Follow us on our Frozen fairy tale vacation to northern Norway!
Kristoffer’s family on his mother's side is from the north. The city Alta to be exact, with partly Sámi blood in their veins. We've talked about going up there for many years, but because of our cold winters, it's more tempting to go on vacation somewhere warm. But now was the time to go, both to see his family and to experience the wonders of the north.
Norway is mostly known for our unique natural phenomena, like our fjords and high mountains, midnight sun and northern lights. I have been fortunate to experience almost all the different "aspects" of what www.visitNorway.com has as their highlights - and they are truly beautiful! But, I had yet to see the northern lights in "full scale" like they have up north. So began our “hunt for the northern lights”!
This would be Liv’s first time flying, so we were happy that it was only a two-hour flight. She is like a little worm, not wanting to sit still AT ALL. We chased her through the whole airport, while she had a blast running everywhere, and making friends with random people.
We stayed with Kristoffer’s aunt and uncle most of the time, and Kristoffer’s mom also took a trip up with us. She babysat Liv whenever we wanted to do stuff that might've been too much for her, like snomobiling into the mountains to sleep there, and to spending the night in an ice hotel.
Alta has a lot of fun stuff for tourists. They have an old history of a lot of nature people living there, so there are many stone-carved drawings that can be seen. It's snow-covered in the winter time, but Alta museum has a lot of good pictures of the drawings.
Alta has amazing salmon rivers. This has created a business for locals, guiding rich, English lords to fish for many many years. They still do this today, even if you aren't an English lord ;)
We booked one night in the Sorrisniva Ice Hotel by the Alta river. The hotel is built by locals every year, since it melts in the summer. It’s a super cool thing to experience, even though it's quite pricey. But hey, it's one night! You have to do it! ;) They have different themes each year, and this year's theme was animals and artic living. I´ll do a separate post about the ice hotel later because it was sooo cool. I posted some pictures of it on my private facebook, and one of our friends said it looked like a scene taken straight from “Frozen” and that I could totally be Elsa. Hehe.
Kristoffer’s cousin, Bernt Johan, took us on his snowmobiles up on a huge mountain plateau called Finnmarksvidda. He built a cabin for the Samis up there, and is allowed to use it during the winter, since they only use it while following the reindeer herds during the summers. We drilled holes in the ice to fish, which we ate for lunch. Bernt Johan is a very outdoorsy person, too, and taught us some new fishing tips in the wintertime. We had a blast up there, literally on top of the world! I feel truly blessed to be able to have these experiences.
The last day we were there, it was the opening of the Boreal Winter Festival, which hosts the World Championship for dogsled racing this year. They race across the mountains over five days. It would have been great fun to see the start of it, at least, but Kristoffer had snowploughing back home in the weekends, so we had to go back home.
The only thing missing on this trip was the Northern Lights! But we hunted it down by snowmobile, by foot and by car almost every night, so we for sure tried! Bernt Johan said that just gives us an excuse to come back, and I agree. Being caught in the middle of those amazing lights is something I sure want to try again.
Check out this Video from VisitNorway's gallery. No wonder we're chasing it, huh? Have you seen the Northern Lights?
