3 October 2015

from Saguenay to Øresund

3 October 2015
Map: Abraham Ortelius, Daniae Regni Typus, 1571

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Saturday 3 October 2015--During my travels, I find it useful to know when sunrise and sunset will be. The time changes fairly rapidly, about three minutes a day on either end, at the high latitudes of the North Atlantic. Tourists landing at Keflavik in Iceland around the time of the summer solstice will be interested to know that the sun sets just after midnight, and rises just before 3:00am. Aviators who fly by line of sight (and walkers who find themselves out in the hills after sunset) need to know when civil twilight starts and ends. In the far north, as summer approaches, twilight stretches longer and longer before sunrise and after sunset. Eventually, evening and morning twilight run together, and true night ceases to fall. At Keflavik, it's light around the clock from about May 20 to about July 24. At Akureyri, just sixty miles from the Arctic Circle, the period of nonstop daylight starts a week earlier and ends a week later. People often talk about the effect of winter darkness on mood. I think I would find months of perpetual light equally unsettling, in a different way.

Well, that's not anything I need to worry about in October. We land at Keflavik at 6:30, shortly before the beginning of civil twilight. The sun will rise in another hour. I've come to associate the darkness, and the gradual gray dawn following, with arrival here. It goes along with the increasing bustle in the terminal, as the incoming North American flights land. When I first came here, there were half a dozen or so of these, on one airline. Since then, Icelandair has increased service, and several other airlines are now using Keflavik. The terminal has expanded enormously, the number of gates tripled. Further expansion is ongoing.

We are changing planes today, bound for Copenhagen. Lots of people change here, and many, I gather, never actually visit Iceland. I don't know how they resist. I suppose if you are looking forward to the civilized delights of Paris or Rome, the view out the terminal windows here seems alien and bleak. I feel the pull of the land looking at that same view, even more from the plane, coming or going. The urge to get out and go somewhere is eased this morning by the knowledge that I have a stopover scheduled on the return trip. Win, who is traveling with me for the next week, does not. He will have to deal with it in his own way.

We have views over southern Iceland on our onward flight, then a bit of Norway, then Denmark. Get a good look at Øresund, the strait separating Denmark from southern Sweden, and the Øresund Bridge spanning the southern end of it. It's Øresundsbroen in Danish, Öresundsbron in Swedish; oddly, the hybrid Øresundsbron seems to be most common. Land in Copenhagen and deal with the usual confusion of an unfamiliar airport, including transfer to the train. The self-serve ticket kiosks resist our attempts to decipher them (hint: American credit cards don't work), and we have to queue up at the ticket counter. Soon enough we are on our way across the bridge to Sweden. Our hotel in Malmö is not far from the train station. It's well on in the afternoon, and we are dragging. Sophie, the cheerful front desk clerk, perks us up and checks us in. We nevertheless go right in for a nap; perkiness has its limits. It feels like it has been a long trip already, by automobile, plane, and train.

It's not long before we get out to wander around town. We pass through Stortorget, the large central square; Lille Torg, a smaller one lined with restaurants and bars; and Gustav Adolfs Torg, site of the public market. I have to confess that I have no real motive for visiting Malmö, except that it is there. Once we decided to make Copenhagen the centerpiece of our trip, we set about looking for points of interest on either side of the strait. An unfamiliar and not-too-large Swedish city with a medieval core seemed as good a place as any to try to shake off jet lag. I was only vaguely aware of the Danish-Swedish television crime drama The Bridge, set here and in Copenhagen. [I'm catching up on it.] So I don't really have any strong sense of what I want to do here. But of course, I have researched some pubs to visit. At the appropriate hour, I lead Win to the Green Lion, over the other side of the train station, and then the Bishops Arms, on Gustav Adolfs Torg. They are both very nice English-style pubs, but it's hard to escape the notion that drinking in English pubs in Sweden is a lot like eating at McDonald's or the like, trying too hard to find the familiar in a new place. Somehow I don't quite feel the same about chowing down at Shawarma King. It isn't Swedish, but it isn't American, either. In fact, this sort of Middle Eastern food stand feels very European to me.

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