This blog post describes the content of the video, which you can see below:
In this video, we go to the very famous archipelago Lofoten in Norway. We travel all over the islands in a little over a week and show you why the Lofoten are a bit overrated.
Henningsvær
We meet with Jan and Emma in Henningsvær, a small fishing village on several small islands in the Lofoten archipelago. This village is very known for the football stadium at the end. We take a walk through the village. It’s cute and friendly. It’s interesting that the village exists of so many different islands and we can see how this is a busy tourist attraction in the summer.
Difficulty finding parking spots
After a nice coffee and cake, we go back to our camper and drive to a new parking spot for the night. We go to a quiet spot in the north, but it is really hard to find a good parking spot for all three of our vans. A lot of them are close to the road, small or just occupied already. We later learn that if you want a parking spot, you have to be earlier in the day.
We also see people parking in spots they should not be, either because it is cultivated land or too close to houses. If this already happens in the autumn, we can’t fathom how bad it must get for the locals in summer.
The beauty of the Lofoten
The next day Marten and I go for a road trip over two of the islands. We find a very cute cafe where they serve cakes and sandwiches and soup, all homemade and have a nice chat with the owners. We also find a marsh-like land that looks very interesting and different from anything we’ve seen. Driving around like this shows us the real beauty and variety of the islands.
Northern Lights at Hauklandstranda
At the end of the day, we pull up to Hauklandstranda, where we do not just meet Emma and Jan but also Alex. He is a German living in this area and wants to show us around a bit. As we knew there was a good chance of Northern Lights this night, we got ourselves ready for an amazing spectacle.
We made a bonfire to keep us warm while we watched the lights get better and better. It’s hard to explain the Northern Lights. They are so different in photos and film as they are in real life. Both look amazing but completely different. You see more of the 3D effect and the weird movements they make, but they can be less sharp because of it.
Lofotr Viking museum
The next day we visit the Lofotr Viking Museum. This museum shows the history and culture of the Vikings. But it also lets you experience it. It has the largest Viking longhouse ever excavated (83 meters in length) and you can enter it. In it, there are demonstrations of arts & crafts from the Vikings as well as food and drinks.
We also meet up with Igor Filippov here, that has an exhibition of his Viking paintings, and he invites us to try Borsj back in his house.
That night we see more Northern Lights at the camping grounds in Flakstad. We are so happy that we got to experience the lights. It wasn’t always clear that we would; we thought it would be much later in the year that the lights would be visible. But we learned much about how it works with the amounts of activity that are necessary and that they can be seen from half of August if you are lucky. It just needs to be dark. Hopefully, we can go back to the Arctic circle sometime in winter to see even more of this fabulous phenomenon.
Nusfjord
We visit Nusfjord, a small fishing village dating back to the late 1800s. It once was an important centre for cod fishing in the region. These days it is completely turned into a museum as an example of traditional Norwegian fishing culture, with its rows of picturesque red and yellow fishermen’s cabins, known as “rorbuer”, lining the harbour.
We took a stroll through the village, looking at the historic buildings and learning more about the fishing culture. We did feel like the entry price was quite steep, considering that most buildings and all restaurants and cafés were closed.
A hike to Kvalvika Beach
We park our camper at Fredvang, where they have special parking spaces for motorhomes that want to hike the mountain to Kvalvika beach. Unfortunately, the next morning, Natalie doesn’t feel well, and it is in the afternoon before we get to start our hike. The weather hasn’t been great all day, and during our hike up the mountain, the weather only gets worse. When we are almost at the top, we decide to turn around because there is no way we can make it down the mountain to Kvalvika and back safely.
This was one of the hikes that we felt was quite understated in difficulty. We have seen multiple hikes where the difficulty level was considered medium or beginner, which were harder than they were made out to be, and this was one of them. The hike was said to take 4 hours back and forth, but it took us 2 hours just to get to the top of the mountain, which was 1/4th of the way.
Anita’s Seafood Shop and Bar
We read a lot of great things about Anita’s Seafood Café and our Dutch friends we met last week also recommended this place. So we drove to the island of Sakrisøya to go visit this famous seafood shop. We had lovely salmon burgers with shrimp and they were amazing!
We then drive to Reine, a village with red houses. All of these villages are so cute, and the views are amazing here. It’s the same in Å, another cute village at the end of the Lofoten. We can understand how people who didn’t see other parts of Norway are attracted to this archipelago. But we actually feel like there are so many cute villages in North Norway and so many fabulous views and stunning sceneries that maybe the Lofoten actually isn’t as interesting as it is made out to be. Personally, we would recommend the Lyngen Alps or the Vesterålen over the Lofoten.
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