The Lofoten Islands have a traditional fishing village just called A. It does have one of those funny bits over the A so that the pronunciation is more like "oh".It is the southern most village in the island group and this letter is the LAST in the Norwegian alphabet - a quirky gem of Norway. 

Another quirky gem we learned while touring the Lofoten islands is that there is a rather famous golf course they claim to be the "the coolest golf course in the world" where you can play for 24 hours in the midnight sun or (potentially!) - under the Northern Lights in winter. Not sure even hardy Norwegians would try to hit a golf ball around in the 24 hour darkness and heavy snows of winter. They conduct summer tournaments that have the golfers playing for 24 hours straight during the time of the midnight sun.

Our full day outing off of the ship began with an informative and hilarious talk at the "Torrfiskmuseum" where we learned the in and outs of the stock fish and importance of the industry to Norway though out the ages. There have always been massive cod fish stocks, although they have declined in more recent times, and for centuries the fish has been salted and hung to dry in summer. Norway catches some 2.5 million tonnes a year. During the talk we learned that these days a lot of the fish and more particularly the heads are exported to Nigeria and neighboring African countries. Portugal is also a large buyer of Norwegian fish.  

Lofoten islands have extremely high and gorgeous spiky sharp cliffs and mountains with colourful little fishing villages perched in tiny strips of flat land at their base. Often the picture perfect cottages sit out over the water as the mountains are just too steep behind. These houses have wooden jetties and walkways over the water and little bobbing boats alongside. As with all we have seen of Norway so far, the houses and villages are as neat as a pin, with the bright coloured painting up to date. Not a sign of peeling neglected paint anywhere! 

Our travel through the islands was by bus, which are joined by causeways and bridges. We visited a blacksmith shop and a fascinating museum of motors, had a traditional Norwegian lunch buffet of pickled herring, smoked salmon and fresh cod then visited an amazing re-creation of a viking longhouse built on the site of old ruins. Everywhere alongside the roads we saw the V shaped racks loaded up with the drying Cod. 

The weather was not kind to us but rather extremely "Arctic" with driving rain and near freezing temperatures even though it is actually summer. It didn't stop us enjoying the day.However, we were rather glad when we arrived at the northernmost Lofoten town to find our ship moored at the pier thus sparing us one zodiac embarking and disembarking.

After sailing from Lofoten,our captain took us through the extremely narrow and beautiful Trollfjorden which was created by ice cutting through granite rock. At just 100 metres wide but with mountains 1000 metres above sea level,it was an extraordinary experience. Of course a very cold experience - being out on deck is getting more and more challenging and requires our heaviest coats that were provided as part of our tour. Hence from now on you will see a lot of matching red jackets appearing in all photos!

A note here about our G Adventures jackets. They consist of two jackets, one black and one red, that when zipped together form an impervious barrier to the cold and wet. We did not wear them much earlier on in the trip, finding them weighty and cumbersome but boy are we glad of them now - especially when out on deck and when in the zodiacs.