Scandinavia Trip: Day 5 – The Western Lofoten Islands

June 30, 2023

For the first time in a while, I ate a proper homemade breakfast of eggs, cheese, and toast. We started the day quite late, only beginning our drive westward shortly before ten. Our first stop was Buksnes Church, an imposing red building with white timber frames and dramatically sloping green roofs. The parking lot in front of the church was quite busy, which kept me from taking pictures. When we entered, we saw many smartly dressed people. We did not understand what had brought them there in such numbers until we were approached by a man who asked if we were tourists. When we responded that we were, he promptly told us that this was a funeral gathering, and we hurriedly left.

We continued westward, taking the underwater tunnel from Vestvågøya to Flakstadøya. Tunnels make me a bit anxious as it is; I always worry an earthquake might make one collapse on top of me. A tunnel under water, therefore, makes my worries double. We stopped at various places of interest on Flakstadøya: the viewpoint in Nappskaret, Flakstad Church, Ramberg Beach, and the lookout over the bridges to Fredvang. Along with many others, we were amused by the automated lawnmower at Flakstad Church, which seemed hypermodern for such a faraway place.

We arrived at the tourist hotspot of the Lofoten Islands towards noon. Making stops before and after the island of Hamnøy, we toured this island overlooked by its iconic hoodlike mountain. We continued to the town of Reine, where we paid for three hours at the municipal parking lot and ate lunch. The food was rather subpar (the pizza tasted as though it were taken straight out of the fridge), but as a near-complete vegetarian in Norway, I cannot be picky.

There was no way to plan well for the next leg of our journey: the climb to Reinebringen. Had we arrived there before lunch, I suspect the sun would have been shining in our faces as we made our ascent. Since we arrived after lunch, we were already a bit tired and slowed down by our own digestive tracts. Nonetheless, we persevered. The height we were to overcome (448 metres above sea level) did not seem very daunting, but the kilometre stretch of a steep, stepwise ascent proved very taxing. To add to that, once we got to the top my exhaustion fed into my fear of heights and I could only take pictures planted firmly on my knees.

Not counting a lovely dinner of various seafoods (in my case, mussels), our last stop was the village of Å, the southernmost village in the Lofoten Islands and the last settlement on the E10 from Sweden to Norway. Chock-full of little red houses on stilts, the town was very quaint, and remained so despite the horrid childlike shrieking of the ever-present seagulls. On our way back, we listened to some Grieg, whose appropriateness to the occasion was chilling to the bone.