Norway 2014 – 02 Senja
21.08.2014 Senja
Happily awoke at a lay-by on the island of Kvaløya.
We make a quick tour to the village, which we toured last night in the dark, lest we miss something.
The village is called Sommarøy and, as its name may suggest, is statistically one of the warmest places in the area.
Yes, yes, this is a beach, very real, with unearthly soft sand, azure waters and all the extras. Prick a palm tree in the photo and you can use it to advertise a summer resort. Well, the water is ice cold and the air is 15 degrees.
Sommarøy itself
And the bridge connecting Sommarøy with the main island.
Once we find that the ferry that needs to take us there is in an hour, we make a quick circle on the other side of the island.
We return just in time and in 20 minutes we have already set foot on Senja.
Even after the first two turns the view is already stunning.
We are headed to the small fishing village of Husøy.
Doesn't it seem to you that at any moment Smog will jump out of the mountains, split the clouds, and the sun will shine on the diamond scales on his belly?
Our next destination can be seen on the other side. To reach it, we must climb the ridge above us and descend on the other side.
We reach a place bearing the sonorous name Tungeneset.
The rocky shore, gently descending to the sea, has formed depressions that fill with water every day at high tide. When the sea recedes, hundreds of small lakes overlook the imposing Okshornan, located on the other side of the fjord.
The water in the stone crevices warms up quickly from the northern sun and the ponds are home to all sorts of shell saltwater little ones.
The place is marked by our friends from the National Tourist Route, but honestly, the architectural intervention here seems so unnecessary that I didn't even bother to photograph it.
Bergsbotn
This architectural intervention is on place.
The sun is setting in the west and we are approaching the end of Senja – Gryllefjord, from where we have to take a ferry to Andenes.
Of course, when we reach the village, it turns out that there are ferries exactly twice a day - in the morning and at 5 in the evening; we jump over the "hill" of 700-800 m and at the end of the road we find ourselves in a small campsite on the shores of the fjord in Torsken.
For Senja in the Wiki page says “Norway in miniature”.
Not that if you have a trip to Norway, I would recommend you to skip Sogne or Trollvegen or Lyse and see only Senja, but still, if there is a place in the north that has gathered all kinds of landscapes and dramas of Norway, this is Senja.
