Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
headland. Here, wholly exposed to the pounding sea, the wind was even more ferocious. Twice it all but
picked me up and carried me forward several yards. Only the toetips of my boots maintained contact with
the ground. I discovered that by holding out my arms I could sail along on the flats of my feet, propelled
entirely by the wind. It was the most wonderful fun. Irish windsurfing, I dubbed it. I had a great time until an
unexpected burst whipped my feet from under me. I cracked my head on the ice so hard that I suddenly
recalled where I put the coal-shed key the summer before. The pain of it, and the thought that another gust
might heft me into the sea like the cardboard box I had seen earlier, made me abandon the sport, and I
proceeded to the Meridiansttten with prudence.
The Meridiansttten was an obelisk on a small elevation in the middle of a graveyard of warehouses. I
later learned that it was a memorial erected to celebrate the completion in 1840, on this very spot, of the
first scientific measurement of the earth's circumference. (Hammerfest's other historical distinction is that it
was the first town in Europe to have electric street lights.) I clambered up to the obelisk with difficulty, but the
snow was blowing so thickly that I couldn't read the inscription, and I returned to town thinking I would come
back again another day. I never did.
In the evening I dined in the hotel's restaurant and bar, and afterwards sat nursing Mack beers at fifty
re a sip, thinking that surely things would liven up in a minute. It was New Year's Eve, after all. But the bar
was like a funeral parlour with a beverage service. A pair of mild-looking men in reindeer sweaters sat with
beers, staring silently into space. After a time I realized there was another customer, alone in a dark corner.
Only the glow of his cigarette revealed him in the gloom. When the waiter came to take my plate away, I
asked him what there was to do for fun in Hammerfest. He thought for a moment and said, 'Have you tried
setting fire to the telephone directories by the post office?'
Actually he didn't say that, because just as he was about to speak, the lone figure in the corner
addressed some slurred remark to him, which I gathered was something along the lines of 'Hey, you dismal,
slope-headed slab of reindeer shit, what does it take to get some service around here?' because the waiter
dropped my plate back onto the table with a suddenness that made the silverware jump and went straight to
the man and began furiously dragging him by his arm and shoulder from his seat and then pushing him with
enormous difficulty to the door, where he finally heaved him out into the snow. When the waiter returned,
looking flushed and disconcerted, I said brightly, 'I hope you don't show all your customers out like that!' but
he was in no mood for pleasantries and retired sulkily to the bar, so I was unable to determine just what
there was to do in Hammerfest to pass the time, other than set telephone books alight, insult the waiter and
weep.
At eleven-thirty, with the bar still dead, I went out to see if there was any life anywhere. The wind had
died but there was hardly anyone about. Every window in every house blazed with light, but there was no
sign of revelry within. Then just before midnight, as I was about to return to the hotel, an odd thing happened.
Every person came out of every house and began to set off fireworks - big industrial-sized fireworks that
shrieked across the sky and exploded with a sharp bang and filled the night with colour and sparks. For half
an hour, from all around the peninsula, fireworks popped and glittered over the harbour and drifted spent
into the sea. And then, precisely thirty minutes after it all began, everyone went back inside and Hammerfest
slept again.
The days passed. At least three times a day I went for long walks and searched the sky for the Northern
Lights, and in the evenings I went out every hour to see if anything was happening yet, but it never was.
Sometimes I rose in the night to look out of the window, but I never saw anything. Once or twice a day it
would snow - fat, fluffy snowflakes, like the ones you see in a Perry Como Christmas special - but the rest
of the time the sky was clear. Everyone told me it was perfect Northern Lights weather. 'You should have
been here just before Christmas - ah, fabulous,' they would say and then assure me that tonight would
almost certainly be the night. 'About eleven o'clock you go out. Then you'll see.' But it didn't happen.
When I wasn't walking or searching the sky, I sat in the bar of the hotel drinking beer or lay on my bed
reading. I tried once or twice to watch television in my room. There is only one network in Norway and it is
stupefyingly bad. It's not just that the programmes are dull, though in this respect they could win awards, but
that the whole thing is so wondrously unpolished. Films finish and you get thirty seconds of scratchy white
circles like you used to get when your home movies ran out and your dad didn't get to the projector fast
