Day 49 – to Kåfjorddalen, Reisa National Park

Just as I sorted the dog’s breakfast at just after 8 am, rain started, so I retreated indoors with coffee and read John Wyndham’s Chocky. I’m not a huge science fiction fan, but this, his last novel from 1968, is really clever.

The parents of an 11 year old boy are surprised but not overwrought when they hear their son talking to an imaginary friend. The boy has been possessed by a highly intelligent and sexless alien, for whom he struggles to get the pronouns right.

It’s a chance to explore what it means to be human; the very way we live, the nature of artistic creativity, how we learn and teach. But there’s a shock at the end when the entity delivers an emotional plea to look after the planet,

“You have not done badly with electricity in a hundred years. And you did well with steam in quite a short time. But all that is so cumbersome, so inefficient. And your oil engines are just a deplorable perversion – dirty, noisy, poisonous, and the cars you drive with them are barbarous, dangerous…

You should be employing your resources, while you still have the, to tap and develop the use of power which is not finite.”.

Seems not enough people read the book..

By now, 11 ish, the rain had relented and we headed out along the shoreline having a closer nose at some of the salubrious apartments. Several of them are for sale at about 3 to 400,000 euros. It would be a great place to live for half the year, and I guess many people who buy them do exactly that.

The rain came again, this time with a vengeance. It was a good time to drive, so we wound our way around the fjords sort of south, but often you’re heading north, west, and even east.

The road skirts the Langfjordjøkelen glacier, the northernmost glacier on the Scandinavian mainland. Enough of it was on view, especially when the E6 highway climbed above the cloud. Measured last year at 8 square kilometres, its snout has retreated almost 1.5 kilometres since 1976, making it the fastest retreat of any European glacier. What would Wyndham’s Chocky say…. I told you so.

I had researched a small gravel road that leads into Kåfjorddalen, the south west entry to Reisa National Park. The rain has cleared, but may be back later. I’m parked up at about 250 metres above sea level with an incredible view down to the fjord, and of the valley’s steep sided. It’s possible to drive higher on the road, but not a good idea in the van. It would handle it, but the beers and the crockery rock around too much. We will hike up further tomorrow.