Look at those cute little houses that are clearly made for tourists (lol)!! Anyways, day 4 in Norway! Today’s itinerary is a bit strange, primarily due to poor planning on my part, but we made it work. We were going to be staying in Svolvær, but we drove further than Svolvær and hit the Lofotr Viking Museum first, then on the way back, we stopped by Henningsvær and the hike of the day (which would be an evening hike) is the Fløya and Djevelporten.
First stop was the Lofotr Viking Museum, it opens at 10am, so we planned to be there when it opens. First picture you saw above is the Viking longhouse (reconstructed next to the original site), and it is the largest Viking longhouse ever found and excavated. In the museum, they recreated some of the Viking experience for visitors, like the open fire in the feast hall, where they cooked the lamb soup in a large cauldron, or the craftsmen showing you how they work with different textiles to make clothing. The admission also included a Viking sailing experience. It is a 1km walk from the longhouse to the harbor, and the sailing trip was about 20 - 30 minutes. On the way there, you will pass by some outdoor activities, like axe-throwing and bow-and-arrow shooting, which was very fun! I have never sailed before, so this is a very cool experience for me to be on a real sail boat without a motor engine! What was surprising is that the sail boat could actually go pretty fast, and now I can imagine how the Vikings were able to sail all the way to UK or France for the raids!
Next, we stopped by a cute fishing village called Henningsvær. We walked around the village and found an interesting exhibition of Ai WeiWei’s artwork at the KaviarFactory - We have never seen his work in-person, so we decided to spend some time at this exhibition! Really impressed with his creativity on the art medium, like the use of lego bricks to create the Chinese zodiac, and the videos he took on the boat on immigration.
After walking around, we went to a local restaurant called Fiskekrogen - unfortunately, we arrived at the “soup hour” (4 - 5pm), meaning they were in between lunch and dinner, so they were only serving bread and soup. So, with no other choice, we ordered some bread and fish soup, and it was AMAZING! For the bread, it came with this amazing butter with whale flakes, and it was absolutely delicious, so delicious that we got another basket of bread for the butter! As for the soup, as you can imagine, seafood is fresh in this area, so it was also very delicious, and so delicious that we ordered another bowl of soup, which we regretted because we got sooooo full!!
After the delicious meal, we went to the Airbnb to take a small break before heading to an evening hike. And again, we had no intention of choosing a luxurious Airbnb or an Airbnb with a view, but look at this (right)! The Airbnb is super nice, with an amazing deck and view. Wish we had more time to just chill on the deck!
The hike we did was the Fløya and Djevelporten, it is about 3 miles, with close to 2000 feet elevation gain. It is a perfect hike to walk the bread and soup off! It started off with lots of stairs (built by Nepalese sherpas), and we saw some mountain sheep on the way. We saw one baby sheep (should have taken a video!) walking down the hill in the clumsiest way possible, and it was super adorable! As you climb up, you will be able to get a view of the town Svolvær. Once you reach the top, after seeing the incredible view, you can follow along the ridge to reach Djevelporten (Devil’s Gate), so it is like a mini Kjeragbolten, which has a rock stuck between two cliffs. We found it and climbed on top of it and it was pretty cool - it is really hard to describe that feeling, but it felt sooooo free when you were on the rock and looking out at the view. We got a little bit turned around when we were coming down (we accidentally went on a different trail, which is not what we wanted to do at 10pm lol), but we eventually found the right path and made it down!
For those who rock climb, it would be interesting to check out the Svolvaergeita, you can see it in the second picture below. It is the very tip of that mountain, and it looks super cool!
