Å and Vaerøy, Lofoten
What names to conjure with! This corner of Norway is one of the most remote, one of the most dramatic, one of the most international and one of the most deadly in Scandinavia. It has given us a word synonymous with chaos and the great forces of nature, all of which are still at work here.
Remote: we are still beyond the Arctic Circle, but the Lofoten peninsula juts out 100 miles from the rugged northwestern coast of Norway like a claw. A claw indeed: Lofoten means the foot of the lynx, the native wild cat of the north. By breakfast we were coasting along the outermost pads of this feline foot.
Dramatic: there is no other coastline like the Lofoten “wall”. Its peaks rise to over 3,000 feet, weathered by the ice and wind of ages to an awesome black blade of jagged saw-teeth. The rocks here are old beyond imagining: 3,000 million-year-old granites, gabbros and gneisses laid down before life existed, while our planet was still in callow youth. We could see the fearsome detail of these peaks as we anchored off Å, our first landing site.
International? Surely not, for Å, like the last letter in the Norwegian alphabet, seems a forgotten afterthought now. A tiny village of red houses on stilts, perched above the sea, it lies at the end of the long road from the outside world. But in its heyday this fishing community was the hub of one of the greatest trade routes in Europe. Sami nomads over 5,000 years ago discovered these fabulous fishing grounds at the tip of the peninsula. For millennia, cod from the Barents Sea have come here each winter to spawn in the waters that swirl round the headland. The Nordic peoples learned from the Sami how to catch and dry them: the Vikings took the dried klipfish to England to trade over 1,000 years ago. English, Dutch then Hanseatic traders relied on this source of prepackaged protein as part of their empires. Today cod still rivals tourism as the top earner; it is revered in Italy, Spain, Portugal and West Africa. In the 1840s cod liver oil became the ultimate health food: look at these bottles, which have secured the health of generations of children for decades. My mother administered the dread spoonful to me without fail each day, and, testament to her perseverance, here I am happy and healthy in the birthplace of this elixir, but alert once again to that unforgettable smell.
At lunchtime we passed Mosken, where six sea eagles soared above the island’s peak. We anchored inside the west bay of Vaerøy, triumphantly launched our kayaks and the rest of us landed beside the abandoned fishing village of Måstad, once a community which thrived on a diet of winter cod and summer puffins. Long walkers hiked along an ancient stone road through lush grass meadows no longer grazed by sheep, where harebells, roseroot and stonecrop bloomed, blue, pink and yellow. All is peaceful now, but once this busy community daily braved the legendary currents and whirlpools of the Moskstraumen to fish, the stretch of water which inspired Edgar Allan Poe’s story. His tale, based on these fishermen’s experiences, has given every English dictionary a Norwegian word: the maelstrom.
