Sunday, 1/20: Alta and true grit

This was to be our longest day by far.  We arrived in port at Alta around 8A, and headed off for a home visit with a Norwegian knitting expert.  

About a dozen of us arrived at a tidy home in a very residential area.  Boots off, or don "operating room booties" to keep the floors clean.  I ditched my boots promptly, as I was wearing my socks made with "Aurora Borealis" yarn to show off.  Our hostess was most impressed!

Our hostess had set up china coffee cups on saucers, and little bread plates, as she was serving spicy cookies and pancakes folded over the (in)famous Norwegian "brown cheese."  We all nibbled away as she showed a wide variety of garments she'd made, with a lot of history on the popular patterns.  The biggest change in recent years has been the move from heavier-weight yarn, which made dense garments suitable for working outdoors, to lighter-weight yarn which makes more fashionable items that can be worn indoors without overheating the wearer.

The variety of items and the quirky stories behind many of them (could YOU knit up a grade-school daughter's dress overnight because she was leaving on a trip tomorrow?) made for an interesting and enjoyable morning.  Our hostess had a junior year abroad in Green Bay (!) and visits her host family there regularly, doing business in various US cities as long as she's in the neighborhood.  A typical visit would be Oslo to NYC to Chicago to Seattle to Houston to Miami to Oslo ... and as she said, "That's a sweater."  Umm...riiiight!

We had a little time to discuss Norwegian life; the income from the North Sea oil leases is held in trust for the entire population.  This funds parental leave, much prescription coverage, dental, school costs, and sick leave.  Your pension is secure if you work 40 years in Norway; our hostess has worked many years abroad and so has arranged a private plan as well.

We learned that kids arrive at "kindergarten" as young as age 1, and begin learning another language (usually English) in first grade, many other languages are offered as schooling continues.  When still at an age to nap, naps are taken outside unless the weather is truly bitter cold (by LOCAL standards!); the baby or child is well bundled up but gets the advantage of breathing the crisp, clean air.  Those habits often carry into adulthood, many is the homeowner who never closes the windows!

Again with regret, we piled back into the vans to return to ship as everyone had more excursions to catch.  Our next was the included "City of Northern Lights" tour, including a visit to the Alta Museum of Rock Art.  Alta has a small population in a large area (about the size of LA but under 10% of the population), and is a very new town from a construction perspective.  It was heavily destroyed as the German forces pulled back towards the end of WWII; most buildings were burned as the soldiers left.  So many buildings have a very contemporary look, including the Northern Lights cathedral with its spiral spire.  The town re-designed its center before rebuilding, so streets are wider and traffic moves smoothly.

There are large deposits of slate here, and it has been extracted and exported for many years.  This slate is particularly resistant to water and acid, and comes from deposits over 10,000 years old.  It's a very durable material for roofing (the old church built hundreds of years ago has been renovated twice, but the roof has not needed work at all!), but also serves nicely for smaller projects such as cheese boards or coasters.  Improvements in process and equipment have made the work easier, but it is still very demanding.

At the museum, we enjoyed several interactive exhibits about the rock carvings and paintings, and what they showed about human society here some 2-7,000 years ago.  Over time, scholars have developed a progression of repeated images, which have gotten more-detailed as years went by.  Boats, hunting, fishing, and various ceremonies are depicted.  There are also many artifacts from pre-industrial times, and (oh help us!) a dandy gift shop.

Back to the ship!  By now, our energy is flagging some yet we have two more expeditions booked.  The last one is the key one:  heading out at 9:30 to "Hunt for the Northern Lights."  Then we learned that there was an educational lecture at 8:15, which we would miss if we went on the third tour.  Good sense prevailed and we made our seats available to others, and had a quick nap.

The presenter makes his living helping folks find the lights.  He provided a solid scientific background on the phenomenon, which starts with an ejection of solar plasma from a sunspot.  This ionized material reaches our magnetic field a couple days later, and its interaction with our high atmosphere brings us the lights.  

All that's well and good ... but how do you FIND them??  Well, first you need clear skies and a minimum of urban light around.  That's pretty easy to do this far north, though we've been plagued by clouds and snow so far.  Then you need a HIGHLY detailed weather forecast for VERY specific locations ... hour-by-hour.  He presented three, in charts that included a diagram of expected cloud coverage and density by hour, and also a one-to-ten rating of probability of sighting the lights.  The best shot was a mere 2, but tonight was THE NIGHT so off we went.

