Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
2. Hammerfest
I took a room in the H￥ja Hotel near the quay. The room was small but comfortable, with a telephone, a
small colour television and its own bathroom. I was highly pleased and full of those little pulses of excitement
that come with finding yourself in a new place. I dumped my things, briefly investigated the amenities and
went out to look at Hammerfest.
It seemed an agreeable enough town in a thank-you-God-for-not-making-me-live-here sort of way. The
hotel was in a dark neighbourhood of shipping offices and warehouses. There were also a couple of banks,
a very large police station, and a post office with a row of telephone kiosks in front. In each of these, I
noticed as I passed, the telephone books had been set alight by some desperate thrill seeker and now hung
charred from their chains.
I walked up to the main street, Strandgatan, which ran for about 300 yards along the harbour, lined on
the inland side by an assortment of businesses - a bakery, a bookstore, a cinema (closed), a caf￩ called
Kokken's - and on the harbour side by the town hall, a few more shops and the dark hulking mass of a
Birds Eye-Findus fish-processing plant. Christmas lights were strung at intervals across the street, but all
the shops were shut and there wasn't a sign of life anywhere, apart from an occasional cab speeding past
as if on an urgent mission.
It was cold out, but nothing like as cold as I had expected. This pleased me because I had very nearly
bought a ridiculous Russian-style fur hat - the kind with ear flaps - for 400 kroner in Oslo. Much as I hate to
stand out in a crowd, I have this terrible occasional compulsion to make myself an unwitting source of
merriment for the world and I had come close to scaling new heights with a Russian hat. Now, clearly, that
would be unnecessary.
Beyond the high street, the road curved around the bay, leading out to a narrow headland, and after a
half a mile or so it presented a fetching view back to the town, sheltering in a cleft of black mountains, as if
in the palm of a giant hand. The bay itself was black and impenetrable; only the whooshing sound of water
hinted at what was out there. But the town itself was wonderfully bright and snug-looking, a haven of warmth
and light in the endless Arctic night.
Satisfied with this initial reconnaissance, I trudged back to the hotel, where I had a light but
astonishingly expensive dinner and climbed gratefully into bed.
In the night I was woken by a storm. I crept to the window and peered out. Snow was blowing wildly, and
the wind howled. Lightning lit the sky. I had never seen lightning in a snowstorm. Murmuring, 'Oh, sweet
Jesus, where am I?', I climbed back into bed and buried myself deep in the covers. I don't know what time I
woke, but I dozed and tossed for perhaps an hour in the dark until it occurred to me that it never was going
to get light. I got up and looked out of the window. The storm was still raging. In the police-station car park
below, two squad cars marked
POLITI
were buried in drifts almost to their roofs.
After breakfast, I ventured out into the gale. The streets were still deserted, snow piled in the doorways.
The wind was playing havoc with the town. Street lights flickered and swayed, throwing spastic shadows
across the snow. The Christmas decorations rattled. A cardboard box sailed across the road ahead of me
and was wafted high out over the harbour. It was intensely cold. On the exposed road out to the headland I
began to wish again that I had bought the Russian hat. The wind was unrelenting: it drove before it tiny
particles of ice that seared my cheeks and made me gasp. I had a scarf with me, which I tied around my
face bandit-style and trudged on, leaning heavily into the wind.
Ahead of me out of the swirling snow appeared a figure. He was wearing a Russian hat, I was
interested to note. As he drew nearer, I pulled my scarf down to make some cheering greeting - 'Bit fresh
out, what?' or something - but he passed by without even looking at me. A hundred yards further on I
passed two more people, a man and his wife tramping stolidly into town, and they too passed as if I were
invisible. Strange people, I thought.
The headland proved unrewarding, just a jumble of warehouses and small ship-repair yards, loomed
over by groaning cranes. I was about to turn back when I noticed a sign pointing the way to something called
the Meridiansttten and decided to investigate. This took me down a lane on the seaward side of the
