No beer for Australians

Well, I'm still on the ferry, and my attention is being divided between the cormerant nests we're passing (apparently they don't divide like germs either), and a floor show which appears to be where musicians go to die. I'm fighting back by using the artists inspiration juice, but coherence is far from guaranteed.



After the great ferry trip, we decided to stay up and check out the midnight sun - a decision that had nothing to do with Norwegian licensing laws (you can get beer almost anywhere - until 6:00pm. oops). The sun looses quite a bit of kick late at night - it feels like the sun you get just after dawn on a cold morning, and it also behaves a bit like a sunrise/sunset, with some orange tones creeping in. However, the brain tends to notice that it's still light, and doesn't really feel like shutting down.

We took the scenic route back to Kiruna, stopping in at a little village complete with a leather sailed fishing boat, and several dozen fat salmon beneath the jetty (I suspect they'd escaped from a nearby salmon farm - they kept compulsively trying to eat bubbles on the water surface, so I think it was about dinner time for them). There is a bit of mountain pass between Narvik and Kiruna, where there was still a bit of snow on the ground, and the lakes still had ice on them. No one decided to go for a swim.

Abisko national park is a little bit after the pass, on the Kiruna side. It has the start of the Kunsgladen (again, may have got that wrong, will correct later!), a long and famous walking trail, a summer skiing slope, and a few other bits and pieces. The Sami camp nearby was interesting, they explained the various types of huts they used for their winter and summer camps. As they migrate along with the reindeer from the winter to summer grazing grounds, they have a bunch of different storage huts for their winter and summer camp grounds. The huts were of various types, which were graded by their ability to keep the wildlife out. It appears that keeping foxes and wolverines out for half a year takes a bit of doing, when all you've got is wood, rock, and reindeer antlers. There was also a fox trap on display. It was a touch cruel, so I won't describe how it worked, but was pretty much just a stick in the ground. I sometimes wonder how people think these things up, but I guess spending a winter fuming about getting your reindeer skins chewed would focus the mind.