June 25 - Lofoten Islands

36 hours after leaving Spitsbergen we are still above the Arctic Circle, at 68 degrees latitude. Caring about latitude was new to me until this trip, other than knowing where 49 degrees latitude north is.

Today I went to Nusfjord, a UNESCO world heritage fishing village with many wooden buildings preserved as they were in the 19th century.

Cod is the primary fish still caught here, and the village includes a cod liver oil factory, and "stocks" for drying the codfish as we had seen all over Norway.

Here's my favourite dried fish:

And more views of the village:

We drove for awhile around the islands, enjoying the scenery. It was good to see greenery in the landscape again, after the starkness of Spitsbergen.

Can you find the lamb in this picture?

Hint: The lamb is lying down after grazing on the roof of the barn. First find the bird in front of the chimney, then look behind it, a little to the left.

Our second stop was at the Lofotr Viking Museum. This was a reconstructed chieftain's longhouse, furnished as it would have been around 600 AD. It was abandoned about 950 AD when the whole community left to settle in Iceland.

A familiar sight from our trip to Denmark:

We heard a great presentation inside the longhouse from a guide in Viking dress.



The community kept to its belief in Norse gods like Thor and Odin.

Rejection of Christianity as the rest of Norway was accepting it is believed to be one of the reasons for the emigration to Iceland.

Here is someone else we saw in Denmark. Heather or Alex, can you remind me of his name?

More from the longhouse:

Then we had some more great views of the fjords on our way back to the dock.