I’d always thought my first trip to Lofoten would be ski focused. My other trips to Norway have been to ski, and I always hoped to come back for more variations of the same. It’s truly one of the world’s great alpine landscapes. If not skiing, I figured I’d be climbing. But sometimes an opportunity will present itself and you’ve just gotta jump. In this instance, a job shooting with some long-time friends and colleagues for a boating client in the harbors and waterways of Lofoten.
I knew instantly that this was a trip I was going to need to extend for some personal time.
The timing was interesting.
Too late for good skiing in Lofoten, too early for reliable climbing weather. Plus, I’d be solo for the trip extension, so finding partners for those sports can be a bit of an exercise in tedium, especially in an unfamiliar environment. Not to mention the breadth of heavy equipment involved.
The solution took me a little while to find.
But once I did, it became a perfect fit. I’d take a bus to the far point of the Lofoten peninsula, then set out with a lightweight backpacking and light mountaineering kit with designs on a human-powered traverse of some of the most amazing parts of the Lofoten, namely the islands of Moskenesøya and Flakstadøya, collectively referred to as the West Lofoten.
With the help of some amazing online resources, I selected a route that would begin in the town of Sorvagen, and would link trails and mountaineering routes in order to create a continuous human-powered thru-hike that covered the majority of the length of the West Lofoten.
This was primarily a rugged hiking route, intermixed with some off-trail mountain travel, beautiful summit visits, white sand beaches and a bit of road walking. In the end it became a 100km, 62mi route which covered just over 17,700’ of elevation and was walked over the course of 6 days. Some miles went fast, others were difficult travel in inhospitable terrain. Invariably, the scenery made up for any shortcomings in the walking surface and each bog wallow would be offset by the wonders at hand.
Surely there were moments of discomfort, but they were but a blip in these endless days of awe.
How does one distill an experience of overwhelming beauty, perpetual daylight and vast movement over wild terrain?
Days and nights spent alone with towering mountains, broad beaches and driving winds. What do you share when the experience feels too potent to be dissected? Yet as a photographer working in the great landscapes of earth, this becomes the job. First, to experience, then to make available a concentrate to be shared with others. To put the sublime down on paper and up on a wall, hoping some of the spark is retained.
Then there is the microcosmic.
The individual fern leaves among an endless jungle of bright green growth. The streaks in a small granite crag among soaring peaks of stone. The flowing grains of sand on a beach that seems to go on forever. These, too, offset the overwhelming. This attention to the details helps the mind to create the pieces to the puzzle that result in a total understanding of a landscape. A process that never really completes itself.
But we cannot escape the grand.
The vast vistas where granite big walls lead the eye to white sand beaches with peeling turquoise waves, and still beyond: fjords, alpine lakes, craggy ridge lines. My only mechanism here was to shoot in a panoramic style to capture some of the breadth of the landscapes, which had a surreal scope of environments within a single vista. Here, seeing the landscape in color feels almost mandatory. The juxtaposition of color across these broad fantasies is arresting beyond belief.
There was a temptation to not include the darker images in this collection for fear of creating a heavy aesthetic. But, as I discovered in Norway, when a dark, quiet, small moment becomes imperative for recovery and to replenish, you need that space. Space to pause the mind and ask for a moment of reflection. Especially in an environment where the stimulus is so strong, and the daylight is so perpetual.
Shadows, shade and moments of darkness and simplicity are as important as the bright and the vast.
Please come and share in the awe of the Fjords and Summits of Lofoten, Norway.
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