Lofoten Islands

    They are still impressive, the Lofotens are a 60 mile wall of mountains jutting up from the ocean floor stretching southwest from the mainland. They are more jagged than the glacier-worn mountains on the mainland. We snaked through some tight passages and made 4 stops in the islands overnight.  
  
   The town of Svolvaer had a statue of a woman waving goodbye in the harbor that i liked. The picture here shows it, but it was so much better on the front side through my binoculars. Maybe I'll get another shot it on the southbound leg.

   We went through a very narrow passage called the Troll's Fiord around midnight. All the passangers were on deck to see it and some of the ships crew dressed up as trolls making fun of the passangers in Norwegian as we passed by. You can see how close we were to the cliffs, at one point someone could have jumped down from the cliff onto the ship's deck.

   We had a small ceremony yesterday where King Neptune welcomed us above the Arctic Circle. All the passangers were lined up to have ice water dumped down everyone's back. He got 3 or 4 ice cubes inside my turtleneck and I had to dance around a bit before they dropped through my jeans onto the deck.

   This evening we stop for 4 hours at Tromso, a major town in the north, above 70 degrees north latitude. There'll be a midnight choir concert in the cathedral, I'll try and stop in to listen.