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Day 8: the North Cape
Nov. 1st, 2004 03:58 pmThe roof of the world: Hammerfest and the end of Europe
The northernmost town in the world, Hammerfest, we sadly pass through at after midnight, and with so many things to do early in the morning – October nights start early here – I can't afford to stay up to explore it. Not that there'd be a lot to see at that time, although resident Karsten is keen to sing its praises. He's on the way up from Tromsø. He's an old sailor – I dare not venture how old, but I'm pretty sure he didn't retire too recently. A small, weatherbeaten man who's visited China and anywhere else I can name, his English is basic but functional – the first Norwegian I have ever met who isn't fluent. "I… not say so much, so good, but I… I understand. I getcha, no problem." He's delighted to learn I speak a smattering of Norwegian – as is Sigrunn, the statuesque Valkyrie barmaid ("Of COURSE I'm Norwegian! I'm six foot tall and blonde," she says, gesturing with a two-foot plait at an enquiring - male - passenger. "Where do you THINK I'm from?" To me, in Norwegian, she says, "well, yeah, I've had an English boyfriend, as well, and he didn't learn one word of Norwegian. [Switching to English.] Not bloody interested."
I think Sigrunn doesn't want to condescend to me - and she speaks excellent colloquial English, plus functional German. Someone does throw her with unexpected French, though. In contrast, Karsten, who's not that much better at my language than I am at his, is happy to speak v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y to me, with small easy words, and we get on fine. Hammerfest, he says, is His Town. I must visit it and come drinking with his friends. The mere fact that we leave it, after a stay of under three hours, at 5.15am does not daunt him. It does me.
So in practice, our first stop up here is Honningsvåg, a tiny fishing village on the island of Magerøya. Here we disembark for a trip to the North Cape, which is very nearly the northernmost point of Europe. Actually, after it was named and given this honour in about 1655 by a very lost English ship's captain who was looking for China – I kid you not. It was later discovered that Knivskjellodden, a kilometre to the west, actually sticks out about 100m further north. By this point, of course, tourists from an heroic seventeenth-century Italian (who took two years to get here by public transport and, mostly, walking) to the King of Thailand (in 1907) had made their pilgrimage here. It was a bit late to move the visitors' centre, too, although the old one was a lot less impressive than the airy 1990s one that currently graces this extremely bare bit of land.
Honningsvåg is 31km from Nordkapp, giving us time for a scenic tour. In the rain. Falling out of a cloud base of about, oh, ten centimetres.
( Read more... )
The northernmost town in the world, Hammerfest, we sadly pass through at after midnight, and with so many things to do early in the morning – October nights start early here – I can't afford to stay up to explore it. Not that there'd be a lot to see at that time, although resident Karsten is keen to sing its praises. He's on the way up from Tromsø. He's an old sailor – I dare not venture how old, but I'm pretty sure he didn't retire too recently. A small, weatherbeaten man who's visited China and anywhere else I can name, his English is basic but functional – the first Norwegian I have ever met who isn't fluent. "I… not say so much, so good, but I… I understand. I getcha, no problem." He's delighted to learn I speak a smattering of Norwegian – as is Sigrunn, the statuesque Valkyrie barmaid ("Of COURSE I'm Norwegian! I'm six foot tall and blonde," she says, gesturing with a two-foot plait at an enquiring - male - passenger. "Where do you THINK I'm from?" To me, in Norwegian, she says, "well, yeah, I've had an English boyfriend, as well, and he didn't learn one word of Norwegian. [Switching to English.] Not bloody interested."
I think Sigrunn doesn't want to condescend to me - and she speaks excellent colloquial English, plus functional German. Someone does throw her with unexpected French, though. In contrast, Karsten, who's not that much better at my language than I am at his, is happy to speak v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y to me, with small easy words, and we get on fine. Hammerfest, he says, is His Town. I must visit it and come drinking with his friends. The mere fact that we leave it, after a stay of under three hours, at 5.15am does not daunt him. It does me.
So in practice, our first stop up here is Honningsvåg, a tiny fishing village on the island of Magerøya. Here we disembark for a trip to the North Cape, which is very nearly the northernmost point of Europe. Actually, after it was named and given this honour in about 1655 by a very lost English ship's captain who was looking for China – I kid you not. It was later discovered that Knivskjellodden, a kilometre to the west, actually sticks out about 100m further north. By this point, of course, tourists from an heroic seventeenth-century Italian (who took two years to get here by public transport and, mostly, walking) to the King of Thailand (in 1907) had made their pilgrimage here. It was a bit late to move the visitors' centre, too, although the old one was a lot less impressive than the airy 1990s one that currently graces this extremely bare bit of land.
Honningsvåg is 31km from Nordkapp, giving us time for a scenic tour. In the rain. Falling out of a cloud base of about, oh, ten centimetres.
( Read more... )
