After marveling at the stark drama of the highlands of the Veranger peninsula, the play of light in the clouds and sky above contrasting with the melting snow fields on the rock and tundra down below, and the unlikely presence of birds everywhere (though you had to look carefully sometimes to pick them out of the landscape), we kept north, all the way to the sea, which was the Barents that itself was part of an ocean and that ocean was the Arctic. We could go no further without piling into a boat after which it would be water all the way to the North Pole. Our itinerary did not include this, for better or worse. If we hadn’t exactly reached the end of the earth, we’d certainly reached the end of continental Europe, which you’ve got to admit is not too shabby.
Batsfjord, the fishing town where we’d stay the next two nights, could be construed as appearing at least a bit shabby around the edges, but it is clearly an economic center with a fishing fleet and a processing plant for the fleet’s offerings, so it is likely people in Batsfjord find it a home where they can live in quiet isolation and make a wage. My guess is most of them know each other and find it all splendid. My hope is that those who find they don’t love it can get the hell out, because it doesn’t look like the kind of place with too many options for those who are unhappy. But what do I know? Call it projection (said the life-long city boy).
We stayed in the hotel which is also where we ate and otherwise any time spent in Batsfjord was limited. As with every day since Oulu, the human presence even in this town was minimal and frankly a bit strange, same as with all the small houses and farm buildings that dotted the landscape we’d been passing endlessly on the road. Where was everybody? Were they all inside watching Finnish soap operas and football? Or off working at some tech center or out in fishing boats? We were now in summer but do the long winters just condition everyone to stay inside, always?
The hotel at which we stayed was named I kid you not: Polar Hotel! and what could be more perfect a name than that? I went looking for the Polar Express train station but no luck. Polar Hotel was the most down-home and eccentric operation one might imagine, a remodeled old wooden building that was previously something else more than likely, with all the rooms and “suites” of varying sizes and decor. The two of us hit the jackpot with what was evidently the family suite, enthusiastically expressive of an African theme, designed no doubt to warm the soul of the guest while the polar winds howl outside in January, so long as they don’t have nightmares of getting trampled by an elephant while sleeping.
At this point I find it necessary to tear us away from this gripping narrative of the trip to indulge in a brief digression about the Arctic Circle, about which I’d guess you know next to nothing, and I mean that with all due respect. You might know it lies at around 66º N latitude, but beyond that, what else have you got? Did you know that the modern Arctic Circle aligns with the celestial Bear’s Circle, so called by the ancient Greeks, who’d already noticed that the stars of the northern hemisphere rotated about one fixed star in the northern heavens? Or that the Greeks got the idea from records kept by the Chaldeans of south Iraq, from around 1000 BC? Or that north of the circle the sun is visible throughout the day? Of course there is more to this: at 66º this only happens for one day, at the summer solstice, whereas the farther north one travels this occurs more frequently until at the pole the sun is above the horizon from the vernal to the autumnal equinox for what is essentially a “day” that lasts half a year. Of course the downside is that it’s the same story for winter, but everyone who lives at the North Pole doesn’t seem to mind, and we all know who they are, don’t we? If you no longer believe in Santa, you’ve my heartfelt condolences, but if you do, think about the challenge of living with half a year of daylight and half of darkness, when your job on Christmas Eve is to achieve the impossible year after year. Santa is either a wise sage, indeed, or must have a really great psychotherapist.
So let’s just say that our foray from Batsfjord back into the highlands for the day revealed a richness of avian bird life which a quick look at the inhospitable landscape would never suggest, at least to the casual human observer. There were ducks on the water everywhere, mergansers and long-tailed, and a guillemot or two, as well as the constant action at several leks where ruffs challenged one another, arrayed in splendid breeding plumage that stood out against the muted tones of the landscape. And again, the jaegers, parasitic and long-tailed, flashing in and harassing other birds who might offer something to eat – or the way it looked, harassing simply because that is what they do. Clearly if this was the end of the earth, it was anything but the end of nature in all its fecundity and richness, a truth which was to become more and more obvious on this trip’s final days
