website — brought 1200 troops racing north to restore order, the only time in the history of ‘peaceful Norway’ when this had been necessary.
On 2 June 1909 — almost 98 years ago to the day — ‘non-local fishermen tore down the whaling factory which had been built by whaler and inventor Sven Foyn and which they blamed for the loss of their fishing income’. So there you have it: mayhem in Mehamn and an anti-whaling protest that Greenpeace would have been proud of. Note that the damage was done by ‘non-local fishermen’, it’s always the out-of-towners to blame. Foyn, in fact, would have earned a prize place on any Greenpeace list of hate figures, having invented the harpoon.
142-145 km
On my second ‘night’ in Mehamn I learn that there is a youth hostel here. Norway doesn’t really have what would be deemed budget accommodation elsewhere, but this place comes close. Except that anything less like a hostel it would be hard to visualise. Picture, rather, a cottage with a balcony jutting over the bank of a fjord. And there, a few hours later, I experience my second epiphany. It is 12.30 am, the sun has disappeared — wait, that isn’t supposed to happen at this time of year. What’s going on? I roll down the ramp and peer over to where the sun was last seen. And there, as the opening drumbeats of a rain shower hit the roof tiles, the sun has been replaced by a rainbow — or rather the golden shaft of one, bending like a bamboo shoot from heaven, and bathing in a phosphorescent glow the fish-salting-and-drying factory that now stands where the workers’ forebears attacked that whaling factory almost a century ago.
146 km
Oot Bjorn, 37, Europe’s northernmost postmaster, sorts through 20 kg of envelopes and small packets a day. Oot, who has seen a bit of the wider world, says, ‘I have tried to live in the city. I went to southern Sweden, to a place called Falkenberg, to Drummen — a town near Oslo — and then to Tromso for three months. But I got homesick. The grass was not greener on the other side.’ It would be callous to mention that in Mehamn there is no grass to speak of, regardless of colour.
What’s so great about life on North Half Island? ‘We have much more freedom out here. We have Nature, we have the hunting.’ And then — how could you have a conversation in Norway without mentioning fish? — ‘There are 800 fishing waters on North Half Island alone.’ He seems happy for all this true northerliness to be kept under wraps, saying, ‘We want more tourists but I don’t want us to be like North Cape’.
True North lies over the hills — ripe with strawberries for just a few days in August — in the village of Gamvik. The headland is pitted with German bunkers. This was a strategic coast for monitoring Allied ships bound for Archangelsk, and it remains strategic today: Nato has laid undersea cables to monitor the movement of Russian submarines. I found that Russians insisted they were a race apart from the Europeans, and now I find the Norwegians — who keep themselves apart from the European Union — are also keen to keep their eastern neighbour at a distance.
At noon on the last day of May, I sit above the wild Arctic surf that beats upon Europe’s (and almost certainly the world’s) northernmost lighthouse, still tended by its keeper, Ms Rita Bastholm, although these days no one lives inside the obelisk. My mind absorbs the elements’ immensity, and the fact that here at 71° 5' 33" N I have reached that part of populated Europe closest to the North Pole (about 2000 nautical miles over yonder as the gull flies).
147 km
Harald Hansen is the principal of Europe’s most northerly school. Most of its 21 students have just returned from Poland, which included a visit to Oswiecim, more infamous as Auschwitz. Athina, fifteen years young, was saddened by the barbarous treatment of the Jews there but added ‘at the same time I couldn’t understand it’. Out of the
On 2 June 1909 — almost 98 years ago to the day — ‘non-local fishermen tore down the whaling factory which had been built by whaler and inventor Sven Foyn and which they blamed for the loss of their fishing income’. So there you have it: mayhem in Mehamn and an anti-whaling protest that Greenpeace would have been proud of. Note that the damage was done by ‘non-local fishermen’, it’s always the out-of-towners to blame. Foyn, in fact, would have earned a prize place on any Greenpeace list of hate figures, having invented the harpoon.
142-145 km
On my second ‘night’ in Mehamn I learn that there is a youth hostel here. Norway doesn’t really have what would be deemed budget accommodation elsewhere, but this place comes close. Except that anything less like a hostel it would be hard to visualise. Picture, rather, a cottage with a balcony jutting over the bank of a fjord. And there, a few hours later, I experience my second epiphany. It is 12.30 am, the sun has disappeared — wait, that isn’t supposed to happen at this time of year. What’s going on? I roll down the ramp and peer over to where the sun was last seen. And there, as the opening drumbeats of a rain shower hit the roof tiles, the sun has been replaced by a rainbow — or rather the golden shaft of one, bending like a bamboo shoot from heaven, and bathing in a phosphorescent glow the fish-salting-and-drying factory that now stands where the workers’ forebears attacked that whaling factory almost a century ago.
146 km
Oot Bjorn, 37, Europe’s northernmost postmaster, sorts through 20 kg of envelopes and small packets a day. Oot, who has seen a bit of the wider world, says, ‘I have tried to live in the city. I went to southern Sweden, to a place called Falkenberg, to Drummen — a town near Oslo — and then to Tromso for three months. But I got homesick. The grass was not greener on the other side.’ It would be callous to mention that in Mehamn there is no grass to speak of, regardless of colour.
What’s so great about life on North Half Island? ‘We have much more freedom out here. We have Nature, we have the hunting.’ And then — how could you have a conversation in Norway without mentioning fish? — ‘There are 800 fishing waters on North Half Island alone.’ He seems happy for all this true northerliness to be kept under wraps, saying, ‘We want more tourists but I don’t want us to be like North Cape’.
True North lies over the hills — ripe with strawberries for just a few days in August — in the village of Gamvik. The headland is pitted with German bunkers. This was a strategic coast for monitoring Allied ships bound for Archangelsk, and it remains strategic today: Nato has laid undersea cables to monitor the movement of Russian submarines. I found that Russians insisted they were a race apart from the Europeans, and now I find the Norwegians — who keep themselves apart from the European Union — are also keen to keep their eastern neighbour at a distance.
At noon on the last day of May, I sit above the wild Arctic surf that beats upon Europe’s (and almost certainly the world’s) northernmost lighthouse, still tended by its keeper, Ms Rita Bastholm, although these days no one lives inside the obelisk. My mind absorbs the elements’ immensity, and the fact that here at 71° 5' 33" N I have reached that part of populated Europe closest to the North Pole (about 2000 nautical miles over yonder as the gull flies).
147 km
Harald Hansen is the principal of Europe’s most northerly school. Most of its 21 students have just returned from Poland, which included a visit to Oswiecim, more infamous as Auschwitz. Athina, fifteen years young, was saddened by the barbarous treatment of the Jews there but added ‘at the same time I couldn’t understand it’. Out of the
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