Tuesday 24 October

This morning, from sunrise, we spend hours on deck watching the whales swimming along beside us. We have proof of this with photos of the many spouts. The buggers didn’t breach until we had just put our cameras down in order to defrost our hands in our pockets. Someone must have invented phone camera friendly gloves, but we have not yet found them and it is impossible not to regularly place our blue hands in the relative warmth of our pockets, such is the biting, but mightily invigorating, cold wind.

Below, anyone who spots the breach, and spots the tale wins a bagful of salted cod

We find that we are sometime distracted by the passing scenery

We dock at Alta, town of the northern lights, at 2pm. We’re now well and truly in the land of the midday sun. Between 6 December and 6 January there is no sun north of here at all. It is said that on 6 January you can see the sun rise and within 5 minutes turn around and see it set.

Each day at 5.30pm we choose to attend an on board briefing about what we will see tomorrow. Last night we learned about the Sami culture. The Sami’s are the First Nations people of Norway, Finland and Russia and have been here for 7,000 years. That’s 53,000 fewer years than Australia’s First Nations people. The Sami’s are recognised by the three countries they inhabit and even have their own parliament. There are no reports of the Sami claiming anyone’s back garden or even their snowmen.

Alta is famous not only for the northern lights but for their recreational salmon fishing. Two fish per angler.

Many of the towns we have been to in the past couple of days were burnt to the ground by the Nazis in 1944 when the Russians were en route to liberate. All inhabitants were forcibly evacuated to the south by the Germans and then the entire villages succumbed to the burnt earth policy of the Nazi regime. Only a few churches survived. So almost everything we see is a rebuild.

We visited the Northern Lights Cathedral, the design of which is the result of a competition, and it opened in 2013. The interior is raw cement with lights intended to mimic the borealis.

Perhaps not surprisingly Jesus was there and rather wonderfully is looking up, rather than down or to the side

The exterior cladding consists of 25,000 titanium tiles which change colour according to the sun throughout the year.

We visited a museum where there is lots of Sami rock art. Again many thousands of years younger than that found in Australia.

Back on board the Norwegian Kitchen today was salted reindeer, and it was absolutely delicious.

Oh dear, tonight’s menu includes roasted reindeer in the restaurant too, and it is tender, lean and delectable. Can’t wait for Christmas.

To top off another wonderful day the northern lights came to visit again.

And again

And again

Can it get any better than this?