Day 635 - Svalbard to Tromsø

Fascinating Characters

The afternoon of the 25th, we flew (unfortunately) back to Tromsø, finding it hard to believe that we had to jet south to a city that was still so far north. While at the airport we met a wild character by the name of Joseph who paraded his 6' 4" body around with a small entourage, his flowing white/blond hair topped by an enormous, fur-fringed Cossack hat. He stood out like an immense dandelion and I was sure he must be some offbeat Russian oligarch.

I had seen him from afar when we flew in three days earlier, but today he was only a few yards away and the next thing I knew he was sitting at our table, saying in an accent as flat and midwestern as a Wisconsin anchorman, "You look like travelers." He pointed to one of our bags now festooned with patches from Portugal, Chile, Argentina, Antarctica, Spain, France, Morocco etc. "Usually people you meet in this part of the world aren't your average tourist."

"I gather you've been to a few places too," I said. His entourage consisted of a young woman who looked like she might be Filipino, a 12 year-old-boy and a black man who said absolutely nothing the whole time we talked.

I couldn't make out where such a crew might have come from or what they were up to and I don't know that I ever got a truly straight answer, but Joseph wanted to know where we had been and why and what had we seen, and then soon he was regaling us with stories of his own adventures in Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia and Yemen, not to mention a suite of rain forests from around the globe. He spoke with the speed of a Gattling Gun, his stories and thoughts heading in one direction and then whipsawing in another with so many broken phrases I had a helluva time figuring anything about his past, his purpose or his future. I'll tell you the whole story when I complete the book about our journey because there's not enough time for it all now. Suffice to say, it was interesting and then it was over as the announcement for the flight came and we went our separate ways.

Planning for Lapland

Once in Tromsø, we settled into our old hotel and prepped for the next leg of the journey. The plan was to work our way across Sweden into Northern Lapland. This would require returning to Narvik (see previous journals) by bus, then a train east across northern Sweden to the town of Boden and then finally to the Finnish border before heading north again to the land of the Sami People (Laplanders), ancestors on my mother's side. Before we departed, enjoyed a hardy waffle breakfast, passed the town's little parklet to salute one of the great explorers of the early 20th century-Roald Amundsen, the man who beat Robert Falcon's Scott's team to become the first human to reach the South Pole, the first European to navigate the Northwest Passage, and the first to cross the North Pole (he did it by Zeppelin).

And prepared to bus and train our way through some of the most remote land in Northern Europe…