Magic of Lofoten

Once, only trawlermen went to the Lofoten Islands, but as fish stocks diminish the brightly coloured shacks are being converted into accommodation for tourists attracted by the wild northern beauty. Gavin Bell reports.

Nobody knows why Olaf Tvennumbruni, a Viking chieftain, left his home in Norway around 900 AD and sailed to Iceland.

One day he was surveying his fiefdom in the Lofoten Islands, and the next he was gone with his followers in a fleet of longships, never to return.

The land he left behind has hardly changed. Where his farm lay on VestvŒg¯y there is a green valley dotted with lakes, and guarded by jagged mountains that are streaked with snow even in summer. Under blue skies, it has an air of peace and plenty like a high alpine pasture.

The fertility of Olaf's land is a revelation to first-time visitors.

From an approaching ferry, the Lofotens rise from the sea like a row of monstrous broken teeth, a fearsome wall of glacier-carved mountains at the end of the world.

Then settlements appear, clinging precariously to the shores behind a maze of islets and skerries that echo to the cries of gulls.

For generations they have sustained fishermen drawn by shoals of spawning cod migrating every winter from the Barents Sea. A reminder of the price many have paid is a statue at the entrance to the harbour of Svolvaer, the main town, of a woman staring out to sea, awaiting her husband.

I see it first from the deck of a ferry on a six-hour crossing from Bod¯ on the mainland. This is the way to discover the Lofotens, with the sea air and blasts from the ship's horn whetting a sense of adventure.

An old fishing hamlet near Svolvaer Svolvaer is a working town with dry docks, and an appallingly misplaced 10-storey hotel under construction on the quayside. But the backdrop of snow-capped peaks is as dramatic as they come, and there is an agreeably slow pace of life in streets of wood-clad houses and stores painted in pastel colours. Fishing is still crucial to the economy, but as cod stocks dwindle the islanders are turning their attention to another lucrative catch - tourists.

In the old days, fishermen who came for the seasonal cod-rush were packed into rorbuer, wooden cabins by the sea in which crews slept two to a bunk and en suite facilities were a hole in the floor.

With men now bunking on modern fishing boats, many cabins have been refurbished (with improved facilities) as guest accommodation.

Mine is at the end of a gravel path on an islet linked to the town by a bridge, perched on rocks with the sea lapping below. The noisiest intrusion is from bickering gulls.

Breakfast and dinner are served a few steps away in the Svin¯ya Rorbu hotel, which used to be a general store and now has a cosy restaurant by an inlet that feels like being inside an old wooden sailing ship.

"The fishing is not the same as when I was a child," says Ola Skjeseth, the hotel manager. "We used to run home from school to the fish factories and cut out cod tongues, which were a delicacy, and sell them privately.

Now hardly any children do it. We have to change, like chameleons. If one day there is no fish, we still have fantastic nature for tourists."

Experienced climbers are drawn by the islands' granite peaks, in particular a twin-pronged stack above Svolvaer more than 120ft high where daredevils jump the 5ft gap between the two. "It's more of a long step than a jump," says Anders Alsvik, a member of the local mountain rescue team. "Even so, it is not really very nice if you miss it."

Since I am disinclined to climb anything higher than myself, he suggests a walk up Tjeldbergtind, a 1,200ft saddle-shaped hill overlooking the town.

It is an easy ascent up a gravel path, then a steeper section to the ridge unveils a vista of lakes in hidden valleys enclosed by towering walls of rock. In the far distance, a row of mountains seems to be floating on the sea, and to the south are faint outlines of small isles where seas froth and roar in a giant maelstrom off a place called Hell.

I give this infamous tidal race a miss, and head for a lair of trolls and sea eagles. It takes less than half an hour to skim over the sea in a high-speed inflatable rubber boat from Svolvaer to Trollfjord, the kind of place where Nordic legends are born.

This is your classic drama of nature, a sea loch more than a mile long, barely 150 metres wide at the mouth, enclosed by 500 metre cliffs and ending abruptly at a jumble of even higher mountains. Our arrival is timed to coincide with the twice-daily routine of big ferries doing their party trick of sailing to the end of the fjord and turning around in their own length, the nautical equivalent of a three-point turn.

Other sightseeing boats scatter fish bait to attract eagles, but we zoom off to the island of Skrova (population 250), where people have lived for centuries on the whaling industry. A centre for processing whale meat, it is a quiet place in the eye of the storm over whaling.

In a quayside bar I meet Geir Notnes, who spent almost 30 years cutting whale meat in his family's business. "We in Norway have a 1,000-year-old tradition to eat whale meat," he says. "It is because minke whales came into our small bays."

He insists that whaling in Norwegian waters is subject to strict quotas, monitored by foreign vets, and that none of the meat is exported. His own family eats around 15kg a year. It is highly nutritious, he says, and suggests I try some. It comes raw, dark red and wafer thin, served with an oriental sauce and I have to admit it is delicious.

You can't get away from fish in the Lofotens. They are everywhere, and not just in the sea. Mainly they are hanging in their tens of thousands on giant A-frame racks, being dried and processed by the weather, for harvesting in early summer.

There are striking visions of men who risked and often lost their lives in catching them in an art gallery in the village of Kabelvag.

The work of an artist who was almost blind, the lithographs and mixed media portray the turmoil of big seas in strong, dark images that evoke the roar of the wind and crash of waves on wooden hulls.

Our last stop is a private collection of Second World War memorabilia in Svolvaer, assembled with passion bordering on obsession by a retired plumbing salesman. William Hakvaag has no idea how many guns, mines, medals, badges, flags, photographs and bits of Spitfires he has accumulated, but at the last count he had 140 complete uniforms.

Sailing to and from the Lofotens is easy. Every day ferries plying the coast of Norway from Bergen to the Russian border call in on their way north and south. Tough big vessels built to sail in all weathers, they have all the comforts of cruise ships without the comedians and dancing girls.

Instead they carry people, cargo and mail between communities that are often cut off in winter, and tourists are welcome to come along for the ride.

Stops tend to be brief, but there are excursions that allow passengers to leave at one port and get on again at the next.

From Svolvaer it takes three days of cruising past misty mountains, fjords and wave-lashed skerries to reach Bergen. I am longing to stretch my legs, and the old trading city by the sea provides the perfect opportunity with miles of woodland paths in the surrounding hills.

It was here that Edvard Grieg penned some of his finest works in a shed below his summer house on the outskirts of the city. The house overlooking a lake is open to the public, and a small concert hall has been built into a slope above the shed, so the stage is framed by a picture window filled with views that inspired Grieg's music.

To listen to his sublime Evening in the Mountains being played in such a setting is to understand the love Norwegians have for their country, and to wonder why Olaf Tvennumbruni ever left it.