Day 3 features us exploring inland, into the Finnmarksvidda. So let’s see about the etymology of this word: “Finn” is Finn, to reflect the locals; “Mark” is Mark, as in the Experience; and “Svidda” is the land of snow, ice, and a whole everloving metric ton of reindeer and not much else – except for that one guy with his airplane.

No, I didn’t get a photo of the airplane – I was about five kilometers away by the time the logistical awesomeness of the guy with the airplane dawned on me. Let’s think here; we’re about three hundred kilometers from anything approximating civilization – and here’s a guy with a little airplane (a Cessna 152 or the like) parked in front of his house. From where does he take off? And where does he land? Well, there’s a really flat and straight section of highway 93 running past his house… and a car comes by once every 45 minutes, if that…

now that’s badass!

We start not too far away from familiar Nordkjosbotn, and then head southeast into Finland and Sweden for a bit, before crossing back into Norway. The sky remains overcast for most of Day 3, and thus the scenery is correspondingly bleak. This is about as “middle of nowhere” as it gets.

Then, a mad dash back to the coastline, where the weather is supposed to improve, a crossing of the Tana river – the unofficial boundary between “the hinterlands” and “the even-more-hinter lands” – up to Vadsø, a brief excursion into a snowbank, and hey, the northern lights, just to say we did.

Surprisingly, there are some places where one can walk down to the water’s edge without stepping in eight feet of snow. Note the clear sky, and remember it well. We will not see it again for quite some time.

Rainbow skies, just west of Vadsø. This, by the way, is right after I plugged a snowbank. I tried pulling over, and, well, the snow may be deeper than it looks at first glance. Sink!

There was a very nice active phase right overhead, but I had no time to look; I was busy standing in the middle of a dark road wearing an American-made orange reflective vest… waving my arms, flagging down a cute Norwegian girl in an Audi A6, for whom it was apparently second nature to pull a dumbass tourist in a subcompact out of the snow. 255 horsepower and survival gear is par for the 70-degrees-latitude course.

Spot the typo. It’s a subtle one. It’s supposed to be Kilpisjärvi, not Kilpisjárvi. Apparently, not even the Scandinavians can keep track of each other’s diacritic marks. In any case, we’re going there. Only later are we going to Kirkenes. For now, we head inland.

Dawn.

E-8 is the Northern Lights Route. Don’t tell anyone, but that’s where I saw the least of the northern lights: inland. All the good sightings were among the fjords.

Graffiti in a toilet stall. Apparently, someone from Murmansk, Russia was here in 2003. I am quite sure that “San Diego” was the most distant place to get signed.

The Northern Lights Route information sign. Along with the four previously seen languages, we have Sámi.

Let’s learn some Sámi. You first.

The absolute last of the sun.

Finland, everyone!

Snow blows across the road.

Finland is grim.

600 meters to the Swedish border. We’ll be back in Finland soon enough, but we may as well poke around Sweden some more too.

Sweden. A rarely seen stand-along marker for highway 99.

The highest speed limit in this area. Good luck going that fast on this road, though!

A terrible picture of a cutout guide sign. It dates back to before 1965! I saw four in a row in Sweden, didn’t think much of them … didn’t see another until Finland!

Sweden prefers blue and yellow arrows at its T intersections. Here at Muodoslompolo is the farthest south we get on this entire trip, except for that brief run to almost-Kiruna the day before.

English pops up in the randomest of places!

And here’s the cutout guide sign in Finland. Yep, we crossed over from Sweden. I didn’t even bother taking a photo of the border crossing; it was that uneventful.

And here’s Norway, for good this time.

gas: 96 kilometers. For around here, that’s not particularly far. I do not know why they signed it – I saw distances of as much as 300 kilometers remain unsigned.

Some color. The pink is provided by the streetlights in this parking area.

Some color for real this time. Despite having no actual idea where the weather was, I managed to escape the doom and gloom by the critical hour. Just past the Tana bridge, here are the northern lights!

The car is, appropriately, heading north.

A very brief active phase. Vadsø in the distance.

Another flare, over desolate plains.

Clouds ahead… and clouds behind. Here’s where I turn around, to double back and take the road north to Berlevåg, to see if it is clear there.

That worked out well.

The snowplow schedule for the road ahead. The 7am service doesn’t run on Sundays. Pretty dang regular, though: those scattered villages have to stay on the grid! I labelled Turjavri on the map – it’s not even a village. It’s a snowplow shack, and a schedule on a big sign. That’s it.

