rest of Europe by the narrowest of isthmuses — just 100 metres across — known as Hopseidet. Here, and nowhere else, you will find True North.
And the town of Mehamn, curled around a fjord at 71° 1' N, is only a few minutes of latitude south of North Cape. Sheer luck has given me half an hour to get to the dock after making a hasty booking with a Mehamn hotel.
‘How can I be sure you’re coming?’ the hotelier asks. ‘Because if you don’t hear back from me I’m on the boat,’ I reply.
The receptionist at the Kirkenes hotel where the bus from Russia dropped me has made her Internet service available, and the town’s website confirms that I am not the only person to have seen through the fraudulence of North Cape’s pretensions. ‘Kinnarodden, northernmost point of European mainland, 71° 8' 2",’ it proclaims, with reiteration, for good measure, in Norwegian, europas nordligste fastland spunkt .’ And right near that point — on the road north of Europe’s northernmost town — awaits its northernmost village, Gamvik. That magic box is really rattling now.
138 km
Arrive at the dock after a 1 km taxi ride that cost the equivalent of A$16 (welcome to the world’s most expensive economy). There, towering above me, is no mere ‘boat’ but a towering Hurtigruten coastal steamer, the 16,000 tonne Trollfjord . Once on board, sinking into a button-backed leather armchair to starboard, I turn my head to the left for a view of black-and-white sailing photos from a more graceful age, then to the right for a sight of the fjord-cut fringe of land that constitutes the ‘brow of the seahorse’.
The sun’s lamp on low spreads subdued rays over the gentle swell of the Arctic Ocean, and I’m left alone to ponder the contrast between this morning’s rough-and-ready Russian bus ride and this afternoon’s life of ease aboard one of the world’s most luxurious cruise ships.
On the wall of Trollfjord ‘s disabled toilet is an emergency phone. One of the buttons is marked ‘Wake-up call’. As the Americans say, go figure.
About 3 pm we cross 70° N on the placid surface of Varangerfjord.
At 10 pm — I would say ‘late at night’ but this eternity of daylight empties the phrase of its normal sense — we indulge in a bizarre and, frankly, childish ritual of waving towels in the direction of the passengers aboard the Kong Harald , another Hurtigruten steamer, who are waving towels at us as it proceeds on its ‘north-east passage’. Per the barman dispenses a free hot toddy which saves me a small fortune and which I down to the strains of Brahms’ Hungarian Dance No. 5 being performed by the ship’s piano accordionist.
The purser tells me with great amusement that he has had Japanese passengers come up to him in broad daylight — around 1 am — to complain they were misled. ‘But where is the midnight sun?’ they challenge him, apparently convinced this rare article is an additional orb visible only on cruises to the Arctic. Glorious as this one sun is, I can see they’ll be wanting their money back.
Back in Australia, as I envisaged that singularly tireless athlete the sun remaining above the horizon almost round the clock, I hadn’t been able to get to grips with how it would set in the west (I assumed it did that even up here) and rise again in the east. Would it nip under the horizon and dart back to its starting blocks? No, I now see, its trajectory describes an ellipse so that it sets south-west — and rises south-east — or, now we are in the period it doesn’t really set at all but rather skims along the horizon, it keeps circling the horizontal track, running victory laps around it all summer long.
140 km
Mehamn announces itself to the nose before the eyes. Ever after, you will associate it with two smells: fresh wood and rotting fish. In this, one of Europe’s most remote corners, it was a clash between the big fish and the little fish that — according to the municipal
And the town of Mehamn, curled around a fjord at 71° 1' N, is only a few minutes of latitude south of North Cape. Sheer luck has given me half an hour to get to the dock after making a hasty booking with a Mehamn hotel.
‘How can I be sure you’re coming?’ the hotelier asks. ‘Because if you don’t hear back from me I’m on the boat,’ I reply.
The receptionist at the Kirkenes hotel where the bus from Russia dropped me has made her Internet service available, and the town’s website confirms that I am not the only person to have seen through the fraudulence of North Cape’s pretensions. ‘Kinnarodden, northernmost point of European mainland, 71° 8' 2",’ it proclaims, with reiteration, for good measure, in Norwegian, europas nordligste fastland spunkt .’ And right near that point — on the road north of Europe’s northernmost town — awaits its northernmost village, Gamvik. That magic box is really rattling now.
138 km
Arrive at the dock after a 1 km taxi ride that cost the equivalent of A$16 (welcome to the world’s most expensive economy). There, towering above me, is no mere ‘boat’ but a towering Hurtigruten coastal steamer, the 16,000 tonne Trollfjord . Once on board, sinking into a button-backed leather armchair to starboard, I turn my head to the left for a view of black-and-white sailing photos from a more graceful age, then to the right for a sight of the fjord-cut fringe of land that constitutes the ‘brow of the seahorse’.
The sun’s lamp on low spreads subdued rays over the gentle swell of the Arctic Ocean, and I’m left alone to ponder the contrast between this morning’s rough-and-ready Russian bus ride and this afternoon’s life of ease aboard one of the world’s most luxurious cruise ships.
On the wall of Trollfjord ‘s disabled toilet is an emergency phone. One of the buttons is marked ‘Wake-up call’. As the Americans say, go figure.
About 3 pm we cross 70° N on the placid surface of Varangerfjord.
At 10 pm — I would say ‘late at night’ but this eternity of daylight empties the phrase of its normal sense — we indulge in a bizarre and, frankly, childish ritual of waving towels in the direction of the passengers aboard the Kong Harald , another Hurtigruten steamer, who are waving towels at us as it proceeds on its ‘north-east passage’. Per the barman dispenses a free hot toddy which saves me a small fortune and which I down to the strains of Brahms’ Hungarian Dance No. 5 being performed by the ship’s piano accordionist.
The purser tells me with great amusement that he has had Japanese passengers come up to him in broad daylight — around 1 am — to complain they were misled. ‘But where is the midnight sun?’ they challenge him, apparently convinced this rare article is an additional orb visible only on cruises to the Arctic. Glorious as this one sun is, I can see they’ll be wanting their money back.
Back in Australia, as I envisaged that singularly tireless athlete the sun remaining above the horizon almost round the clock, I hadn’t been able to get to grips with how it would set in the west (I assumed it did that even up here) and rise again in the east. Would it nip under the horizon and dart back to its starting blocks? No, I now see, its trajectory describes an ellipse so that it sets south-west — and rises south-east — or, now we are in the period it doesn’t really set at all but rather skims along the horizon, it keeps circling the horizontal track, running victory laps around it all summer long.
140 km
Mehamn announces itself to the nose before the eyes. Ever after, you will associate it with two smells: fresh wood and rotting fish. In this, one of Europe’s most remote corners, it was a clash between the big fish and the little fish that — according to the municipal
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