Wed
10 Aug
2016

10th-12th August 2016 – Exci­ting days on the north coast of Nord­aus­t­land. To the south, the­re are the lar­ge ice caps, and to the north, the Arc­tic Oce­an. Bet­ween them, a nar­row stri­pe of bar­ren, ice-free land. It has ple­nty of rocks and lichens. Any­thing else is rare or absent.

And yet, the­re is so much. Impres­si­ons that are hard to squeeze into words. Land­scapes that have a lot of NOT­HING. I don’t mean the absence of any­thing that could catch the eye or mind. Quite the oppo­si­te: the­re is a lot of some­thing that might be descri­bed as NOT­HING. May­be emp­ty­ness is ano­ther term that makes the point. Any attempt to descri­be this would soon get bog­ged down in a long list of stones and rocks, shore­li­nes and gla­ciers, bays and fjords. Every flower, no mat­ter how small, beco­mes an attrac­tion, any chan­ge of rock cat­ches our atten­ti­on. It pro­ba­b­ly doesn’t sound very exci­ting unless you have expe­ri­en­ced the gre­at NOT­HING yours­elf. Many could pro­ba­b­ly stand in this land­scape and wouldn’t expe­ri­ence the gre­at NOT­HING, but just see – not­hing.

Gal­lery – Nord­aus­t­land – 10th-12th August 2016

Click on thumb­nail to open an enlar­ged ver­si­on of the spe­ci­fic pho­to.

We hap­pen­ed to visit the Hau­de­gen sta­ti­on, the last out­post of Ger­man sol­diers during the second world war. A mili­ta­ry wea­ther sta­ti­on that was not reli­e­ved befo­re Sep­tem­ber 1945, when a ship came from Nor­way. Ano­ther place we visi­ted was inner Bren­ne­vins­fjord, whe­re the Glen expe­di­ti­on from Oxford had a base for their rese­arch on the ice cap Ves­t­fon­na in 1935-36. The edge of the ice cap is just a few minu­tes wal­king away from the shore and it is easi­ly acces­si­ble.

Now we are on our way into Hin­lo­pen Strait.