Knivskjellodden - Northermost point in Europe

SummaryNone
OwnerMatthew Gilbertson
Creation Date2010-08-24 15:44:23 UTC-0400
DescriptionLeg 2: Rovaniemi, Finland to Birtavarre, Norway
Including Knivskjellodden – Northernmost point in Europe

LINKS:
Our Country High Points Page
Our Adventures Page


750 miles
June 30 – July 10, 2010

The next destination of the summer was Europe’s northernmost point, Knivskjellodden, on the northern tip of Norway. We wanted to bike the farthest north you could bike in the world without needing to take a boat. Near Knivskjellodden the road reaches 71.1 degrees north latitude, which puts it at 48 nautical miles farther north than Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, which is North America’s northernmost connected road. This also puts it at 270 nautical miles north of northern Iceland. That far north the sun doesn’t set for whole the month of July. It wasn’t a high point, but we figured it would still be worth the trip.

We wanted to experience all the Scandinavian countries, so we chose to fly into Rovaniemi, Finland, which is situated right on the Arctic Circle. That way we could spend a few days in northern Finland before entering Norway. Once we hit Knivskjellodden we would start biking south through Norway and see how far we got into Europe before the end of the summer. The goal was to reach Switzerland, climbing some country high points along the way. Finland’s high point, Halti, is farther south on the Norwegian border so we would hit it a few weeks later.

Our flight took us from Reykjavik to Helsinki to Rovaniemi, a town of about 60,000. When we got off the plane we noticed a sign that read “Welcome to Rovaniemi, official home of Santa Claus.” I’m not sure who is in charge of making international Santa Claus designations, but this distinction must really boost tourism around here in the winter. Luckily Santa’s little elves had handled the bikes carefully during the sleigh ride and they arrived intact. We brought the bike boxes outside and scattered the contents across the pavement. It was assembly time.

Pretty soon I experienced my first Finnish mosquito bite. With a loud slap Eric triumphantly exclaimed, “first dead mosquito in Finland.” We were headed deep into the very heart of mosquito country. We expected the primary wildlife to be mosquitoes, Santa’s reindeer, and people. From our Alaska ride we learned that a good mosquito head net and bite-proof clothing can mean the difference between life and death. We carried bug spray in case those didn’t suffice.

After an hour and a half I was done assembling my bike and went inside to wash my hands. But the airport was closed. It was our first introduction to the sometimes ridiculously short working hours of businesses in Europe compared to America. It turns out that only two big planes arrive each day to unload and pick up passengers: one in the morning and one in the evening. So the airport is only open about six hours a day. The nice part about having such a small airport, though, is that there were woods all around and we even identified a stealth campsite 200ft from the airport entrance. How many airports in the US could you stealth-camp a 1 minute walk from? It was stunning to see so many trees after spending a week in treeless Iceland. I think I heard that Finland is over 60% forested.

We rode a little ways into town to grab some water and some unleaded for the stove. I put in a 20 Euro bill into the fancy self-serve fuel pump, expecting some change when I was done filling up. I filled up €0.80 and the stupid machine wouldn’t give me any change, dang it. Twenty dollars for a liter of fuel! Talk about expensive European gas. I vowed to be more careful next time. We found a good stealth campsite just outside of town and set up for the night.

Next morning we had a few more errands to run in town. Since we would be spending the next month and a half in Europe the plan was to get a prepaid European SIM card or phone so we could call the US more cheaply and frequently, without needing to be at a pay phone in town. The inconvenient seven hour time difference between Finland and the east coast meant that we couldn’t call in the evenings and weekends would be best. I walked into the cell phone store, a little nervous because I wasn’t sure if they would speak English. But as it turned out everyone’s English was excellent. After a few hours of shopping and discussion I had a cheap European prepaid cell phone which would cost about 50 cents/minute to call the US.

Nearly everyone we met spoke fluent English. It was stunning at first how helpful and friendly everyone was, even though we didn’t speak a word of Finnish. Everyone was happy to give us directions, help us with the phone, and give us advice. It felt like we were treated as locals. I feel that it’s different in the US. If a Finnish person who didn’t know any English showed up in eastern Kentucky, people would immediately identify them as a foreigner and some would probably be a little condescending. Some people in the US are just plain xenophobic. Maybe the courtesy we experienced in Finland was because so many foreign travelers and tourists pass through the area that they get accepted as locals.