This was "maximum layers" night, as we would be outdoors a couple hours or more.  We are substantially even with Barrow, Alaska though the Gulf Stream moderates the temperatures just enough that scrubby trees and such vegetation can survive; Barrow is quite desolate.  We had dumped everything warm out on our beds, and with some mix-and-match bartering, each of us assembled a sensible outfit.  The next problem was ... we WEREN'T OUTSIDE.  It would be easy to melt right down.  So everyone was doffing and donning layers and items to find a good  balance.  Off to the coaches we went.

We followed the Alta River for a while, and were regaled with historical and current tales of managing fishing access so as not to deplete the stock.  Originally the Sami were here alone, no problem.  Norwegian settlers arrived, but still plenty to go around, so an informal agreement was reached as to who would fish where.  Then a third group arrived from Finland, and things got tense.  After some years of unpleasantness, a determination was made that whoever owned the land adjacent to the river had fishing rights for that length.  

Now, the entrepreneurial spirit kicked in and folks are renting out their place for others to fish from.  Yikes!  New rule:  you can bring as many people as you want on the day your rent the access ... but ONLY ONE fishing pole.  So crowds do show up, bearing picnic baskets and lawn games, and pass the pole from person to person until time's up and all the fish are packed to go home.  What an interesting solution!

There are also some open spaces assigned by lottery, we were told the winners never EVER sell their prize  :)

Besides fishing, this area has the second-most-northerly pine forest but the MOST northerly pine forest actively used for commercial purposes.  A lot of wood is harvested, processed and exported for construction purposes (and of course, plenty stays right here to build houses as well).

You might have figured out that, since we were heading inland, we were heading into mountainous terrain.  Indeed so!  There are many summits to reach, most with a box on the top with a sign-in book for those who do reach the summit.  Climbing clubs track the number of summits each person does reach, and award prizes as the season comes to an end.  Geocaching without the tchochkes, I guess.  It's quite a thing to have reached all your peaks!

And critters ... yes, there are critters.  No polar bears now survive this far south (Svalbard still has some, right Lyra?).  But black bears, moose & reindeer are the common large animals.  Arctic & red foxes, lynx, arctic hares and stoats/ermines fill in the middle-sized niche.  There are many birds including eagles & hawks, crows, ravens & magpies.  Then the small animals, including lemmings, a variety of insects, and various earthworm-type critters.  Apparently no reptiles survive this far north.

By now we have arrived at the viewing area.  We are surrounded by mountains, and have a panoramic view of a wide valley below.  The open sky and a full moon are above us ... it's a BEAUTIFUL night.  Except it's about 10 below zero Fahrenheit.  The only saving grace is that the wind is quite calm.  We walk around for a while, we sit on some reindeer-hide-covered benches, we gaze at the sky.  Nothing.  (Our educator had noted that he has about a 75% success rate in "finding" the lights, but that it's really, REALLY boring if your tour is in the 25%...)

We go into the small cafe for some warmth, shedding several items and at least one layer.  Those hardy souls staying outside promise to shout when (if?) the lights do appear.  I have the Aurora Borealis socks in my bag ... and do bring them out to display and hope to influence the situation.  But, alas, it's now close to 11:30 and nothing's going on in the sky.

The buses had earlier begun to shuttle frozen participants back to the boat, and we'd been told firmly that the LAST bus would leave at 12:30A and we'd best be ON IT.  We decide to catch what we estimate will be the midnight bus to Alta.  YIKES!  There's only ONE BUS out there!  But it develops that the others will be back once having dropped their passengers at the boat.  So we clamber onto the bus, get the ferschlugginer seat belts fastened (mandatory under Norwegian law ... but no two buses so far have had the same seatbelt configuration, and ALL of them have been quite snug), and hear great excitement outside.  We jump up and clamber out, and there's the aurora smeared across the low horizon.  Go to www.facebook.com/glodexplorer ... pick photos ... click into Viking Sky to see our little experience.  (afterword:  or, see below!)

OK, socks did their magic and we checked our box.  The bus fills up in record time and we're off to a well-earned rest.  But WAIT!  In the middle of nowhere, another display is sighted.  This one is a huge squiggle, and the bus can pull into a wide spot in the road where we can get out protected from traffic and gaze.  I don't have a photo of that, prettier one ... but it was there.   (afterword:  but others DID get some shots, see below)

 

  

All that said, the marvelous movies and photos of colorful sheets of light are ... photos.  To catch the color, the exposure has to be several SECONDS long to get enough light to show the color.  Our eyes don't actually catch the color in the time they have to adapt, and the aurora is a pale green or even gray as we view it.  That was a bit of a downer, but knowing our educator would have the correct equipment eased it.  And we got to see TWO!

Finally back on the bus for the last time, we stumble onto the boat around 1AM too tired to sleep.  But happy!