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| We did get to see a decent display of the Northern Lights last night. But, the thing to bear in mind, is that the camera is much better at picking them up than the human eye, limited as it is by what the rods and cones can do. What this means is, for example, the greens in the image are not as pronounced as when you are standing there looking up. It's only when the conditions are right that you can pick up the colours visually. But go with what you get and be amazed at what nature can provide by way of entertainment - as long as you are wrapped up warm and are patient. |
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| My brightest image. But it's not very clear, I hear you say? That's because the edges were fuzzy and not particularly well defined. I can only photograph what's there - or what the camera says is there! |
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| Our excursion from Kirkenes gave us the chance to try our hand at snowmobiling. To do this we drove a few miles out of town to the head of a fjord to be united with our vehicles. |
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| Your two intrepid explorers on their snowmobile. It gives a spectacularly bumpy ride which must be worse for the passenger than the driver. I discovered that I was not a natural when it came to driving these beasts. |
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| Our route took us a few miles down the ice on a frozen fjord, an inlet of the Barents Sea. It was flat and we could see for miles. The skies were amazing. |
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| As well as being amazing, what you saw changed minute by minute. You can feel very small on a landscape like this. The ice beneath us was about a yard thick and stays that way for about six months of the year. |
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| Perhaps photographing white on white isn't too smart but look carefully and you might be able to make out an ice sculpture of a penguin. Which, of course, you don't find in the Arctic. |
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| A reminder that we were about 25 miles from the Russian border and road signs were starting to show bilingual directions. The Finnish border isn't too far away either. |
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| Looking over Kirkenes directly north to the open Barents Sea. I know you are curious - it's named after a Dutch explorer, Willem Barentsz, who came this way in the late 16th century. Despite the extreme climate (perhaps down to -30C in the winter and with an average summer temperature of 10C), Kirkenes seemed quite a pleasant place, at least what we could see of it under the snow. But I wouldn't want to live there. |
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| Captain beware: shipping hazard! A mini-iceberg or berglet has drifted into the path of our ship. Fortunately, our master mariner took evasive action and there was no need to person the lifeboats. |
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| In the rest of Norway, trolls live under bridges so they are close at hand to ambush unsuspecting travellers. But, in areas where there are few roads, they have to adapt their strategy to local conditions. In the north there are more boats than anything else and the trolls have taken to living on the sea shore. Despite their reputation for liking the damp and the dark, out here they live in neat little cabins with associated solar panels to give them power for domestic comforts. In fact, some of the older ones get so comfortable they forget their trollish habits and spend their days watching endless repeats of 'Flog it' on TV. Those with keen eyes should be able to make out the house name on this one: Duntrolling. |
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| Sailing out of Kirkenes on our homeward leg. |Same journey up but in reverse and those ports we stopped at in the night when we came up, we stop at during the day on the way back. Which is great, because we get to see more of them, albeit sometimes from the deck as there's not enough time to get off and wander around. |
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| As I write this, we have just left Vardo, our first stop after leaving Kirkenes. Only another 32 and we are back in Bergen for our flight home next Tuesday afternoon. |
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| Some reflections in Vardo harbour. |
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| Some more reflections in Vardo harbour. |
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