While we were sitting on a bench in downtown a local cyclist dude approached us and asked if we needed any help. He was intrigued with our bikes and our plan. He told us which towns we could get groceries in along the way. He saw the “this bike climbed Mt. Washington” sticker on our bikes and said “wow, you climbed Mt Washington with that bike! I hiked up it a few years ago, my brother-in-law lives in Boston.” Small world. We told him how the bikes really made it up and down Mt Washington and he was impressed. We said “kiitos” to him for all his help.

With all the errands complete it was time to hit the road. We were in Finland with nothing in front of us but the open road and a few weeks of freedom. I took a deep breath of Finnish air and started pedaling. The road was pretty flat and since we were so far inland the wind was non-existent. It was weird at first not pedaling into a headwind.

About 30 miles out of town we started looking for a campsite. There were so many trees and flat ground we could have camped anywhere we darn well pleased. But tonight we were going to be a little pickier. See, I had brought my telescoping fishing rod and lures that my grandpa Gilbertson had given to me. We needed to find a river so I could test and see if the fishing tackle still worked in Finland. Luckily the GPS showed the rivers as well as the roads so while we were riding I could scroll through the maps and pick out a good potential campsite. We had a waterproof Garmin Vista Etrex HCX GPS for which we purchased some European road maps. It had served us well in many previous adventures.

We found a nice stealth site next to a big river near Yli-Nampa and parked ourselves there for the night. I immediately set up the fishing rod and excitedly headed towards the water. Let’s see what kind of fish there are in Finland, I thought. The river was so peaceful. All you could see upstream and down were trees. It felt like we were back in the Yukon.

I didn’t have much luck fishing with flies, especially because I didn’t have a fly rod. I could only cast the fly about six feet. I attached a Rapala to the line and then I was in business. Pretty soon I had a nice-looking fish with orange-tipped fins. I sliced him up right there with my Leatherman and put him away for dinner.

A few minutes later I cast in again and thought I had snagged a rock. But it wasn’t a rock, there was something huge on the other end of the line. I was actually a little worried. I had never hooked a fish that felt that big before. I had no idea what it would look like. The dark brown water concealed all but the top six inches of water. I nervously reeled the lunker in. It emerged onto a little shelf of rocks and for a split second I was astonished, that sucker was about 20 inches long. But alas, the fish flopped around violently and became free. Dang it! So close! Of course, that kept me going for the next hour, even though I didn’t catch anything else.

Then Finland decided to properly introduce itself to us. The skies let loose and it started pouring, with thunder and lightning all around us. While we cooked I built a big fire to at least make it seem drier but the rain didn’t let up. It ended up raining most of the night. The temperature had cooled down into the mid 50’s by morning. What a nice welcome to Finland, we thought. Little did we know that the weather wouldn’t really change for the next three weeks.

Over the next few days we biked deeper and deeper into northern Finland, passing through towns like Käyrämö, Sodankylä, Kaanaanma, Peurasuvanto, Ivalo, and Karigasniemi. We never quite figured out how the pronounciation of ‘ä’ was any different than just plain ‘a’ but we learned that the Finnish really like their umlauts and their k’s. Several other things of note:

-We got to eat plenty of reindeer meat since that was the only meat they sold at stores that looked like it would survive days without refrigeration.
-Each day we killed on average 1,297 mosquitoes
-Northern Finland has a whole bunch of trees and reindeer and not many people. One day we even saw an albino reindeer. Most of the reindeer usually fled with terror when they saw us coming because we looked so foreign compared to cars.
-Everyone and their reindeer is headed to the northern tip of Norway, like us

After four days of cycling we arrived at the Norwegian border near Karigasniemi. We weren’t quite sure what to expect for the border crossing. I knew that at the US/Canadian border they didn’t want you to be transporting meat, plants, or fruit. Would they be so strict at the Finland/Norway border?

As it turned out, cycling into Norway from Finland was about as tough as cycling into New Hampshire from Massachusetts. A little rinky-dink sign on one side of the Anarjohka river said “Suomi” (Finland), and a sign on the other side read “Norge” (Norway). There wasn’t anyone on the Norwegian side to welcome us, it was somewhat disappointing.

But we were still excited to finally be in Norway, the land of one-fourth our ancestors. We like to think that one-fourth of our blood is Viking blood. A few of our distant relatives still live in Norway and our grandpa’s second cousin still visits them from time to time. So the plan was to visit these relatives when we got down to Jevnaker and Roa, Norway, near Oslo. But there was still over a thousand miles of Norway left before Oslo. And first we would visit Norway’s northern tip.

