Cruising Lofoten’s Highway 815

Roland laughed, “Vik beach? No sunrise there. Try route 815, it’s Lofoten’s undiscovered alternative to E10”.

Seemingly everywhere we had been in the past week involved the E10 tunnel. In of itself that wasn’t an issue. The issue was its two year renovation. Open once an hour during the day was painful and at midnight and then again at 3am contributed heavily to our frequent 4am returns. But that is all history as the workshop has ended, almost everyone gone and we are now masters of our own destiny.

Fed, we pile into the rented range anxiety vehicle and head northeast the untunneled section of E10.

While many of us can walk and chew gum simultaneously , apparently talking, marveling at snow drifts and following navigation was beyond this pair’s ability. I pull a U turn, head west and go right and get it right.

815 hugs the “southern” shoreline of this part of paradise. I still can’t reconcile my head to any of the views. It’s almost as if someone has sliced the top off the Alps or Sierra Nevada mountains, and to be clear, sliced the best bit and simply parked it at sea level. The jagged, rugged, twisted granite is both beautiful and intimidating. Overlaid with snow, every nuance of its contours are visible. Veins of snow and ice create a contrasty black and white photo. The cold, the lack of sunrise suggests viewing from within the EV but it’s impossible to not try and experience firsthand standing in frigid air.

Late January, sunrise is a slow and almost laborious process. Unlike summer on the equator where it’s gone from nothing to blindness in a snap of the fingers, here its thinking and we’re wondering if it really will appear. It does and it climbs so slowly we ponder, compose and shoot almost on a programmed rinse cycle. Boulders in the foreground, maybe try some tufts of grass or a slight left view of the snow covered stubs rising from the water’s edge.

Not that the deserts of western Nevada and Lofoten have much in common beyond a possible sense of desolation and loneliness, for me these are my only two experiences with “range anxiety”. The first as a passenger in a Rivian, watching digital instruments and contriving to find charging points that might offer more than boredom. The second and today, I’m the driver. The anxiety is really the same, as in both instances I don’t want to be walking or calling for help. Cold is not a battery’s friend and 20F is cold in any unit.

We have two charging points that I know I can use; Leknes and Solvær. We venture closer to Solvær but hunger and a sense of soon to fade light has us pull into Kabelvag. Another random place with very un-random views.

This is a seat of the pants operation. No real plan, enjoy, see the sea and take a more leisurely approach to five plus shoots per day on the workshop.

You’d think our luck should, would run out. Clear skies, Northern Lights on steroids, exquisite coastline and red villages is more than we can expect. However, we have two last serendipitous moments within 20 minutes of each other.

Sailing west, we glimpse north and uttered “wow” and with nowhere obvious to stop continue. No, that’s wrong, that’s lazy and we pull into the only possible place, a business with trucks and buildings but no obvious view of our quarry. Dismissed, we reverse course, drive northish and park in what seems like a drive way. Desperate, we clamber out, tripods perched, iPhones out and snap away.

Someone reminded me recently of a saying…’fortune favors the brave”. We aren’t really brave but clearly fortune favored us.