A business trip to Oslo just around the longest day of the year offered the perfect opportunity
to experience a couple of polar days by going 'merely' some 1000 km north.
Since it turned out that nobody would join me for this excursion, I gave up the idea of doing the trip by car.
Instead I made good use of a relatively new and inexpensive offer:
the InterRail One Country Pass for Norway.
With some careful planning, I could touch basically all parts of Norway that
are accessible by train within just the six days and seven nights
that I had at my disposal, taking advantage of the quite efficient net of long-distance (mostly) night trains:
Date | Departure | Mode of transport | Arrival
|
19.6. | 09:05 MUC | flight SK 3678 | 11:10 Gardermoen Oslo Lufthavn (OSL)
|
22./23.6. | 22:47 Oslo S | night train | 07:18 Stavanger (S=Sentralsatsjon: central station)
|
23./24.6. | 22:20 Stavanger | night train | 06:40 Drammen
|
24.6. | 07:12 Drammen | train | 11:41 Myrdal
|
24.6. | 17:53 Voss | train | 19:05 Bergen
|
24./25.6. | 22:58 Bergen | night train | 06:26 Oslo S
|
25.6. | 08:07 Oslo S | train | 14:45 Trondheim
|
25./26.6. | 23:35 Trondheim | night train | 09:13 Bodø
|
26.6. | 10:15 Bodø | ferry | 13:30 Moskenes (on Lofoten)
|
28.6. | 06:30 Svolvær | express boat | 10:00 Bodø (back from Lofoten)
|
28.6. | 12:15 Bodø | train | 22:10 Trondheim
|
28/29.6. | 23:05 Trondheim | night train | 06:06 OSL
|
29.6. | 07:10 OSL | flight SK 1463 | 08:20 Copenhagen (CPH)
|
BTW, for Norwegian long-distance trains and in particular night trains, reservation is mandatory,
but usually can be done on short notice at a train station as the trains are rarely fully booked.
Most of the "Komfort" class seats and all the night train seats have a power plug.
In some trains there is even free Internet access via wifi; one just needs to register (giving any 8-digit number as 'phone number').
There is one critical factor that is nearly impossible to plan with, in particular in Norway: weather.
In summer, one may be lucky to have a relatively stable and warm period with clear skies,
or may be unlucky to have an awfully rainy time with very low-hanging clouds, or most likely: a mixture of both.
In may case, weather was not perfect - but better than forecasted - in Oslo,
unpleasantly cloudy and slightly rainy in the south, west, and middle of the country,
and - thanks goodness - mostly sunny for the most scenic area: the Lofoten islands above the Arctic circle.
I was glad that I did not bother spending more time in Bodø than necessary.
On the way up I spent the hour I had there rushing around with my heavy backpack
desperately trying to find a place to rent a bike for getting around on the Lofoten.
Yet nobody I asked on the street had a clue if this possible after all (while
the tourist information office was closed on Sunday mornings, but presumably would not have been helpful either).
So I just locked the bulk of my luggage at the train station (with by the way is 2*30 NOK for the 48 hours I needed),
hopped on the ferry (good information on how to get to the Lofoten islands may be found
here and at the Torghatten Nord
ferry operator homepage, which links to here)
and resorted to getting around the islands hiking, hitch-hiking, and taking
(unfortunately rather infrequent) buses, which worked out surprisingly well.
I got a lift mostly by locals and by two young Swiss guys, all of which were very pleasant encounters.
My - pretty dense - itinerary from the Southeastern tip of the islands towards their center was: