Now it’s not a secret that Lofoten is full of secrets. Wooden fishermen’s towns with cabins leaning on rocks by the water, or balancing on wooden poles. Curvy steep bridges being the only way to access these middle of nowhere towns, tucked away on small islands in the middle of the ocean. One of these islands earned the title ‘shortest name in the world’, which is not really fair, as it is literally a letter only: Å. That’s how this cute little town deserved that title. But it deserved a whole lot more titles. But to be honest, my reason for visiting it was quite childish: I wanted to have visited the town with world’s shortest name.
So on my way I went, another 2 hour trip. I still could not believe that these 2 hours still did not take me completely to the other side, but, 2 hours made sense considering there is only 1 road. And it’s always curvy and steep, never made to go faster than 50 per hour. Of course to make myself excited about more than just the funny name of this town, I’d been doing some pre-research on little A. It is an old fishermen’s town (like basically all town’s here, they all should be on UNESCO’s world heritage list for good) with only 250 residents. No, coming from a country that almost hits the 18 million residents, I cannot believe a town having only 250 of them, and it made me even more excited. Fishing has always been the thrive of this town, especially codfish was their golden catch. The production of that is what makes this town very much alive, but tourism also is a nice addition to it. And this is what I always try to emphasise: visit places like this. These people do anything they can to keep their town as beautiful as it has always been, maintaining it the way they always maintained it. Nobody deserves the extra cash more than these hardworking fishermen in Å.
The amount of pictures I took along the way was insane. I had to stop everywhere, if I wouldn’t I would regret it later. These roads could never bore me. Often they were stretched but sometimes they went up so steep that whatever showed up after, was a big surprise. Endlessly horizontal plains, deep green. Endlessly vertical mountains, deep green. All blocked every now and then as this was a gathering of islands and water found its way in all the time. But always as clear, always as calm and always as colourful. Bunchy hills followed the bounty beaches colliding with the emerald green water, slowly transferring into deep blue, to end in the mysterious dark depths of Lofoten. The only heroes breaking through these depts again, were the islands so small that the waves sometimes completely hid them. This place did not seem to have an end, the only end every now and then was a pointy mountain blocking the view. But after that mountain, it all continued again, the same landscape in a new shape.
And after all the curves and hills, all the bridges and breaks, the sign of little Å appeared. The wooden houses showed up, balancing on the rocks, resting by the blue watersides. Now Lofoten had small towns only, old towns. But this was by far the most extreme. It was like time stood still here, even the cabins that weren’t houses but little stores, were pointed out by old-school wooden signs, hand-painted. All cabins were painted in red and a yellow light shone softly trough the windows. For the rest the town existed of rocks scattered trough the hills, mountains surrounding it, and water closing in. Peace. At the end of this single hilly road, a small parkingspot appeared and I grabbed my chance immediately. Safe to say there were more gulls around than people, so far I hadn’t seen anyone around. I was drawn by the oceanbreeze and as I followed, that’s where I end up. I smiled, watching fishermen working by the harbour, satisfied with today’s catch. I now saw that at the porches of the cabins there was always fishing gear stored somewhere. Fishing rods, part of boats, fishing nets, even fishheads as proud trophies hanging at the walls. I watched the ocean turning into what seemed to be a lake, where the mighthy mountains broke off it’s pathway into the darkest depths.
Only now I realized how hungry I was, as besides the gulls I suddenly heard my stomach making it’s loud appearance. And as I followed the dock with my eyes for a bit, I saw a wooden bridge leading to the only red cabin that was bursting with life: a restaurant. Now maybe it was due to the unbelievably sunny day or maybe it was the fact that there’s not too many restaurants around, but many others seemed to be enjoying it. I also found myself a table and ordered a big fat burger because I deserved it, all these impressions were exhausting of course. Poor me. I could not believe that the table with the best view was still free, straight by the deep green waterside filled with fishes hiding in corals. The little boats peacefully floated on the tiny waves coming from the ocean far ahead, although here it was just a clear lake that at some point escaped trough 2 mountains, back to its origin. The burger was absolutely perfect and again, worth the big amount of money. The advantage of travelling in scandinivia to me has always been the fact that besides groceries, the plane ticket and the rental car when needed, you did not have to spend so much as you could simply enjoy your surroundings by hiking.
As if this place wasn’t already perfect, abandoned by the world yet beloved by it, the sun broke through and made the water sparkle, made my face burn up straight away and the mountaintops greener than ever. I felt so happy, surrounded by the little cabins on their rocks, the proud mountains forcing the ocean to clear and colourful lakes besides little A. But I had another activity in mind for the way back, so after taking about 90 pictures of the same spot, I drove off. I was going to cross a big thing of my big bucketlist, something only doable at very few destinations, Lofoten being the best one. I wanted to go to the beach at midnight. And I couldn’t have picked a better night, it was now almost midnight but the sun was still not going anywhere. At 2 it will be at its lowest but it will never fade, it will simply nap, leaving this orange glow in the sky for the entire night. I parked my car by the small beach that I crossed everytime I left Svovlaer, as there was only one way into Lofoten, and one way out. The beach existed out of few metres of soft white sand which could only be reached by concurring the rocks surrounding it, which I did. I smiled from ear to ear as I put down my towel, grabbed my earphones and as it was a beach: got on my bikini.
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