Narvik, Norway

Narvik Field Notes · Viking Land

I Didn’t Wake Up. I Came To.

Home of the Nobel Peace Prize, Norwegian Wood, alternative reality, and one suspiciously small bicycle.

In a perfect world, chickens get to cross the road without having their motives questioned.

Featured Film

Viking Land in Motion

The Call

Nobel Intentions

Here in Viking land, home of the Nobel Peace Prize, prestige and impact still carry their own mythology.

The prestige, the impact of winning a Nobel—I’d kill for one.

Rewriting the dictionary of superlatives does not help. Magnificent, stunning, breathtaking, spectacular and awesome simply will not do.

Stunning and rejuvenating will have to.

Foreign Land

Alternative Reality

Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts. In Northern Europe, ignorance can feel like bliss.

There is no global warming—the water is too cold to go swimming.

Ecstasy is the condition of not doing your ordinary everyday routine. It is stepping into an alternative reality.

This place was meant to be snowed in.

Narvik Norway landscape

Answer the Call

The Bicycle with No Brakes

Small bicycle in Narvik Norway
Small but Effective After a little adjustment, the brakes worked and the trip downtown became considerably shorter.

On my walk into Narvik, I found a bicycle with no brakes.

After a little tweak, I got them to work.

It was a bit small, but it cut the travel time into downtown considerably.

In travel, scale is negotiable. Momentum is not.

Field Transmission

Narvik on Two Wheels

Comic Geography

Norwegian Wood

Norwegian Wood in Narvik
Norwegian Wood A Beatles song—and eventually, perhaps, IKEA furniture.

Northern Europe turns landscape into deadpan comedy.

One minute the scenery is sublime. The next, the sublime is flat-packed, labelled, and missing one small screw.

The Elixir

Some mornings you wake up. Other mornings, the landscape brings you back online.

Narvik is alternative reality with practical brakes: snow, irony, mountains, bicycles, Norwegian Wood, and enough beauty to make the ordinary world feel temporarily fictional.

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