It was July 4th, but Norway did not extend to us a particularly festive welcome. A torrential downpour began a few minutes before we entered the first little Norwegian town, Karasjok. (The ‘j’ is pronounced like a ‘y.’ We soon discovered that the Norwegians and Swedes have more j’s then they know what to do with and try to sneak them in everywhere.) We kicked it into gear and ducked under a big picnic table + umbrella before we really got wet. We thought, well we’ll just wait out the downpour and stay dry. We ended up waiting there for about an hour and a half before it let up. We met an Austrian couple who had pulled in on their tricycle/motorcycle and talked with them for a while under the umbrella.

But just a few miles out of town the rain resumed and didn’t stop. It started out warm so we didn’t put on the rain jackets because we would just sweat up a storm inside and then be wet on both sides. But gradually the temperature dropped and eventually reached the upper 40’s. Ugh. Biking in skimpy little shorts and a polypro tshirt weren’t warm enough. We wanted to put on a rain jacket but we were already soaked, we wanted to save the rain jacket for if we were really hurting.

The weird thing about a cold rain is that it can actually make you look forward to an uphill climb. When you’re cold and wet, all you want to do is climb in order to keep yourself warm from exertion. You really don’t want to go downhill because you’ll freeze. Midway up one hill Eric alerted me that we were at the century mark. But it was still pouring rain and the trees were too spindly to shelter us so we were forced to keep going and postpone our campsite search. The plan was that as soon as the rain stopped we would pitch the tent, which was reasonably waterproof. If we set up the tent while it was still pouring the tent would have a few seconds of vulnerability before we put on the rainfly and would get soaked. So we kept pedaling, expecting the rain to stop anytime or for a least a rocky overhang to appear.

We pushed on for fifteen more miles and the situation did not improve. We stopped for a moment underneath a tiny roof and weighed our options. With disappointment we concluded that the safest option would be to stay in one of the touristy huts we had seen signs for. Our disdain for sleeping indoors was not merely because we were cheapskates, it was just a lot more fun sometimes to sleep in a tent, away from other people. But tonight was not the night for a wilderness experience. We were both shivering and soaked. We pulled into the small Skoganvarre Resort booked a cabin.

The woodwork on the cabins was impressive. The wood was so thick I bet you could stay warm and cozy during the roughest Norwegian blizzard. We removed all our wet layers and turned the heat on full blast. We determined that the cabin was definitely worth it.

The next morning we had a few errands to run in our first big Norwegian town, Lakselv. We found out we needed to get a Norwegian SIM card for the cell phone. This is going to get annoying, we thought, if we needed to get a separate SIM card for every country. On the way out of town we invested NOK 56 ($9) in a big waterproof tarp. We figured that if we had a tarp last night it would have saved us the night in the cabin. We hoped that it would be able to save us hotel nights further down the road.

From Lakselv we began heading up the fjord towards Knivskjellodden. The trees grew smaller as we rode farther north, it was like we were slowly climbing to treeline on a mountain. In the evening we approached our first tunnel. We had been warned about tunnels buy a Dutch cyclist named Marchal a few days ago. He said that to get to the northern tip the road passes through a bunch of tunnels, the longest of which is 7km long and plunges 212m below the Mageröysundet on the way to Magerøya island. He cautioned us to ride through the tunnel early in the morning when the traffic would be lighter. The current tunnel we faced was only a few hundred meters long and we dashed through it quickly.

We set up camp far back in a little fjord and quickly strung up the tarp. It was good timing because it soon started pouring. It rained so hard we filled up our 2.5L of water bottles from the tarp runoff within five minutes. We figured that the rainwater ought to be purer than any water we had drank so far. Already the tarp had paid off. When the rain stopped Eric hiked up to some snow below a waterfall and brought some back for us to munch on.

The next day was summit day. Well, not really “summit day,” but it sounds better than “northernmost point day.” Knivskjellodden, or shall we say, “K-Jello”. Those Scandinavians really know how to create cumbersome place-names. To simplify things I will start referring to another, less cumbersome place very close to K-Jello, called “Nordkapp”. Nordkapp (“North Cape”) is another peninsula that protrudes parallel to K-Jello and ends in some spectacular 800ft-tall cliffs above the ocean. Some people incorrectly think that Nordkapp is the northernmost point in Europe because it is where all the tourist shops and other fluff are located. Luckily we had done our homework and read that Nordkapp is actually 1 mile south of K-Jello. But K-Jello requires a 9km hike, which deters many out-of-shape tourists who would prefer to just get out of the tour bus at Nordkapp and snap some pictures. So we told most people we were headed to Nordkapp because they probably hadn’t even heard of K-Jello.

But K-Jello was not about to be vanquished that easily. It turns out that fjords make really good wind funnels, especially fjords that are so far north and not close to much other land. So as soon as we turned north on our bikes we were blasted by an invisible hurricane of wind. We swung in and out of fjords and eventually discovered that the prevailing wind was coming from the north, which was inconveniently the same way we were headed. But at least it would be a tailwind on the way back, right?

A few miles later near Kåfjord a ferocious headwind collided with us. Even though we were going downhill the wind was so strong I had to use a gear I’d normally reserve for uphill. Eric tried to draft close behind me but it didn’t help him much. We had to yell at the top of our lungs to communicate. It was like being on Mt Washington. We crawled along at 4mph. But just then we turned a corner and spotted a strange-looking cave that the road plunged into. It was the Nordkapptunnelen, length 6870m. “It ain’t gonna be windy in there,” I yelled to Eric.

It was currently the middle of the day, but traffic didn’t look too bad so we decided to go for it. “Well there aren’t any signs telling us not to,” Eric said. We switched on our lights and took the plunge. The road needed to dip down to 212m under the ocean that separated the mainland from Magerøya island. In order to do so it steeply descended at a 9% grade. It felt bizarre. We zipped down the articial hill and plunged deeper and deeper below sea level. We completely lost our perspective. Just by looking at the road it seemed level but for some reason we were being pulled down by a mysterious force.

A few dim lights lit the tunnel but it seems that the road builders must have intended for car headlights to do most of the illuminating, so our bike lights didn’t help too much. This was the first time we had experienced darkness in the past week. After 3.5km the mysterious force disappeared and we rapidly slowed to a stop. Now we had our bearings. We were at the flat spot in between the downhill and the uphill. At that point we were 300ft lower than Death Valley, and probably some of the lowest people in Europe. Whales and cargo ships could cruise above us. I imagined that we were at the bottom of some giant aquarium.

A loudening roar brought me back to reality. A vehicle was coming from behind us. We weren’t sure what kind but it sounded like a freight train followed by a tornado. The roar increased until it seemed that we were listening to the output of a jet engine. I was worried the car couldn’t see us. But we’ve got all kinds of lights, I thought, he’d have to be blind not to see us. The deafening roar finally peaked and a tiny little compact car whizzed by. No way, I thought, how can such a small car make so much racket? We pedaled faster and faster up the steep 9% grade so we could minimize our chances of another encounter like that. We didn’t want to see what a tour bus sounded like.

On the exit of the tunnel we were delighted to see that bicycles didn’t have to pay the toll. I was just thinking to myself, in the US, they wouldn’t cut a huge, expensive tunnel like that for such a small road. And even if they did they really wouldn’t allow bikes on it. But even if they allowed bikes on it they’d at least make them pay for it. We breezed through the toll booth with nothing but a wave and a smile. Welcome to Norway.

We passed through the quaint little fishing town of Honninsvåg and made our way up some steep hills. A few hours and a few flat tires later we reached the turnoff for K-Jello. Luckily the 9km hike deters a lot of people so Knivskjellodden is thankfully far less crowded than Nordkapp. There were only ten cars in the parking lot but they were from all over the continent: Spain, Netherlands, Estonia, Switzerland, Poland.

It was getting late so we decided to make a backpacking trip out of it and camp near the point. We wanted to be some of the northernmost campers in the world this night. We stashed the bikes behind some rocks and stuffed our overnight gear into the drybag backpacks. Those backpacks were perfect.

We reached the northernmost point in Europe at 7:10pm on July 6th. It wasn’t too spectacular, just a rocky point sticking out into the water. But it did give us an awesome view of Nordkapp. We could see the rocky cliffs of Nordkapp a few kilometers away and wondered if the view was any better up there…

We put our stealth campsite flag down at a nice little grassy beach on a lagoon. There was so much driftwood and other interesting items on the beach that I had to figure out a use for them. I thrust two short logs vertically into the ground and reinforced them with rocks. Then I strung a rope across and draped the tarp over to make a shelter. We found a bunch of old rope on the beach that we used to stake out the corners. Another long piece of driftwood made a stylish bench beneath the shelter. It might have appeared that I had this all planned out. We were like Vikings conquering a foreign land.

