Arctic Circle: Under the northern lights

A country that takes its time: Norway is just starting when you think it's over. And it only gets dark when all hikers are tired. Trekking at the Arctic Circle let you enjoy the northern lights.

The number with the coffee kettle makes
Tare Steiro grin before the water boils. Then there is circus magic
in the Norwegian wilderness: Steiro, a nature lover by nature and a
hiking guide by calling, takes the seething cauldron from the open
fire and places it on his outstretched hand. Without changing a face.
The hikers' tour is now amazed with open mouths - until Tare Steiro
modestly points out that the primitive-looking kettle has a carbon
floor. "Doesn't get hot at all."

That's how they are, the Norwegians
here in the small town of Mo i Rana, high up on the Arctic Circle.
Snarling jokers who drink from waterfalls with small folding cups,
only need a match and some birch bark for a fire in the pouring rain,
and even in the deepest thicket they occasionally pull out their cell
phones to creak something important.

Lost in solitude 

The landscape seems to want to imitate
the people. Norway is much bigger than the Federal Republic of
Germany, but has only 4.5 million inhabitants. Most of them live down
south. To the north the land is lost in solitude and around the
Arctic Circle at a magical 66 degrees and 33 minutes there is only a
rocky wasteland of stones and moss under a low sky.

The Saltfjell, a plateau at 700 meters,
is an attraction for hikers who are looking for something special,
says Bjørnar Brændmo, head of the polar circle center and master of
the deserted landscape. You can walk for hours along colored markings
on rocks and cairns without seeing other people from a distance. A
ribbon of asphalt as smooth as glass stretches through the middle,
which, if you carried it on and on, would only end at the Arctic
Ocean.

Far from the civilization

But nobody has to go that far who wants
to be far away from the smells and sounds of civilization.
Immediately behind Mo i Rana, a small town with remote-heated
sidewalks that owes its existence to the rich iron ore deposits in
the area, the more than 2,000 square kilometers of the national park
begins.

A dreamland for hikers and world refugees, on foot in summer
and on skis in winter with guaranteed snow. Paths run through the
province of Helgeland like a fine web of spun threads - sometimes
they are narrow footpaths that lead over bare plateaus and rocking
bridges, sometimes they are two-lane paths that remind of the time
when goods and people laboriously headed north by horse and cart
pulled.

But at some point a hut always turns
up, simply built from boards painted red or gray, but clean and tidy.
Anyone who does not want to camp en route, although everyone is
allowed to do so at any time and anywhere according to the Norwegian
public access law from the Middle Ages, can get the keys from the
tourist office before heading out into nature. And sleep comfortably
here for the price of a hotel breakfast in the shade of snow-capped
mountain peaks.

Home made alcohol

Norwegians do this all the time.
"Almost everyone here has their own hut somewhere in the
mountains or by the sea," describes Tare Steiro. Whole families
and groups of friends set off at the weekend, carrying the brownish
caramel cheese specialty Geitost, bread and - because of the
exorbitantly high prices in the country - preferably home-made
bottles with alcohol. Then a few fish are pulled from a fjord or a
stream, mushrooms and berries are collected, the campfire is lit and
what Steiro simply calls "togetherness" - in English a
party without a birthday boy, cassette recorder and angry
neighborhood.

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More from Norway:

Come with me to Rosskreppfjorden

Follow me to the Latefossen Fall

Paddling over a mountain

Walk into the rain

See the hidden streetart of Stavanger

Follow me trekking the Lysefjord

Let me show you the Kjeragbolden

Come with me to Preikestolen

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