This is actually the coldest it got during my entire trip. Not bad at all. (-16 Celsius is about 3 Fahrenheit.)

Dawn. Again. We’re looking across the Tana river at the village of Máskejohkguolbba. (Apparently, the name “Å” was taken.)

Coming up next: Day 4. Kirkenes, and Soviet Russia!

We pick up from Day 1 near Nordkjosbotn, and dash south in the middle of the night on highway E-6, to where it hits E-10. E-10 west, across the Tjeldsund bridge, all the way to the village of Å, and then back along the same road, because northern Norway is – like Alaska – very sparsely connected. E-10 all the way east to… well, almost to Kiruna, Sweden, because there is a big snowstorm blocking our path! Retreat again, down to Narvik to get gas, then up again on E-6 – almost back to Nordkjosbotn, actually, but we’re branching off on a slightly different route. The good thing is that even though I covered the same spots over again, there was different light and weather each time, making it highly interesting.

The same northern lights as the previous night – still visible, as the sky gets brighter with dawn. The village of Steiro is on the other side of the fjord.

Typical view in the Lofoten islands.

The Tjeldsund bridge, in late afternoon. E-10 is Kong Olavs veg (“King Olav’s road”), whose modern incarnation was built in 1967 over an old Viking trail from Luleå, Sweden to Å.

Don’t be fooled: this isn’t a sunset in Norway. It’s actually in Sweden, as we look back westward on the way to Kiruna. Originally the plan was to go through Kiruna and into Finland, but then nature intervened.

Heading west, to the village of Å. Yep, that’s the entirety of its name. “i Lofoten” means simply “in the Lofoten region”, to differentiate it from all the other villages named Å! (Seriously. I know of at least four.)

The Tjeldsund bridge, at night. We will revisit it several times, because it’s a pinch point: from here, several roads diverge. E10 continues to the Lofoten islands, while other roads branch off to the islands of Langøya and Andøya (home of, respectively, Å i Langøya and Å i Andøya – no kidding!). This bridge was just about the last portion of King Olav’s Road to be finished.

I’ll have plenty more photos of this bridge from other days… both day and night. This photo is from the roadside information station that tells about the bridge and the road. Clearly, the trees have been trimmed to provide a view. In Norway, they’re proud of their architectural achievements, and (in stark contrast to the Verrazano Bridge), they encourage people to take photos.

Wind speed: 4 meters/second, as we cross the bridge.

The northern lights are still present, but not particularly active at this time. 49 kilometers west of the bridge now. You can read the sign in the bigger version of the photo. More interestingly, there’s a comet in the sky – something I didn’t notice until I was looking through the pictures! In the foreground, Norway’s famous glowing trees.

(Zoom in from the previous photo.) I believe that that’s Comet 17P/Holmes – the exploding comet of November, 2007.

The moon over the village of Fiskebøl. I’m tempted to say it means “Fish Bowl” in Norwegian, but it very likely does not.

The E highways form a large grid all over Europe. They keep the same number through national boundaries all across Europe and are signed in green.

Look at that, I found the one tree in the area.

We’re in the Lofoten Islands now – here, they don’t feel the need to differentiate their Å from all the other Ås.

Old sign!

Resistance is futile.

Mountains, mountains, everywhere. Norway’s mountains aren’t tall – namely, they do not reach as far from sea level as, say, the Rockies. This peak is “only” about 5000 feet high, for instance. They appear much taller for two reasons: one – the surrounding lands are very close to sea level, and two – they are extremely sharp, rising to jagged peaks that emphasise their starkness.

The cute little fishing village of Bø. Yep, those Norwegians sure do love their short place names.

Note that the road is getting progressively narrower and more winding. E-10 starts out as a major trans-Scandinavian freight route, but as one reaches more and more remote villages, the construction quality starts getting iffier and iffier. Norway, in general, has incredibly good roads. When one takes into account both the construction (large mountains to navigate around, over, or through) and the maintenance (did I mention we’re north of the Arctic circle??), the fact that the roads are paved, and driveable year-round, is a magnificent accomplishment.

Before the blue-and-white town boundary signs, Norway had white-and-black ones. They switched over after realising “oh yeah … snow”.

Construction zones feature neon-green instead of white on their signs, for extra visibility.

