Monday 12 September 2022--I will be all day on MS Polarlys today. Another reason I chose this sailing, rather than flying to Tromsø, was so that I could cross the Arctic Circle on the surface instead of in the air. I asked at the service desk yesterday what time this would happen, and was given a very vague answer--I didn't realize that a pool was being conducted on the exact time, and I was in effect asking for inside information. Oops. As it happens, we pass a marker on a rocky island called Vikingen, purporting to denote the Circle, at 7:53am [or so the time stamp on my photo reads]. Wikipedia says the Arctic Circle is at 66°33'49.2", and according to my own GPS, we pass that point twelve minutes later. Vikingen is at 66° 31' 57, about two miles south of that. In fact, the Arctic Circle is not constant, fluctuating within a range of a bit more than 2° over a period of 41,000 years; it's currently drifting northward at a rate of about 48 feet a year. If that speed has been reasonably constant, the Circle would have passed through Vikingen late in the 18th century.

Whatever the case, the coastal scenery is considerably more rugged today than yesterday's. At 10:00, we land at Ørnes, where we are greeted by a group of schoolchildren, dancing (with varying degrees of enthusiasm) to a peppy tune that sounds like it was lifted from a teacher's aerobics class. A short while later, we are treated to a personal appearance by Neptune himself, here to award a prize to the winner of the pool, and to engage the passengers in a bit of folderol. There's a fair amount of water involved. I observe from a safe distance.

At 1:05, we dock at the town of Bodø (pop ~40,000), where there is a two-and- a-quarter hour layover. I'd thought about spending a night here--there's a fast passenger ferry from Bodø to Skutnik, and another from there to Svolvær via the island of Skrova. There's an interesting-looking hotel and restaurant on Skrova, and I made an inquiry about spending a night there. The restaurant isn't open tonight, though, so I scratched that, and am taking the slow boat to Lofoten instead. A walkabout in Bodø is enough to satisfy my curiosity.

From Bodø, the Polarlys sails across broad Vestfjorden toward Stamsund, at the heart of the Lofoten archipelago. The advancing darkness only heightens my sense of anticipation as we approach the islands. It's another hour and a half from Stamsund to Svolvær. We land at 9:20. I disembark and head for my hotel, having set foot in Lofoten at last, after so many years of dreaming.