A cabin in Lyngen

This is the last part in the story of Tanya's and my trip to Norway in early February. For the best chance of seeing the aurora borealis we decided we would rent a cabin outside of Tromsø, away from the city lights. Saying “city lights” is perhaps a bit of a stretch, because Tromsø is a pretty small place, but it does cast some light all the same. The cabin we chose was in Svensby, in Lyngen, which is just over an hour’s drive from Tromsø. To get there you cross from Tromsø island onto mainland Norway, drive across a peninsular, and catch a ferry across a fjord. The coastline in northern Norway is wild; it is rare to be away from the sight of water, and fjords and lakes pop up unexpectedly. Svensby felt just like it was on an island, but in fact Lyngen is connected to the mainland via a small spit.

Watery Lyngen.

The ferry across to Svensby is a giant boat that does the twenty-minute journey back and forth all day. It is double-ended with a maw that opens at each end so that cars and busses and trucks can drive on and off. Upstairs in the ship is a cafe which is heated, so everyone parks their car and goes upstairs to warm up and grab a coffee. The ferry also offered free wifi, and because I’m a hopeless internet addict, on occasion while we were in Svensby I would pop back to the ferry terminal and try to access the network before the boat pulled away.

Boarding the ferry to Svensby.

During the crossing.

The peninsular on which Svensby sits has roads and houses to the west and impressive mountains to the east. These are the Lyngen Alps, nudging the fjords and rising straight out of the sea. The tallest is about 1800 m above sea level. The roads around Svensby were icy, and throughout our stay we drove to the end of all of them in a strange kind of depth-first search exploration. This took us to the northern tip of Lyngen and the village of Moe, and to the southern end which hides the main town in the region, called Lyngseidet.

Our hire car thought it was pretty cold on the way to Lyngen.

Moose!

We also went cross-country skiing on hired skis. These were what the French call “ski de fond” skis - very narrow and, at least for me, completely uncontrollable. I was fine on flat ground and uphill, but downhill I would pick up speed, go into a wild wide snow-plow which did absolutely nothing to slow me down, flail wildly, shriek and crash in a heap. So it goes. We saw some lovely countryside by ski, gathering hard-earned views of the fjords and mountains around us in the short daylight hours.

Nothing beats some Bog Skinke after a day on skis.

The temperature hovered around -10 degrees then warmed markedly so that on our last morning it was just above freezing, which turned any icy surface into a skating rink. We had considerable difficulty getting the car down the icy driveway without sending it careering into the road below. Tanya fell over, was unable to get up, and slid ten metres down the driveway in slow motion before she was able to right herself and scoot to safer ground.

Tanya navigating the slipperiest surface known to humankind.

After we said goodbye to our hosts we went to return to the car and were actually unable to reach it from one side due to the slipperiness of the ground around us - they probably looked out their window a few minutes later to find us in a heap on the driveway. “Amateurs!", they would have thought, and they would have been right. Despite these conditions we made it back to Tromsø, and stayed there for a night before flying back to Switzerland. Ours was a short trip to Norway, but a thoroughly fantastic adventure.