End of the line. We’re in the village of Å – just barely. This is actually the official end of E-10: the section that is under construction is a town-maintained road. More than anything else, the barricade is to keep cars out because Å is heavily pedestrian, bike, and boat-oriented. There’s a parking lot just barely on the correct side of the gate: it just happens that, at this time, the suggestion is being made vehemently. Call “175″ if you object.

Ålas, I did not get a photo of the “Å” sign. I was kinda hedging my bets that Å i Andøya or Å i Langøya had one too, and I wouldn’t have to walk a kilometer and a half or so to the official boundary of incorporation. Guess we’ll have to behold photos from a later batch to determine if my bet paid off!

Another view of Å, as we turn around. Back we go – all the way back on E-10, past the Tjeldsund Bridge, back to the E-10/E-6 junction from whence we came – but then we continue onwards on E-10 into Sweden.

A white-tailed eagle. This bird is the North American bald eagle’s nearest cousin, and is Norway’s largest consumer of fish. Seriously – it has a wingspan of seven feet! I barely got this photo as I was driving past the cliff – about one-half a second after it started taking off as seen here, by golly it indeed took off.

Narvik is the largest city in the area. It has a population of an impressive 18,000.

Clear skies: enjoy them while you can!

Austnesfjorden (“the Eastern Fjord”) under infrared.

Reflecting mountains. I took this one while barreling down a hill at a whopping 44 miles an hour (Norway’s speed limits aren’t exactly colossal). No shoulders on this road, and this was before I realized that if I wanted to stop and get a photo, I could just park in the lane. All the zero cars that would come by could figure out how to go around me.

Norway has the occasional tree.

It’s Norway. Two feet of snow doesn’t stop people from having a picnic.

Back in Troms county.

Norwegians love their red houses. Another “through the window” shot.

Back at the Tjeldsund bridge. Identify the car that didn’t notice the “no passing on the bridge” sign.

The informational sign at the Tjelsund bridge. The information is given in Norwegian, Finnish, English, and German. No Swedish, even though that’s the most likely native language of foreign visitors. Swedes are expected to read the Norwegian – the two languages are pretty similar – or the English!

Here, let’s all learn some new languages. That Magnus Lagaboter: smart guy!

Heavy elk moose crossing. What we call the moose, Europeans call the elk. There are no North American elk in Europe – the closest thing is the red deer.

Luleå and Kiruna are in Sweden. That is where we’re going. Well, only to Kiruna. In fact, not there either.

Near dark, as we start crossing the mountain pass that leads into Sweden.

Windmills in the mountains.

High clouds at sunset.

Sweden’s just around the bend. A little further down is what appears to be one Hell of a snowstorm. The reason it looks like that from over here is because it is, indeed, one Hell of a snowstorm.

Sweden. Don’t have anything to declare? Just float on through! Good luck seeing an international border like that in North America any time soon.

Sweden prefers blue for its guide signs.

“That word. I do not think it means, what you think it means.”

Bigfoot-quality moose photo. Hey, it’s the first actual moose I saw on this trip! In fact, the only one! Plenty of reindeer (see: Day 6, especially) but only one moose.

Narvik? Why are we going towards Narvik; isn’t that where we came from? Some time has passed since the last photo, and I definitely ran into the edge of that snowstorm, that’s why. When Kiruna’s eleven kilometers away and I can’t see the lights in the haze of the flakes, that’s when I know it’s all systems retreat. Especially when I see that it’s heading west…

A stop sign. Hey, they’re plenty rare in Scandinavia. Nearly every intersection is marked with a “yield”. Why stop when there isn’t a car for twenty kilometers? It just wears out your clutch. I dunno why this intersection (a side street to the E-10) earned a stop sign: there wasn’t a car for twenty kilometers.

Back to Norway. Thus ends the little Swedish experiment… until the next day, that is.

Narvik, or thereabouts. Home of gas stations. 850+ kilometers on a tank of gas is excellent – but not infinite!

Our first mention of Kirkenes: the easternmost town in Norway. Over a thousand kilometers away – we will visit it on Day 4.

Had I noticed them, I’d have stuck around! Note the northern lights on the right side, behind the mountain. The town of Soløy. Not Soløy i Lofoten, with the white sign from this morning, but rather Soløy i Tverrfjellet – oh, those crazy Norwegians and their unique town names! I only discovered the aurora in this photo when editing them.

A 1940s old truss bridge. This is the first one we run across, but there will be plenty more. They were built well, and they continue to serve their purpose.

And that is it for day two, simply because here I caught an entire hour of sleep, before proceeding onward.