I am sitting in a room full of easy chairs and small tables all bolted or chained to the floor. On my right is a wall with five windows. On my left, another wall with five windows. In front of me are ten windows. One floor up is the same set-up done slightly smaller. Outside the windows is the Norwegian Sea and islands and fjords. We are on the MS Lofoten, the smallest and oldest ship in the Hurtigruten fleet.

We boarded the ship near midnight in Bergen. Our room is in the top class, in the category of the largest rooms. However, by hotel standards–by any standards–it is a tiny space. Two narrow bunks fold down from the wall, one atop the other. Our tiny bathroom has a smaller-than-a-phone-booth shower, a toilet and a heated floor. (I love the heated floor.) We have a port hole window, but it is sealed with an iron cap for the winter season, lest a storm push the sea through the glass and soak the room.  We are in the lower half of the ship–about ten feet above the water line–but it is only a short one-minute walk upstairs to all of the lounges and decks.

Compared to today’s enormous cruise ships, the Lofoten, is like a bathtub toy. Quaint. Old-fashioned. The interior is done in gleaming wood and shiny brass. The lounges are living rooms.  Large enough if you want to be alone. Small enough if you want to chat with fellow travelers. Fellow adventurers. The winter voyages have few passengers on-board. Each has a compelling reason for making the journey into darkness and cold.  Here, the sun rises at ten a.m. and it set’s near two p.m. Our sleeping and waking is not governed by the sun’s rise and fall. As we go far north into the Arctic Circle the days will get shorter.

The daily temperature is in the twenties.  I am exhilarated by the cold. I saw an exhibit about walruses. Their skin is thick and dense like several straw mats combined. My clothing is similarly insulating. Patagonia Capilene long-johns. Fleece-lined jeans. Waterproof ski pants. Up top, a long sleeve shirt. Fleece vest.  Down sweater. And a heavy hooded parka. I can stand comfortably on deck–in the howling wind, in the frigid air, watching moonlight shine on the sea and stars shine in the sky–for a long time, comfortably.

We made this trip, in part, to experience the Lofoten, the Grande Dame of it’s fleet and the last of it’s type.  Forty-eight years old. With it’s original diesel engine. With only one-hundred and fifty-three “bunks” it is fairly small. More than several Lofotens would fit into the space of a Princess Cruise ship.  For one-hundred and ten years this shipping company has had a goevernment contract to connect the coastal Norwegian cities. It delivers passengers, cargo and mail to the thirty-four ports on it’s route. It stops at half of the ports on it’s way north to the Arctic Circle. And stops at the other ports on it’s way down south to Bergen. It’s round trip takes eleven days.

It begins it’s journey in Bergen, which is Norway’s second largest city. Population about four-hundred thousand. It’s last stop is Kirkenes in the Arctic Circle, a stones throw from Russia. We will exit the ship in Tromsø, two days short of Kirkenes.

Here is what runs through my head as I stand on deck, my fingers ashiver as they type, on the blackberry, these words………

We are traveling north, weaving in and out of hundreds of islands and fjords. The Norwegian coast is entirely spectacular and breath-taking.  The light is crystalline. The color palette is blue, gray, slate, silver, mercury. This time of year the sun is indirect. Over the horizon. It will not come back into view until late-January. It rises at ten a.m. And it sets at two-thirty p.m. On the one hand, our magnificent scenery passes, barely seen, in moonlight and in darkness. On the other hand, our time, our pace, is out of our control. The ship travels at it’s pace, not ours. We are left to sit, to think, to read. To stand on deck. Outside. In the dark. In the wind. Twenty-degrees Fahrenheit. Where the mind goes into sensory mode. Collar raised. Scarf tightened. Hat pulled low. The face chilled. The cheeks tingle. The air clear and clean. The light brilliant, crystalline.  Everything vivid. The stars seem brighter. The mountains more etched. The ocean dark, roiling and alive with power and peril. The brain tries to conjure words for the all-encompassing physical sensory experience of it, but words won’t come, it is all sensation and one must simply give in to being awash in the cold and the wind and the moonlight glinting on the sea.

Marlow and Wes
16 December 2012
The Norwegian Sea