Lofoten Lullaby

               Islands can isolate, islands can comfort, islands are narrow and broad, weather worn and ocean ravaged, wildernesses of wonder. Islands are different to mainlands.

             I suppose that it is correct to say that I grew up on an island. Anybody who was born and bred in the UK did. But maybe it is important to note the differences between a small island and a large one. A little island sometimes feels set aside from the maelstrom of being. It is a still water in a rushing stream. I grew up in a rushing stream.

     Robert Macfarlane is a favourite writer of mine. The way in which he writes about the outdoors, climbing experiences, history and geography and the world around us, is peerless. His language has a flow and easy elision which is gentle and soporific.

When I visited the UK in 2019, I had no intention of buying a book. I am always happy to lose myself in a book shop but was determined not to bow to the inevitable.  But walking up a street in the Roman city of Bath where our daughter, Alison, worked at the time, splashed across the window of a large book shop was the startling orange cover of Macfarlane’s new book, ‘Underland’.  Being about to embark on a Norwegian ferry ride for 11 days, plying its trade between Bergen and the Russian border, I thought that I would have ample opportunity to read it.

The sun shone, the sky was blue for every day of that journey, Dear Reader. The sights and sounds, gently nudging one’s way up a beautiful coastline, were a feast for the senses. The chapter entitled ‘Red Dancers’ in Macfarlane’s book was particularly intriguing because of its relevance to that current journey. It was about the author’s adventure on the Lofoten Islands which the boat was about to visit .  I read and reread it in anticipation of the pending arrival. At this point in my short story, Dear Friends, I apologise because I am going to fail you. I have not the skill to paint a word picture that will do justice to the majestic beauty of that intriguing panorama. All I can do is furnish the mundane facts. The Lofotens are situated well above the Arctic Circle, they are an archipelago now joined by bridge and road . They are populated by under 25, 000 people. They are a wonderland of stark, rocky peaks thrusting forth as if fired from beneath the sea, jagged, pointed, giant arrowheads shot upwards from some underwater bow-bearing Neptune.

I do not know what it is like to live on the Lofoten Islands except I am aware that they fish and hang their catch to dry on racks, except that they enjoy a mainlander’s standard of living with enough separation from the Norwegian coastline to give them an idiosyncratic identity, albeit with their native Norwegian nuances intact.

I am guessing that if one were to assemble the islanders of the world at some form of convention, be they from large islands like Tasmania or Vancouver Island or smaller ones like the Faeroes, Pitcairn, Orkney and such, they are going to sit down and find common ground. Maybe the fishing, the diet, an ability to make do and adapt, a closeness to the elements of climate and geography, a greater understanding of the seas and oceans. I think, Dear Reader, that they are going to find more common ground amongst themselves than they may find from the culture and mores of their fellow countrymen and women from the mainland.  I suppose there is a city parallel here. For example, I expect that a New Yorker may find that she has more in common with a Londoner than, say, somebody from Barrow Gurney, Somerset or Cheyenne, Wyoming.

I do not think, Dear Reader, that I could live on an island. I would not want to do so. Why? Because my fantasy of island life needs to remain complete. I love the image of islanders as huddled around a fire while a winter storm blows outside; I like the picture of gatherings in village hall or community centre for evenings of music and chat; I adore the idea of neighbourly friendliness, helping and comforting and bantering. I like the belief in a physical boundary that creates an essential bond within it.

Now some two years removed from my visit to the Lofotens, what I have is a memory and a picture[i], an Utopian vision of an ideal world which can only be muddied by the unlikely event of my ever staying there for a period of time. I have a lingering Lofoten lullaby and I want to keep it that way.

Stay safe, friends.

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