Nordlight and the Swan 44 Cadeau
Nordlight is a haven for travellers and readers at the edge of the World, between the snowy peaks of Vanna Island and the Barents Sea. Geography calls it a peninsula, with a windswept cape, a small bay prized by killer whales, and a tundra of rocks and grasses, sometimes white, sometimes green, fought over by gulls, woodcocks, terns, sheep and reindeer. Men have built a microscopic village of a few houses that were once for fishermen, and the two houses of Nordlight defend the eastern front. Nordlight is at the foot of Vannkista and Peppertinden, around 1,000 metres, designed by geology to lift the eyes to an endless horizon of snow, ice and blue oceans, and to ski in the powder down to the sea.
A few miles to the west is the sheltered harbour of Kristoffervalen, the base of our Swan 44 Cadeau, an adventurous boat that comes from long voyages in Alaska and Patagonia. Cadeau happily splashes around in these quirky waters and takes Nordlight guests to the islands of Senja, Kagen and Arnoya, which are particularly difficult to reach without a boat, to continue their discovery of the mountains of the great north. It is also a perfect playmate for following the killer whales that inhabit the waters off Nordlight from the end of October.
Nordlight’s white house, the House of Books, is now 101 years old and is all wood, nails and glass. The ground floor will become a library designed to tell the story of the Arctic and its people, a refuge for islanders, the curious and readers who want to come and discover it. It will be a house that tells its own story, and that of those who come to discover it. The door will always be open, like churches used to be. In churches a candle was lit, here a book is left behind. The library with its beams will house the travellers and creative people who want to go up here, and it will never be connected to the network.
The red house, the refuge for sea and mountain travellers, is half a century younger, but its four rooms and lounge are still made of wood, nails and glass. Its large windows open onto the Auroras, the ocean and the present of fibre optics.
In Nordlight you can spend a week simply embracing the world, books, ocean, ice and an endless collection of tireless birds. In October the Northern Lights season begins, in November the killer whales arrive. In March, light shines on the two 1,000-metre peaks behind Nordlight, and it’s seal skin time. In June, the midnight sun shines in the north, outside the windows. And still to the north, as beautiful and mysterious in summer as in winter, the island of Fugloya, with its gothic atmosphere and its swarm of puffins, inspires, if possible, the desire to explore further.
