I went to Lofoten in Norway for a four-night getaway with some friends this week. Here are some photos.
Hello, Bodø.
We saw the northern lights last night. They weren’t this visible in person, but seeing faint streaks of light marble the nightsky is something else.
I spent the first hour or so just thinking that my camera wasn’t good enough for photos like this, and then a friend showed me how to use it properly, and here we are. Ha. I probably should’ve just asked. 🌌
The entrance to the hike up Reinebringen is marked by a sign warning you of a high death risk. It’s a 450m ascent in about 90 minutes. There’s sort of a trail most of the way; mostly you just follow the footprints in the mud. Then you get to the summit, and the other side is this. ⛰
we are all
so
small
and everything is
so beautiful.
•
four hundred and fifty metres above the ocean.
// I spent my days out chasing the wind
Trying to turn gold from your hair //
I found peace on the other side of the breakwall today, in the wind and the rain.
•
At fourteen, I would seek out the ocean to breathe the salt air, to sit in the sand, to feel like I was tiny, and grounded, and part of something. It’s crazy to think that at twice the age, that’s still the same. There are remarkably few things that are, but there’s something amazing in feeling small, and inconsequential, and safe, for all the turmoil in the waves. 🌊
Autumn. Well and truly.
🍂 🍁
There are houses on that peninsula.
This was the view from our fishing cabin on Tuesday. It was decidedly less picturesque in the wind and rain of the rest of the week, but it was still easy to maintain a quiet sense of wonder.
•
I still can’t believe that places like this exist, let alone that places like this have 60 Mbps WiFi 📶
starts googling for real estate
I took all of these on an Olympus EM-10 (original, there’s a newer Mk II now) with an Olympus 9-18 mm f4-5.6 lens, some of them with a polarizing filter.
This was my first time taking photos with such a wide lens – I bought a 25mm (50mm equiv.) prime lens a few months after I bought the EM-10 two years ago, and I’ve used it ever since. I felt like the colours weren’t quite as vivid with this lens, but it was pretty nice to be able to capture some sweeping landscapes. The setup is also ludicrously small and light, which makes it perfect to stick in a backup and scramble up mountains (e.g. Reinebringen).
Getting there, where to stay etc.
I’m not by any means claiming that this is the best way to do it, but it worked really well for us:
- The southern part of Lofoten is less built up than the north. We stayed at Toppøy Rorbuer (run by the same people as Sakrisøy Rorbuer, linked), and loved the relative isolation. Svolvær, on the other hand, is probably easier to organise / has more tours etc, but it’s definitely a tourist town.
- Shoulder season was a great time to go. It wasn’t relatively crowded and we managed to book a cabin a month out. You can see the northern lights at night (though, not as strongly as later in the year), and still get 11 hours or so of daylight.
- Fly into Bodø, organise car rental at the airport, and take it on the ferry to Moskenes. It’s much easier to get around with a car and the roads are amazing fun to drive (we saw a number of buses around, but I’d want to do more research before I relied upon it). Otherwise, car rental is a little more fiddly in the south, and the alternative is to go from Svolvær, which is a two hour drive away from where we were staying.
- Cook your own meals mostly. Eating out is expensive (NOK 300+ / AUD 50+ / EUR 35+ / USD 35+ for a main meal). But also, try Tørrfisk (Stockfish) and have a glass of Akavit sometime.