The Road to Å

The villages of Reine (right) and Sakrisøy are along the route to Å

Tuesday we set out in the morning to find the end of the road. We found it in Å.

Å is the fishing village at the southernmost point you can travel on the E-10, the road which connects the main islnds of the Lofotens. (A couple other inhabited islands -- Røst and Værøya -- can be reached only by boat or helicopter.) From Svolvaer, the nearly three-hour trip  covers 128 km (80 miles) along roads which, the more southerly you go the more narrow they become. At least two or three times we had to backup our Opel by curves or one-lane bridges to allow other vehicles to pass.

Even in drizzle and rain the Lofotens offer magical views. Changing tides provide a shifting landscape. The fish racks for drying cod no longer are A-frames; instead, southern Lofoten fishermen hang theirs from flat-top structures which, except for the dried fish, could be mistaken for arbors.

Two small museums dedicated to the region's fisheries industry are located in Å. One, devoted only to the fish-drying process, we skipped. The second and larger museum was what was, essentially, much of the original village. Today it is the museum, a restaurant and a collection of rorbuer, the fishermen's cabins that dot the coast of much of Norway.

The Norwegian Fishing Village Museum, as it is formerly known, is small and only moderately interesting, even to me, who finds nearly anything about fishing industry riveting. Of the half-dozen buildings you can visit, the most interesting is the boathouse, where samples of the small rowboats used by the fishermen are housed, along with nets and every other item necessary for making a living from the northern sea. Of a bit less interest was the cod liver oil factory where, if you are a masochist, you could taste the product from which these islands derived so much of their livelihood.

(The cod fishery off the Lofotens peaks during the winter, when huge quantities of fish from the Barents Sea (between Norway and Russia) seek the waters off the coast hear warmed by the Gulf Stream. For a wonderful, absorbing account of the live in a remote Lofoten fishing village, I recommend reading For Love of Norway, a literary account (in translation) centered around the life of the wife of a fisherman in the tiny (and now abandoned) village of Mostand on Værøya.

We had hoped to have lunch at the Brygga restaurant in Å, since we regarded it as The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. They were closed for lunch, so we headed back north, stopping at Maren Anna in Sørvågen.