We flew from Trondheim into Bodø, rented a car and drove to the ferry terminus in bodø--only to discover that the ferry the Tourist Office in Trondheim told us to take to Moskenes near the southern end of the Lofoten Islands would not actually start running for another week. Our whole carefully orchestrated route and schedule would not work. We fell back to catching a later ferry from Hamarøy to Svolvær. This added to the amount of driving we'd have to do, but it also added a stunning segment to the trip. Not to mention the first of the truly artistic Norway postcards ("Hamarøy: Adventureland after the Rain"):
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The mountains on the mainland made the departure by ferry quite dramatic.
But not quite as dramatic as the arrival by ferry to the Lofotens (with a stop at Skrova).
Approach to Skrova and Skrova harbor
The last of these images shows the approach to Svolvær and gives a good sense of the towering proportion of the mountains, some rising over a mile above the sea.
We drove south from Svolvær to Leknes, where we spent the night. The next day we continued south, past magnificent scenery, to Å, the southernmost end both of the road and of the Norwegian alphabet.
Beautiful Lofoten! Here is a postcard that shows more of the geography than we could see from the ground:
Then we turned around, headed back up north past Leknes and Svolvær, across Vestgåvøy, and on to Harstad, where we saw at midnight--if not the midnight sun--a dramatic sky that suggested the presence of a beautiful midnight sun somewhere nearby.
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Back to the previous day's travel (Trondheim)
On to the next day's travel (Hurtigrute to the North Cape and on to Alta)