Kiruna and Narvik

We've been in Narvik for a couple of days now, after flying up from Stockholm, renting a car in Kiruna, and driving across. I've got reasonably fond memories of Kiruna from a decade ago, but they seem to be of the same quality as my fondness for cheap beer from the same period. This time, it seemed to be a bit of a bleak outpost in the middle of nowhere.

Hence, we escaped in our little rental (a microscopic Clio this time, which upped the difficulty of luggage tetris) to the seaside town of Narvik. Narvik is a little utilitarian as well (I guess any town that is an iron-ore port in the middle of nowhere will have a few rough edges), but it is nestled in a picturesque fjord, and is currently bathed in the midnight sun.

We spent today attempting to hire a boat to do a fjord tour, but the tourist season is yet to start in these parts, and no boat owner has answered their phone yet. We ended up doing a bit of a car tour around Skjomen Fjord, which was pretty impressive. We came across a couple of little villages, but I'm not sure if they where year round places, or just summer getaways. There was one little house where there was a bunch of drying fish out the front. Whether this was a hobbyist, or a committed bloke from the old days, we don't know.