Nord-Norge Adventure Wednesday, Part 1: Alta
Continuing on our North-Norway tour during the kid’s winter holiday week. We flew from Fauske to Alta, in the far north. We spent a few hours in Alta where we had lunch, met a Portlander working in the tourist office, and visited the Northern Lights Cathedral and museum.
Alta is a cool little town way up in the northernmost region of Norway. There are a few other towns nearby that are farther north, but Alta is also on a fjord and it gets the jet stream, so temperatures are very reasonable, around 20 degrees while we were there. It’s also at the perfect place to see the Northern Lights and has been a base for Northern Lights viewing for decades (or more–the details from the Northern Lights Museum allude me now!)
Use the photo gallery to see some pictures and captions (I don’t know why they don’t load in order, sorry about that, make sure to get them all while I figure out how to fix it). More to come very soon from the rest of our trip!
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- We had to get up at 4:30am to get on a bus to Bodø to fly to Alta. Hans got up with us and served breakfast. Everyone was concerned the night before that we wouldn’t have bread before boarding the plane. And it’s a good thing we ate, because they confiscated my yogurt at airport security. Since when is yogurt a liquid!?!
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- Nordic sunrise
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- More Nordic sunrise
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- Downtown Alta, the Northern Lights Cathedral is at the end of the main street. This is a pedestrian walkway.
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- They recently had a winter festival with ice sculputres outside of the Northern Lights Cathedral.
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- Inside the Northern Lights Cathedral. It was built in 2013.
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- A panoramic of the inside of the Cathedral, it is a round space with the Northern Lights sculptures illuminated on the walls.
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- We lit some candles to set our intentions for the trip.
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- In the basement of the cathedral is the Northern Lights Museum. It is one room with several informational and interactive displays.
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- They had a “joiking” video game to sing to the Northern Lights. Joiking is the singing of the Sami people, indigineous reindeer herders of Northern Europe. Anders was an excellent joiker!
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- You can barely see Nora in this photo, she is waving to the Northern Lights in the screen above to make them move and change.
