Honningsvag and the North Cape

Honningsvag, tiny fishing town of 5,000 people, was obliterated by the Nazis under their “scorched earth” policy as they retreated ahead of the allied forces. No structure was left standing except for the church which apparently, at the whim of a Nazi commander who liked it, was spared destruction.

A blonde girl approaches us with a flyer for an afternoon theatre performance called “Our Northernmost Life”, a singing and dancing show put on by local teenagers to explain how, where the world ends, there starts their life! Unfortunately we had an excursion to the North Cape scheduled for the afternoon and could not make it. By the way, the show has excellent reviews on Trip Advisor.

And so, this is the day on which we finally get to the North Cape or Nordkapp. At 71 degrees latitude, we drive from Honningsvag (with a great tour guide from the Check Republic sharing a ton of interesting info and historic background) for about 50 minutes through barren but striking landscape, occasionally broken up by lakes and reindeer. 7,000 reindeer spend the summer in Mageroy Island (where the North Cape is); they are brought to the island in the spring by ferry as they are too weak to swim from the mainland, spend the summer in Mageroy having babies and getting strong, and then swim back across. We see many reindeer, including lots of babies. We also stop at a Sami (or Laplanders) family ranch who look after the reindeer and sell souvenirs to tourists.

Up and up we go until we reach the Cape. There is a distinct polar chill to the air and the views are quite magnificent. We are lucky to arrive on a partially clear afternoon, we are told that a lot of the time the views are completely obscured by heavy fog. There is a visitor centre where tourists can watch a 15 minute, very well done panoramic movie of the North Cape, buy expensive souvenirs and have delicious pancakes. The Globe sculpture is a magnet for picture taking tourists but a different sculpture, Mother and Child, surrounded by seven disk-like sculptures created by children from seven different countries, is a touching homage to all children around the world.

Later in the evening we sail past the North Cape; nothing between our ship and the North Pole, the calm waters reminding us of another unusual polar sailing some years ago, that one around Cape Horn on our way to Antarctica.