Above, shortly after 8am on the 23rd of January, roughly two minutes before our boat crossed into the arctic circle. Below other mountainous coastal shots from the following hours before we docked at Bodø…including Gary with the ship’s spotlight illuminating the arctic circle monument behind him.
Last photos from Bodø, which was our first port call after entering the arctic circle in the wee hours of 23 January, and is both the capital and the largest city of Norway’s Nordland County.
Every photo in this post was taken between 3:15 and 4:31pm on the 22nd of January, as the boat traveled north towards the arctic circle which we crossed shortly after 8am the following morning.
There are windows in all these shots from the Snowhotel Kirkenes – starting with a photo of the frozen fjord taken from the dining room mid-morning after we arrived and checked in. Note that the photo at the very bottom, which looks rather late-night, was taken 3:26 pm. On January 26, so I think they said five days or a week after the sun returned to Kirkenes. 🙂
I think I’ll aim to use up my snowy and dark Norway shots in July & August, in hopes maybe it’ll help friends sweltering in hot summer weather appreciate the seasons a bit. Including myself, though sweltering hot remains, mercifully, a rare weather pattern here in A’dam specifically. Last from our short port call at Finnsnes in January.
With this post, we’re wrapping up our remaining photos of Trondheim, which is the largest city but not the capital of Norway’s Trondelag county. An interesting perception shift that came about over the course of this journey was that cities I used to think of as very far north (e.g. Trondheim, or even Bergen) I now think of as, by Norwegian standards, not really all that far north in fact. After all, they’re still below the arctic circle lol… 🙂
This is only the sixth post we’ve shown you from Tromsø, where my photo time-stamps tell me our boat pulled in right around 2:30PM on the 24th of January. The center circle photo above, and the panorama below, were taken just before Gary & I began our roughly two-hour stroll through the lingering mid-afternoon dusk to dark of the city at that time of year. Since many of you fabulous readers are in locations where it’s now getting hotter by the day, I figured a reminder of cool winter evening-afternoons might be welcome :-).
Last shots from our roughly one-hour port call at Svolvaer, “capital of the Lofoten Islands,” where we were on the ground from about 9:30 to about 10:30pm on the 23rd of January. I hope, one day, to go back for a longer stay at this time of year when the days are as long as the nights were, back in January :-).
Final ice sculptures from inside the Snowhotel in Kirkenes. The idea of this series arose from ice, snow, ices sculptures and waterfalls I saw during my Swiss train travels last November, then carried forward with these ice sculptures. Probably letting the series sleep again, til I either photograph another fountain as nicely as I did to start this series, or see more ice sculptures somewhere. Water really is one of those things one should stop to appreciate now and then, though, eh? 🙂
We’re in Troms County, Norway for this post. Above and below left, the city of Harstad & vicinity around 7:20 during our short morning port call, and below some snow-capped mountains along the coast 1-1/2 hours later as we continued north.
(so much world, so little time....) 