JOURNEY TO SALTEN, NORWAY, UNDER THE MIDNIGHT SUN

Here, far from the crowds, in opal clarity, from May to September, the sun knows no rest. As soon as it’s about to set, it rises again

-  Vincent Noyoux

It’s a secret corner of the Norwegian north coast. Beneath the Arctic Circle, facing the Lofoten Islands, Salten offers wild  landscapes far from the tourist crowds. Even if, this year, the town of Bodø is the European Capital of Culture

It’s wrong to sulk about Bodø (pronounced “boudeu”). Visitors hardly linger in this small port, too eager to reach the spectacular Lofoten Islands. They forget that the landscapes of Salten are of the same calibre...and much less frequented. They are also probably unaware that in 2024, Bodø is the European Capital of Culture, the first to be located below the Arctic Circle. More than 1,000 events punctuate the year, making the capital of Salten, with its 53,000 inhabitants, an “arctic” city.

For the time being, the streets are quiet, bathed in opal light as midnight approaches. From May to July, the sun never rests. As soon as it’s about to set, it rises, bathing the night in its diurnal light. “The sun would barely dip its disc into the ocean and then rise again, red and renewed, as if it had come down to drink”, wrote local boy Knut Hamsun in Pan. It is to the call of this northern nature, depicted by the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature (1920), that we must respond without delay.