Next was the most important task of all: swimming in the Arctic Ocean. It would be like removing a thorn in our side that been implanted two years ago. When we were in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska in 2008, we had the option of visiting (and swimming in) the Arctic Ocean, but since the beach was privately-owned by the oil companies we would have to pay $37 to go on an organized tour. “No thanks,” I remember saying to Eric. It was against our morals to pay that much money for just a little view of the ocean. But the regret at not having taken what might be our only chance to swim in the Arctic had haunted me for the past two years. Next chance I get to swim in the Arctic Ocean, by gosh, I’m going to take it…

So here we were, on a little peninsula sticking into the Arctic Ocean on the northernmost tip of Europe. “It is time,” I said to Eric, “you better get a picture.” Scantily clad, I hopped from one rock to the other, took one look back at the camera, then took the plunge. It wasn’t too pleasant, but of course I couldn’t make myself look like a whimp. I had to say what everyone else says when they jump in cold water: “the water’s not too bad, it was refreshing.” With those few words there was no way Eric could back out now, it was like a triple-dog dare. He would be branded a sissy for life if he backed out. A little while later he indeed took the plunge too.

Pretty soon we saw some kayaks coming our way. We figured all this commotion must have attracted their attention. It was sprinkling a little so we let them use our little shelter for cooking. There were five of them and one woman spoke fluent English. It turns out they were from the Czech Republic and had driven 40 hours almost continuously to a nearby town where they put-in their boats. They were celebrating with liters of wine and some fish they had caught. The woman who spoke English offered us a fish and it tasted exquisite.

Pretty soon five other hikers came down to the beach and joined the encampment. “Wow, I didn’t expect this place to be so popular,” I said to Eric. I started a big fire using the driftwood and everyone gathered around. Eric rounded up a few giant plastic buoy-balls and started juggling them. It was like a three-ring circus on that little Arctic beach. For the first evening it was actually clear and free of rain. In a few minutes the sun would appear from behind the cliff and we would see our first midnight sun of the trip. Everyone on the beach was excited. But moments before the sun reappeared a thick layer of fog enveloped the beach and smothered the sun. Dang it! Eric said to me, “if Alaska’s called the ‘land of the midnight sun,’ then they should call this the ‘land of the midnight cloud’ instead.”

When we hiked back to the bikes the next morning I realized something exciting: it was finally time to start heading south. The temperature would finally start warming up, we hoped, and maybe it would stop raining. At that point in the trip, including Iceland, we had only had two dry days in the past nineteen. Hopefully it would get drier farther south.

Just because we were now heading south and south is “down” on most maps unfortunately doesn’t mean it’s downhill in real life. Over the next few days we continued to get blasted by the southwesterly wind—the Gulf Stream. To anyone else planning to bike in Scandinavia hear this: you will enjoy your trip much better if you bike north and east instead of south and west like we did. Another agonizing thing about northern Norway is that there are so dang many fjords. The road winds in and out of every fjord and makes driving distances twice the distance it looks on a map. At one point for us the line-of-sight distance to Alta (from the GPS) was 47 miles but the driving distance was 96 miles. For us it was depressing how slowly we covered distance on the map. We needed to find a better road or we’d still be in northern Norway at the end of the summer.

We looked at the map and found a nice-looking road that cut through Sweden. We figured that since Sweden is farther from the Atlantic maybe the weather would be nicer and not as hilly. In any case, if we planned to climb the highest point in Sweden then the Swedish route would become the shortest route to Oslo anyhow. We would reenter Norway farther down. But we didn’t have to make any decisions for a few more days, the cutoff road would come at Narvik.

Before then we planned to climb a mountain called Halti, which is the highest point in Finland. It’s interesting because it’s way up on “the frontier,” a rugged hilly plateau that separates coastal Norway from interior Sweden and Finland. The only people tough enough to live here are the nomadic reindeer-herding Sami people. The funny thing is that Halti is way easier to climb from the Norwegian side because you can drive/bike to the trailhead and hike just a couple miles to the summit. By contrast, if you started hiking in Finland it would require a multi-day backpacking trip to reach the summit. At least, that’s what the SummitPost article said.

After a few days we arrived at the road junction in tiny Birtavarre, Norway, where a dead-end side road would take us to the trailhead for Halti. “Get ready for high point number two,” Eric said.