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In Which I Start To Leave The Arctic

August 15, 2006 by Mike

Tromsø

It might seem strange, perched 600 miles north of the Arctic Circle, to be talking of leaving the Arctic, but that's how it feels. Not just because of the staggeringly good weather - I'm getting used to that. (Cue downpours and snow, no doubt.) But because Tromsø advertises itself as the 'Gateway to the Arctic'. In which case, I've arrived at the gate heading out.

No reindeer again. Still feels strange.

I hammered the coast as much as possible - a tortuous route north from Nordkjosbotn via Storsteinnes, Mestervik, Malangen, Vikran, Sommerøy and Eidskjosen. Got that?! In fact, giving names to some of those places is to suggest they might be larger than they actually are. One-blink-and-you-miss-'em hamlets: a cluster of fishing families, a cow or two, perhaps, but no reindeer. Empty roads, too, which made riding a pleasure but also allowed me to film myself zipping around - hopefully got some good shots.

With a short ferry ride, long detours and a longer bridge, I made it to Tromsø by mid-afternoon. Having had a lousy night's sleep last night in the hammock, wind-tossed and verrrrry cold, I wanted to treat myself to a roof and four walls.

Tromsø Camping had no available cabins by the time I found it; even their camping grounds were full of suspicious-looking backpackers hugging all the available trees, so I couldn't put the hammock up. I bit my lip and took a room back in the centre of town, at the laughably-described 'budget' Hotel Polar. Ouch.

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To Marianne and Michael in the evening: lovely to meet up again after Kirkenes.

We pore over various papers and discover that Marianne and I have a great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather in common -- Niels Nielsen Astrup (1681-1743), the very first Astrup to move north from Denmark to Norway. (Beyond Niels we can trace our ancestors back to one Troels Winter, born in Astrupgaard, Denmark in 1430. Blimey!

One son stayed in the south of Norway, became a priest (oh the irony) and eventually his descendants begat yrs truly.

Another son kept heading north - he lived in Tana, south of Berlevåg and west of Kirkenes, a motley collection of farms, huts and rusty caravans that I passed through last week. It's nothing special today, but in the 18th century it was the wildest of wild frontiers, far beyond the reach of the groomed fingernails of civilised Europe. Wow. Was he forced north? What did he do to mean he had to move there? Or did he choose to live beyond the fringe? To explore the outer limits of his country - and perhaps himself? What kind of man does that?

(Just a hundred years before, a group of English criminals were offered the choice of being shipped to Finnmark, or being hung. The authorities wanted to see what effect the Arctic would have on human beings. The criminals asked if they might be hung straightaway, thank you very much, and make it snappy. No hanging around. That's the country the young Astrup moved to.)

So in other words, Marianne's ancestor was a hardy, adventurous free spirit. My ancestor was a weedy, God-bothering stay-at-home. Ooops.

We were talking families. Michael's maternal grandfather was a King. As in, monarch, ruler, royalty. Not the surname. When the King tried to introduce taxation in the 1940s his people decided to embrace democracy (or what passed for democracy in Ghana in those days) and the King was removed. Gordon Brown please note.

It was a good evening: from complete strangers to family and firm friends in the blink of an eye. And red wine, dear, lovely red wine, for the first time in too long.

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Leaving my new family to get on with earning their hangovers, I headed back into town and ducked into a likely looking bar, Kaos. Where a white Rastafarian was playing dub reggae with a pick-up band composing a tubby blues harmonica player, a death metal guitarist, a jazzer on drums, an invisible bassist and what appeared to be a six-year-old conga player. It was after midnight. In the Arctic. Nothing surprises me any more.

I didn't talk to any Norwegians in the bar -- to be completely frank, some of them smelled a bit (and this coming from a man with limited space for spare clothes on his bike!) -- but I did get talking to a New Zealander wearing a cowboy hat, black leather overcoast and a four-inch goatee. Cade, his name was, though I suspect anyone who knows him had guessed that from the brief description. Indeed, it turns out we have friends in common in Auckland -- Vanessa, Jono, Nicki. Nothing surprises me any more.

Cade promised to introduce me to the Tromsø Beer festival tomorrow.

Uh-ohh.

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