BICYCLING FINNMARK IN EXTREME NORTHERN NORWAY

    At 69 degrees north latitude deep within the Arctic Circle where the borders of Suomi Finland, and the Russian tundra converge just off the road to Nordkapp, (North Cape) this curious adventure begins.
    Here is the land of the midnight sun, Midnattsol, where inquisitive adventurers journey north from May until July to the northernmost point in Europe on Norway’s rockbound coast of the Arctic Ocean to witness days with no sunset.
    This is the land of the Lapps, Norway’s dogsled and reindeer people, who have adapted and evolved to thrive in this frigid forlorn terrain of arctic isolation.

 

  In this rare photo these Lapps are fully dressed in their decorative native attire for a wedding celebration. (photo by Trygve Trondsen)

  
    My cousin Trygve  Trondsen, a dentist, had worked and lived in this district for four years, bought a cabin and made lifelong friends. Now Trygve makes it a point to visit this outpost area at least two times a year.
    Nearly all of the year the Lapps travel by dog sled and even on occasion use their dogsled dogs to pull them about on skis. These huskies are specially trained dogs bred to the task.
    For a short time of the year the snow occasionally melts enough that the dogsleds become unusable.
    That problem has just been solved by enterprising Ole Bakkevold, a Laplander and close family friend to Trygve.
    The ingenious and natural solution would be to use bicycles towed by their Lapland sled dogs.
   

 

    Yes here in the mountains of northern Norway in the province of Finnmark, the probability of running into trees is not a worry and finding a shady resting spot is not a priority concern either.

    In Trygve’s own words;
    “Yes, we employed the dogs for assistance upward and down the roads. At some places on the road we had to get off the bicycles because the road had been washed away for a little distance. I must admit that I was uncertain how this biking would end, but I was surprised that the dogs mostly kept a steady course. But I had to keep a close attention on my dogs”.
    Trygve noted that one of his dogs had a sudden tendency to run off when he spotted any water and that the other dog couldn’t resist chasing rodents.
    “My dog loves water so whenever there was a brook on the side of the road I had to watch up. The other dog has a nose for mice and that kind of creatures. So we had to be aware. But the dogs are used to follow a track; Ole is skiing with them.” 
    “The dogs were tied to the bicycle by a flexible kind of rope. The rope goes in and out of a kind of box. Before we started I did not think that was a good way to do it, but Ole has experience. It worked very well. He trains his dogs in this way.
   

    In the treeless mountains of Finnmark, Ole Bekkevold makes a campfire for the night.

    Out of the mountains and down to the tree line to the end of the dog towing bicycle adventure where Trygve and Ole successfully survived but the dogs are spent.

    This is the glacial pot-hole lake named Rehpi and the neighboring country of Finland can be seen beyond.

    Little Norway has but four and a half million residents, 100% are literate of which 73% of them are urban, leaving the rest of this expansive country sparsely populated.
    Norway’s extensive rockbound coast is highly indented with tens of thousands of islands interspersed with profoundly deep fjords. Most of the country is mountainous with high plateaus and only 25% forested.
    The abundance of hydroelectric power of which more than half is exported, and enormous oil reserves has produced one of the highest living standards in the world.
    In the area where Trygve was bicycling and a few kilometers west on one of the countless barrier islands in the municipality of Harstad, Troms, is the small town of Kasfjord where Trygve’s family originally came from. During the occupation in WWII the German battleship Tirpitz was stationed here, it was of the Bismarck class, the largest ever built in Europe and was finally sunk by the British in 1944.
    Norway is a land of contrasts from the midnight sun country in the far north where there are two months without a sunset to the city of Rjukan in the south central where the sun never shines. Rjukan pioneered in hydroelectricity, nuclear development and during WWII witnessed the German attempt to spirit off a key component for the A-bomb…heavy water. At least one book and a movie were produced about that epic wartime espionage event.

    A thank you to the Viking adventurers Ole Bakkevold and Trygve Trondsen, who provided us with a look into one of the most ecologically friendly countries on this planet earth, Norway, home of the Nobel Peace Prize!

© 2010 John M. Grimsrud