At the top of Europe: the magic is not only Nordkapp

Only a few years ago I started wanting to reach that destination considered extreme by all the eighteen-year-olds of my generation, which I had, of course, missed: North Cape. Naturally, the difficulty lay in the distance and the prohibitive costs that have always "surrounded" Norway. A few months ago, chatting about this and that with some friends, I had an idea that I then carried out at more contained costs. We in fact arrived in northern Finland, at Rovaniemi, from where we picked up a car to reach the cape. I have already talked about Finland in another section, where I nonetheless anticipated that northern Norway, Finnmark, is a stunning region. From Rovaniemi we headed north-west and, from a certain point on, we followed the border with Sweden, from which a large river separated us, until we entered Norway.

As we got closer, the landscape changed: the gentle, wide hills turned into mountains covered in snow and ice in the process of melting, we started to find lakes still frozen, suddenly we found ourselves on the edge of deep ravines, without having had the slightest impression of being so high up: in short, the spaces became stronger, more powerful and more exciting. All of this was seasoned with strong, continuous winds and the temperature had dropped by 4 or 5 degrees, reaching about 8 degrees.

Here, at last, we had the true sense of being in the North, because of the fact that, at temperatures indeed not so low, the lakes could still be so frozen! The roads are slightly better in Finland, but overall, between the speed limits, the reindeer that cross continuously and suddenly, the bends and the state of the asphalt, well, quite simply, you CANNOT speed! So, on the day we reached the Cape, to cover 600 km we took more than 12 hours, with many stops, but almost all brief. The first village we reached was Skibotn, from where we then always followed the sea up to just beyond Alta; from here we cut across to Olderfjord, a village overlooking the Porsanger fjord, and which after about 70 km finally reaches the island of Magerøya, on whose northern tip North Cape faces.

Overall, the road is varied, because coniferous forests alternate with tundra, and hills and plateaus are constantly marked by the presence of water, in the form of lakes and rivers. The mountains are all around and when you are on the fjord you have no clear awareness of which are the islands, the mainland, the open sea or the end of a fjord. Above all, continuous waterfalls of water pouring into the sea or onto the road. On this marvel of nature many little wooden houses are built, typically painted red, but also in other colours, including various shades of sugar-cane blue, and in general the Norwegian Finnmark, compared with the Finnish one, appears much more lively.

The part of the Porsanger fjord is FANTASTIC, it is low on the sea and the other side of the fjord is distant and white; the mountains seem lower and you continuously have the idea of how ancient this land is and how evident are the geological evolutions it has undergone, from the many colours of the rocks and from the very different consistency of the ground or the rock. Having arrived at Magerøya we simply took the tunnel that goes down and then brutally rises again until it puts you on the island. Everyone points out how expensive it is: to me it didn't seem so, because if you had to take the ferry with the car it would certainly have cost just as much, if not more. From here we reached Honningsvåg, the largest village on the island, pretty, full of character, but where at 9 pm it was not possible to find anything to eat...

either everything was closed or they didn't feel like serving us. Overall, both here and in Finland, it was not easy to find food, because it seems that all the places open after 22 June, so, keeping this in mind, every time we found a supermarket we stocked up on something to nibble. In Honningsvåg we eventually found only a pub, which anyway didn't sell food, so we at least had a beer, and here we had our first taste of the prices in this country, since we spent 20 euros for 2 medium local beers! The second taste we had after 30 km, to enter the North Cape area, where we spent about 70 euros! At the museum it is worth watching the film, for the rest it is more than anything a collection of commercial finds. But the Cape, sheer above the sea and the infinite, is truly moving.

We were lucky not to find fog, a situation that apparently happens to many, but it was a bit cloudy, so, even though we decided not to look for a place to sleep, to stay in the car and watch, we didn't manage to follow the sun as it went down... without reaching the very end. But towards half past one, the clouds were swept away by the powerful gusts of wind and the sun appeared in all its splendour, on the sea, on the Cape and on us. After about an hour, in the heart of the sunlit night, we felt satisfied and took the road back south, meeting very few mad people like us, many reindeer grazing at any hour, and the grand Norwegian nothingness that consists of infinite spaces, sky, sea and land... as far as the eye can see. Absolutely FANTASTIC.