photo was taken at/in the Feldsee not on the Feldberg.

The descent was quite unspectacular and much shorter, since I took another way. A bus brought me back to the very same train station were I’d started the tour four hours ago.

Spring birds Apr 25 2017

What a late spring we got this year. Still the seasons feels quite wintry and many of the fields and meadows are still covered with snow, only partly and slowly being defrosted by the spring sun.

The migrant birds however had started to fly northwards already – first the Whooper swans and geese, then the Common cranes.

I caught another bird by chance in mid-air and asked for help on Facebook not knowing what kind of bird it was.

This flying fellow is a Smew and according to the comments on Facebook I got it seems to be quite rare here. A photographical chance hit.

Since I was already quite near Bjuröklubb on my “bird hunt” I took the last 12 kilometres to the parking place at this peninsula. Parts of the northern bay Gärdviken was still covered with ice – apparently thick enough to bare the two ice fishers who sat or lay upon it. But round the eastern part that is more exposed to the sea the water was open, only some ice floes that stranded at the shallow shore indicated that summer is still some months away.

Translations:

English	German	Swedish	Latin
Whooper swan	Singschwan	Sångsvan	Cygnus cygnus
Common crane	Kranich	Trana	Grus grus
Smew	Zwergsäger	Salskrake	Mergellus albellus