When traveling as a Rolex Scholar, you don’t always find a lot of time for running the blog – I haven’t found much of it for last two months 🙂 Now, after catching up with other things finally, comes the blog!
At the second half of July, I flew to small city of Kirkenes in northern Norway, then took a ferry to Berlevag, and finally drove last bit of road with Christoph, who with his partner Maren were my hosts, and run KISS – Kongsfjord International Scuba School. Kongsfjord is a small village (population 35!) on a side of a fjord of the same name. From there, their operation runs diving, arctic fishing or king-crab-fishing, RIB rafting etc. all (weather permitting) year long.
In this area, “all year long” takes a whole new meaning. In the summer, for many weeks sun doesn’t even set, temperatures are well over 10, and plankton in the water goes blooming. In the winter, on the other hand, sun doesn’t even rise – sometimes snow blocks the road, sometimes arctic storm hits the coast hard, but lots of time you can still go diving under the northern lights, in the crystal-clean water.
A goal of my stay was shooting the video of Kongsfjord’s underwater – but we truly did take it easy! For first couple of days, we just went diving every day, to get me accustomed to local conditions. Except for rather cold water, it involved sometimes heavy wave action or a ripping current – but Christoph and Maren know their business, so no surprises there. Most of diving with them happens inside Kongsfjord fjord, or one of neighboring ones. They have also several divespots located offshore, but there’s more then enough interesting stuff that’s sheltered. Marine growth is abundant, marine animals – depending on the time of year. At my visit, you could see quite a lot of famous king-crab, not at it’s best though – in the winter, the large ones come up from depths (they don’t like UV), and they reach width of 2 meters! Besides that, lots of shrimps and various fish species. But at this latitude, life works in yearly cycle, so in other time frame, one could see beluga whales, killer whales, or huge amounts of atlantic salmon just born. There’re couple of wrecks in the area, too – like Martha, one in 40 meters depth just 3 minutes boat ride off the village.
Because communities in this region are quite remote, they need to depend more on themselves. This also applies for everyday needs like food – most of the food comes from the sea, either caught by yourself, or one of your neighbors. Part of my hosts’ business is running fishing tours, so they never lacked a great fish or crab for the dinner! (or actually breakfest, too) It’s not unreachable, though, of course – you can feed yourself from the supermarket. It’s just way more expensive.
Once you get out of the water, Kongsfjord’s area has a lot to itself, too. Just couple of minutes from the village there’re remains of German fort from second world war. German soldiers have arrived in November, and in few months of deep winter, in freezing darkness, have built a post to fight off Russian army. You can find memories of those times all over the place – shells here and there, over- or underwater, sometimes unfired munitions, some personal items, that now are already rare finds though… If you drive kilometer or two from the shore, you’ll find yourself on an elevated, rocky plateau, dotted with lakes, rivers, and patches of snow – even in July.
Hospitality of my hosts, and area different than any other I visited before – made it so fun to be up there. I hope to be back there, this time – in wintertime!
