Sandvika and Skårvågsfjellet

Today is a beautiful day, and we wake up for the first time in our new Airbnb near Bø. After a lovely breakfast we set off, because we have a lot planned.

First we head to Hovden, a fishing village in the northeast of the municipality of Bø with pale sandy beaches. We stop at Finnbugsanden, a small sandy cove south of the village. By car you can get almost all the way to the beach. Then we go to Skiftesanden, the bigger beach on the east side of the village. Both are really beautiful sandy beaches.

Bufjellet and Sandvika

Now we want to hike up Bufjellet and park at the Sandvika car park for it. Bufjellet is only 210 metres high, and the path up is very easy and short. Even so, it rewards us with a wonderful view. Below us lies the bay of Sandvika with its beautiful sandy beach. Off the coast, the rocky peninsula of Engenyken with its two dark rock domes and the pointed island of Spjøten rise from the sea. Nicolas sends up the drone right above the summit of Bufjellet and explores the beautiful landscape all around from above.

After the descent we go to Sandvika Badestrand. It is extremely beautiful and lonely, apart from us there are only a handful of people here. The sun is shining and warms us up nicely, so Nicolas even goes for a quick swim. The water is rather cool. Meanwhile Annina walks up through the dunes, and we even see someone surfing in the water.

Up Skårvågsfjellet

Then it is time for our second hike of the day, Skårvågsfjellet. We park on the road to Skårvågen, at the turn-off just past the bay of Krumsvågen. This spot is recommended in a route description on the Norwegian hiking portal ut.no, whose author counts Skårvågsfjellet among the finest and easiest mountains to walk in Bø. There and back on the same path it is 4.6 kilometres. The path starts almost at sea level and is very muddy at first, crossing a bog on a few wooden boardwalks. Then comes the steepest part, about 100 metres of ascent according to the route description, and after that the path continues over the ridge and old peat bogs until you see the sea on the other side. At a fork, left leads to the summit and right to Tverrfjellet. The last stretch is stony. Even on the way up we have very beautiful views.

After about 400 metres of ascent and an hour and a half we stand on the summit. The sign reads «Skårvågsfjellet 403 moh.», and below it hangs a red box with the code T124. With this code or by GPS you register your visit in the «Stikk UT!» app. We are completely alone up here. It is warm and there is no wind, and we walked up in T-shirts, in October in northern Norway.

Because it is so calm, Nicolas sends up the drone and takes a few photos and videos of us on the summit. The sun is already low and draws a bright band across the sea.

From up here we have a fantastic all-round view of islands, mountains and fjords, and we can see incredibly far. Below us lie countless small islands, one of them shaped like a heart. Just over nine kilometres to the south-southwest lies the pointed island of Gaukværøya, and behind it the mountains of Lofoten line up on the horizon.

Nobody lives on Gaukværøya today. Its highest point is 273 metres high. Around 1910 about 130 people lived there, and they made their living from fishing. According to the mayor of Bø at the time, nobody thought of leaving as long as people fished from small boats. When the fishermen got bigger motorboats, the island lacked a proper harbour, and there was no road either. There was no electricity, and the power company Vesterålens Kraftlag doubted that its grid would reach the island in the foreseeable future. On Langøya, the large island where Bø lies, the houses by then had electricity, running water and telephones. From 1946 more and more families moved there, and in 1951 the school and the fish buying station on the island closed. A state committee that visited Gaukværøya in November 1951 considered it unlikely that a usable harbour could be built at reasonable cost. The state then supported the move of the families from Gaukværøya and the neighbouring island of Litløya with 125,000 kroner. In 1953 the last three families took down their houses and moved them to Langøya. Today only foundation walls and stone quays remain on the island.

The setting sun bathes everything in a soft, beautiful light, and we walk back down. Ahead of us lies the pointed Gullstabben, the highest point of the peninsula near Søberg, and below it the bay of Krumsvågen. We get back down to the car just as the sun disappears into the sea at 18:26.

Coop Prix and northern lights

On the way back we make a quick stop at the Coop Prix. There is Coop here because in Norway, too, many grocery shops belong to consumer cooperatives, and Coop is the second-largest grocery retailer in the country. The first consumer cooperatives appeared around 1850, and like the Swiss consumer societies they took the cooperative of the weavers of Rochdale in England, founded in 1844, as their model. The Norwegian Coop shares its name and this idea with Coop in Switzerland, but they are two separate companies. In Norway the joint company Coop Norge belongs to around 60 regional cooperatives with more than two million members between them. Coop in Switzerland, on the other hand, has been a single cooperative since 2001. Coop Prix is a discount chain of its own in Norway, while at home we only know «Prix Garantie» as a budget product line on the shelf.

Then we drive back to our Airbnb, hoping to see northern lights tonight, because the sky is clear and full of stars. For dinner there is tortellini with homemade tomato sauce and pesto, with a cucumber salad on the side.

In the evening northern lights really do appear, and we enjoy them outside our accommodation. A green arc stands over the bay and is reflected in the still water. Northern lights form when charged particles from the sun, the solar wind, meet the Earth’s magnetic field. Some of them are guided towards the poles. There, these particles enter the upper atmosphere and collide with oxygen atoms and nitrogen molecules, which give off the energy as light, much like in a neon tube. It is usually brightest at a height of 100 to 120 kilometres. The common green comes from oxygen, and so does the red higher up, while the blue-violet lower edge comes from nitrogen. Northern lights are most frequent in an oval ring around the magnetic North Pole, the auroral oval, and Vesterålen lies very close to it. Tonight the Kp index, which measures the disturbance of the Earth’s magnetic field, is only about 2 according to the US agency NOAA, which counts as quiet.

It gets late, and we are not in bed until shortly before 3 o’clock.