Transport

In 1997 while I was an exchange student I would get a lot of questions about what kind of transport we have up here in the arctic in Norway. Sometimes I would get so tired of their questions that I would tell them I had to go to school by reindeer driven sleds.

Being that we are spending our summer at our summer house it can seem like all transport in Norway is by boat. As it may be true for some places here, it is not true for the most part of Norway. Just like any other country we depend on cars, busses, trains, airplanes and such. But being a nation of sea fare we also use a lot of boat.

Where our summer house is located there is no possibility to make roads as it is too remote and the mountain is too steep up from the ocean to run any roads along. Because it is so remote most of the people living out here moved away in the fifties and sixties. Now some properties are deserted and falling down, given back to the mountain and the forests again. Others are being used as vacation homes / summer homes.

To get to our summer house we have to go for 30 minutes by boat. To get to the bigger town to go shopping we have to ride the boat first and then the car for another hour to an hour and a half depending on traffic. It is sometimes a hassle, but honestly when you only go maybe once a month or so it isn’t so bad. And then we have the local grocer right by the boat dock when we go in the fjord where we get all the essentials that we need on a daily basis and this we do about once a week.

It is such a relief to have the quietness of no cars, alarms or anything. The only thing we hear out here is the seagulls, the waterfall and the occasional boats going by.