So where is Lofoten, and how do you get there? This archipelago extends off the northwest coast of Norway, between roughly 67.5 and 68.2 degrees north latitude. Lofoten’s largest town, Svolvær, is about 125 miles north of the Arctic Circle and 1,500 miles from the North Pole.

You reach Lofoten by plane or ferry. Currently, no roads, bridges or tunnels run from mainland Norway all the way to the Lofoten islands. So even if you’re driving, you’ll have to get on a boat at some point to reach your destination. Ferries are ubiquitous in this part of the world, and once we learned how to read the schedules (no English here), we all enjoyed the different perspective afforded by this form of transportation.

Here, you see our ferry across Hadselfjorden to the Lofoten port of Fiskebøl. It was about 9:00 pm. We’d been driving since 2:00, having begun our Arctic journey in Kiruna, Sweden after a one-hour flight from Stockholm earlier that day. So the 30-minute boat ride was a nice break.

With just 90 minutes of driving between Fiskebøl to Svolvær and the knowledge that it wouldn’t get dark again until August, we felt “home free.” Unfortunately, the delightful clouds you see in this photo developed into a fierce storm that pelted us before we reached the hotel. No problem. After we arrived, we found the one pub still open and rewarded ourselves with a banquet of pizza and beers and beers and beers. After shutting the place down, we walked home in the daylight of Arctic (near-) summer.