Do You Know That? Norway - The Beauty Of The North II.

Beautiful, cold, and also extremely green islands lies near the coast of Norway are for its unique atmosphere of a popular place for tourists from around the world and themselves Norwegians, who are still more often spend their summer holidays. Magic atmosphere port villages, coloured boats tribal fishermen above them you can see peaks towering granite mountains, a few million years old. Crystal clear water and clean air makes one fear that Lofoten is a place worth visiting.

Atlantic waters are washed at 80 large and small islands, whose names you probably do not tell too. They are Austvågøy, Hinnøya, Skrova, Gimsøy, Vestvågøy, Flakstadøya,

Moskenesøy, Værøy and Røst, while only some of them has a bigger population and larger cities. The entire archipelago falls under the scope of the county of Nordland, whose capital is Svolvær, located on the island Austvågøy. Total live on islands around 24 thousand inhabitants on an area of ​​less than 1300 km². Northeast of Lofoten is another fairly well-known archipelago - Vesterály, but fame does not reach the southern neighbours. From the Lofoten is separated by tourist favourite Troll Fjord. From the mainland the islands are separated by the Gulf Vestfjord.

The history of settlement in the archipelago is longer than it might seem, since the first residents to this beautiful and rugged place chose already 6000 years ago! Nordic mythology findings supported the original settlement, and the mighty Vikings across hundreds of generations of fishermen shape the legendary history of the islands, over which in summer the sun hardly sets. The modern boom has come up with a wealthy Hanseatic merchants of Bergen, from the traditional fishing craft and became a profitable business, but he remained on life Lofoten exceedingly modest and directly dependent on the quality of their fish catches and demand. Another wave of expansion came at the end of the 19th century with the influx of new settlers and adventurers. Several major residential towns and villages grown up at that time.

The largest and also the capital city is Svolvær with nearly 4000 inhabitants, it can be compared with Czech smaller town Jesenice. The city is especially known for its summer art colony, a place where in summer flock inspiration for creatives from all over the world to the heart of nature and fresh air gained new inspiration for their work. The city is well accessible ferries, especially the port of Bodø, where he spent some part of his life obscure novelist Edgar Allan Poe, he wrote to his fall into the maelstrom, which is a unique natural phenomenon where water masses flow into the deep and narrow ravines with back tide, a giant sea swirl, emerging tide and low tide - but not at the coast, but on the open sea. This phenomenon can be dangerous especially for smaller fishing boats and other vessels of small displacement. This massive water vortex is reportedly accompanied by horror sound, along with all this performance has inspired many a genre author.

The landscape is typical of northern archipelago motif, bare rocks, large mountain meadows with low grass vegetation, a minimum of trees cut down most of the population as a suitable boat building material and housing. Forests, however, in recent decades massively restored. The settlement is significant on the eastern side of the islands - that is the Continental, as the western Atlantic is whipped by winds and weather volatility. That here as throughout the west coast of Norway mainly determines the Gulf of flow, hence it is also due to the location of the archipelago in the Arctic Circle climate is relatively mild. The southern part of Lofoten is even the northernmost place on Earth where the average temperature never descending below zero, creating a significant climatic anomaly. Typical are the cool summers and mild winter, when temperatures reach a low of -15 ° C. A better and far more pleasant to visit is summer, especially the period between June and July.

In addition, ferries operate on the Lofoten and three airports, especially realizing everyday connections to the city of Bodø, approximately a half hour flight or 5 hours sailing.

Lofoten is in any case one of the most exciting destinations in Scandinavia, but their availability and relatively lower price higher demands of them still do something for us rather remote and not very accessible. Good for nature, worse for us...

Text: Jan Chaloupka

Photo: Wikipedia Commons - hrysdjones, strokin,Sveter a II., M.Heferkamp, per ,Holmstad, Sxilderik