50 Shades of Grey

Feb. 27.2023
High 30's, but oh! how the wind bites
Above the 68th parallel--We are officially "Blue Noses" now!

 Knarravik ~ "Good natural port

Located above the Arctic Circle, Narvik is a town of about 22,000 hearty souls. Archaeologists have discovered petroglyphs and other artifacts that suggest people have lived in the area for over 4000 years.  If the weather is dreary and cold, Narvik still is situated to be a special place. It's blessed with a year round ice-free harbor, thanks to that mysterious path in the sea called the Gulf Stream. Warm water from the Caribbean flows up and keeps the port of Narvik usable in all 12 months, making it a major transportation hub for the north. 

No, I'm not shooting pics in black and white. The area around Narvik seems to be naturally monochromatic. 

In the 1870's, iron was discovered in nearby Kiruna, Sweden and Narvik was the nearest, most reliably usable port. So they built a railroad to move the iron to market, thus assuring prosperity on both sides of the Norwegian/Swedish border.

Norwegians never let little things like missed ports or zero color in the landscape get them down!

Conditions deteriorated during the day and all the evening excursions--snow mobiling, Northern Lights searching in the hinterlands, visiting Polar Park (a large zoo for arctic creatures)--were canceled for fear of avalanches in the mountains. We stayed warm and dry on the Venus and enjoyed a solo show by Elmer del Fierro, our assistant cruise director. Viking always seems to promote from within the entertainment teams, so all the cruise directors and their assistants are performers in their own right. And they hire based on personality. We see that demonstrated in all the crew members. Everyone is so cheerful and helpful. One of the Restaurant waiters was on the Star for the World Cruise with us, and even though he wasn't our regular server, he remembered us and came up to greet us this evening.

Each evening in the Explorer's Lounge all the constellations light up above the wrap around the bow wall of windows. It's a lovely feature on all of Vikings ocean ships.

Feb. 28th, Day Two in Narvik

The weather warmed a bit, turning the snow to freezing rain. We  donned our multi-layered cold weather gear, reminding each other of poor little Randy from A Christmas Story, who couldn't put his arms down, and we were off! Our excursion today took us on a brief tour of the town of Narvik and then to the War Museum. 

It's a tidy little town of wooden houses, almost all painted the traditional red, white or yellow. I saw very few garages and wondered how they kept their vehicles from seizing up in the cold or if they had an electric car, which the government favors, how they kept the batteries from draining while the vehicle just sat on the street. 

Our knowlegable guide with a ship killing mine 

The War Museum was interesting because Norway's situation during WWII was not a black and white issue. There were some who were sympathetic to Germany, some who were wholly committed to the Allies, and many pacifists who wanted to stay clear of involvement at any cost. Unfortunately, the iron that shipped out of Narvik made it a prize worth taking so those Arctic dwellers had no choice. The war came to them. 

The uniforms didn't look very warm to me.

The mayor of Narvik at the time refused to fight when the Germans steamed into the harbor and was later branded a traitor, but he claimed his goal was to lose no Norwegian lives in his town. It reminded me of our guide in Montenegro last year, who claimed she didn't care who won the Serbo-Croatian war so long as Montenegrins could continue living their peaceful lives. An appealing, if naive, position. Not all powers who win are beneficent toward the peoples they subjugate.

Norwegians may have a bloody and brutal history of viking, but after Christianity came to the fjords, they became a much more peace-loving people.

The landscape in this part of the world isn't the only thing composed of shades of grey. The politics of Norway during the war was a complex, nuanced business. Sons of Norway fought and died on both sides, though the Norwegian king was firmly in the Allies camp. But the king was reigning in exile from Great Britain and individual members of the population were left to decide for themselves what to do.  

What a terrible time it must have been. Narvik is so very remote. The evil represented by the Nazis is so evident to us now. During a time when information was scarce and always belated, when the plight of a distant people had to be weighed against the lives of your family and neighbors, well...let's just say I can understand how little Narvik decided not to take up arms against the German invaders when they had no hope of winning in their tiny corner of the world until reinforcements arrived.

If you'd like to learn more about Norway's situation during WWII, let me recommend the Masterpiece series Atlantic Crossings. This well-done production chronicles the activity of the Norwegian royal family as they tried to find their way through a world that was coming apart. 

Please God, may the we never face another global conflict. But if we are confronted with it, may we know which side to support.

And now, to lighten the mood a bit, here's your chance to win 50 points and the coveted mythical rubber cookie with cement frosting! 

I snapped this photo in the War Museum. One of the items was clearly handmade, the other fashioned to last longer with metalwork reinforcing it. They both serve the same purpose.

Can anyone guess what these things might be?

And here's the DH's photo montage of our time in Narvik: