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Behind a polar circle there was usual June weather. Mornings are clean, transparent, in the afternoon stem of thermometer rose even up to +25. Towards evening clouds came, but by midnight the sky cleared up again and the sun filled in all around. Sitting on steps small forest & laquo; хьютте» sipping strong 40-degree aquavit, it is possible to be heated in beams of this midnight sun. To listen to silence and to bring slowly in the netbook of an impression of day travel on the North of Norway.

Constantly there live 3300 people & mdash; in the town of Honningsvog (near it traces of the most ancient settlement in the territory of Norway just were also found) and in several fishing small villages. With the continent Mageryoya connects the tunnel 6,8 km long dug at a depth of two hundred with superfluous meters below sea-level. Fare to pony is 145 Norwegian kroner from the ordinary car and 775 kroner from the bus & mdash; an utter nonsense for thousands of travelers who are annually going to "the poor island" to look at the place where Europe comes to an end. It comes to an end suddenly: the flat land surface suddenly breaks a steep, three hundred-meter abyss. Below silently lap steel color of a wave. Afar the boundless World Ocean stretches for hundreds and thousands of kilometers Е Even the most unemotional person at this boundary is involuntarily covered by some strange feeling and visit thoughts of limits of all real. Actually, for the sake of this beauty people also renounced the truth. The extremity of any island by the rules adopted in geography cannot be considered as an extreme point of the continent. But, anyway, Norwegians consider the cape Nordkap the northernmost tip of Europe. As a tourist object it is for the first time mentioned in the guide of 1867. From the 1875th Cook's agency will organize regular groups for Nordkap's visit. In the 1890th the seven-day cruise in a cabin of the first class from Trondheim to Nordkap cost 300 kroner, the sum astronomical for those times. The ships usually moored and landed passengers in the gulf Hornvika, in 2,5 km to the east from the well-known cape. There to this day the remains of the old mooring and the leader on the top of a ladder in 1008 steps remained. The normal overland way to Nordkap, by the way, was paved only in 1956, and till that time the sea way remained the main thing. At the end of the 19th century on the cape there was only a small hexagonal wooden pavilion. Today there is a big tourist Nordkapphallen complex. It is necessary to pay tribute to his architects: over the Earth's surface two floors tower at most. Inside panoramic movie theater at which the beautiful specific roller is shown. Restaurant, gift shop. The most northern in the world post office from where cards with the corresponding stamp go. Having paid symbolical 30 kroner, it is possible to acquire the personalized certificate confirming your stay on the edge of the Old World. The administration urges not to designate the visit by inscriptions like "There was Vasya (Fritz, John, Akiro Е)" and also not to build a pyramid of stones which separately look very lovely, but in mass quantity do not decorate a surrounding landscape at all. From the main building of Nordkapphallen to the region of the cape conducts a hundred-meter tunnel; placed in it is mute an exposition tells about the history of opening Nordkapa. There is a Thai pavilion devoted to a visit here in 1907 of the king Chulalongkorn. Row & mdash; an ecumenical chapel in which wedding ceremonies are made. And at the end of a tunnel Grotten Bar where to guests suggest to note achievement of the cape a glass of ice champagne & mdash is located; such is 150-year tradition. A certain theatrical action is at the same time developed: solemn music sounds, over steklyannoysteny the curtain slowly rises, opening a view of the ocean and the midnight sun hanging over the horizon. You will be able to observe all this if you in one of summer months decide to meet on Nordkap new day.

The most amazing that ancestors of the modern person lived on the wild island Mageryoya, nearly in one thousand kilometers to the north of the Polar circle, in the Stone Age & mdash yet; 10 000 years ago. What did they forget here? Really did not find for yourself other, more comfortable place?. Mageryoya Square about nine hundred square kilometers. Several spacious gulfs and fjords. Mountains 300-400 meters high above sea level & mdash; once, on a legend, they were huge trolls. Dozens of small lakes & mdash; in the summer they feed the streams running from the melting snezhnik; in the winter all is held down by cold and ice around. Uniform tree & mdash; not without reason Mageryoya received a pro-rank "poor island".

Beginning in Kirkenes, at the Russian-Norwegian border, strategic Highway E6 extends along everything the western coast of Norway which is cut up by fjords, to Trondheim, and then goes to depth of the continent, through Lillehammer to Oslo. In 175 km from Alta on Highway E6, in the depth of Flight fjord, the town of Storslett, the administrative center of Northern Troms lies. He on the southeast is left by rather narrow beautiful valley of the river Flights. On both of its sides & mdash; mountain chains height about kilometer or it is slightly more. One of the met small villages for some reason is called Moscodalen, "The Moscow valley" Е On the 52nd kilometer the road comes to an end also with mdash; further, to border with Finland, the territory of one of 25 Norwegian national parks. Eight hundred square kilometers absolutely wild nature & mdash; neither housing, nor people. In depth of the park conduct pedestrian tracks. It is possible to use the motor boat and to rise upstream the bright small river Flights to the Molisfossen falls. If to move on foot, the road to it will occupy hour four. Hardly anyone will undertake to count how many falls in mountain Norway. Molisfossen from them not the most known and not the biggest, but because not less beautiful. A powerful milky-white stream in a cloud of water dust, making a sound gradually of the working turbine, it is overthrown from height of 269 meters & mdash; on some forty meters is lower than the Eiffel Tower!

On the western coast Mageryoya the bird's market Gyesferspattan, one of the largest in Northern Norway is located. It is a unique natural sight of "the poor island". At the same time here about several million feathery guests nest: deadlocks, cormorants, willocks, olush, eiders, white-tailed sea eagles and still god knows how many kinds of birds. For amateur ornithologists so-called bird-safari will be organized. Chelovek20-30 the tourists armed with field-glasses, photo and video cameras plunge on a small fishing schooner which in half an hour of swimming reaches the town of Gyesfer and begins to drift slowly along the coast. All bird's life clearly. There is such excursion 450 kroner. The birds who got used what watch them, pose absolutely free of charge. They say, hundreds of thousands of belogrudy and krasnoklyuvy deadlocks annually arrive to Gyesferspattan strictly according to the schedule & mdash; exactly at seven in the evening on April 14. Locals on them as if even synchronize watches Е

Strong and skillful northern deer, Sami hunters, in the first century of our era the Roman historian Tacitus described. Dvetysyach of years back Sapmi's earth stretched in the huge territory which is nowadays belonging to Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. About hundred thousand Sami, and more than a half of them & mdash live in these four countries today; in Norway. In 1987 the special law on Sami was adopted here, in two years the first elections to the Lappish parliament of Sametinget designed to advocate the interests of indigenous people and to care for maintaining its culture took place. Similar parliaments are in Sweden and Finland. And the first general meeting of representatives of the northern people took place on February 6, 1917 & mdash; since then this day is celebrated as a holiday national most, more precisely, than a saamoopredeleniye. Karashok, the capital of the Norwegian Sami, is located in 18 km from the Finnish border. The name of the city comes not from Russian "well" as we first thought, and from the Karashokhka River coiling between hills picturesque, overgrown with the wood. In the modern building stylized under traditional Lappish plagues & mdash; to a lavv, sits elected for four years by Sametinget; nearby there is a big ethnographic Sapmi park. There the lavv can sit on cervine skins at a fire in real and to listen to traditional Lappish songs of a yoyka, to glance in the dugout covered with the turf to scale and to visit shaman magic theater & mdash; in general to learn much interesting about culture and traditions of the northern people. It is possible to visit real Lappish family. Specially to your arrival Sami will put on national suits & mdash; bright, red-blue, embroidered by simple patterns; women will throw shoulders with silk scarfs with a long fringe, men will pull down on the heads amusing caps with several sharp tips. The hostess (it in family main; it is more than a half of Sametinget's deputies, by the way, too women) will specify to you your place in a lavva and will treat bidusy & mdash; ragout from cervine cutting with potato and carrots. And later will invite to the open-air cage & mdash; to look at deer by whose number the welfare of any Lappish family is defined to this day. Deer on hundreds kilometers are grazed, dispersing on all finnmarksky plateau. But to hunt them & mdash; even do not dream: there are no wild deer in Norway, all of them the property of Sami. Each animal has two tags: one designates to what Lappish family the deer belongs, another & mdash; to whom exactly of family members. To us, one may say, has the luck to see a local celebrity with the simple name "White Deer in Grey Apples and with Grey Burn Marks". During the visit to Karashok of the king of Norway Harald V and the queen of Sony it rolled the little crown prince Haakon. The elderly, honored deer with enthusiasm ate young sprouts of a reindeer lichen, without paying any attention to the tourists photographing it. And then, having delicately turned away, made that, having sated, all animals usually do.

Alta is similar to the big housing estate. Several hotels, several shopping centers and restaurants. The suburban areas which ran up on coast of the fjord. Main building & mdash; sound, but in appearance modest two-storeyed buildings. Build the house more abruptly, than at the neighbor, comes to nobody to mind. That also mdash is surprising; the altinets living, in fact, in the country place at any opportunity try to escape "to the country", on the nature, to the sea, on coast of the rivers and lakes which in Finnmarka there is about 70 000. Many citizens have small witness marks without light and elementary conveniences, and very much value these possession. Someone uses lodges on wheels and dachas trailers, someone removes huts in campings or just pitches a tent somewhere in a solitude, far away from a civilization. To merge with the nature. To lead healthy, free life. To hunt and catch fish to live Е What else is necessary for happiness? Knut Hamsun perfectly gives this Norwegian mood: "From witness marks I saw turmoil of islands and a shkher, a sea piece, blue tops, and behind a storozhka the wood, the boundless wood lay. As I rejoiced to a smell of roots and foliage, a smell of fat pine pitch; only in the forest everything in me calmed down, I felt strong, healthy, and nothing saddened soul Е In the forest I am free to do everything that I want, I can lay down backwards and close eyes if it wants; also I tell everything that I want". If you are going to Northern Norway in search of a privacy or with friends on fishing, keep in mind that placement conditions for guests here same, as for the, that is very unpretentious. There are no five-star hotels; it is not accepted to appropriate "stars" to hotels in Norway at all. There is no chalet with that level of comfort to what you, perhaps, got used in the Alps also. Forget about a jacuzzi, hair dryers and minibars. Washing machines and microwaves are not in each camping Е But the shower and a sauna are guaranteed. A situation in "hyutta" often the most standard. Plate, table, chairs, bed. Sometimes electric heating, sometimes & mdash; the furnace with a reserve of firewood. And what else is necessary for merge to the nature?!

In the sea it is possible to catch free of charge how many and what you want. River and lake fishing requires the license which costs 200 kroner, and for some freshwater reservoirs rich with a salmon what, for example, Altaelva (near Alta), also special permission is. If you reserve housing in advance, the license for fishing is included, as a rule, into a package. If you remove a lodge in a camping (the hut on four & mdash; 1000— 1200 NOK a day), extend to all your company action of the license which for certain is available for the owner. It is possible to buy permission to fishing by mail or in sports shop.

The Norvegian Air Shuttle airline performs direct flights Moscow & mdash; Oslo five times a week. Aeroflot flies to Oslo once a week on Fridays.

Polar day lasts in Alta, the largest city of the most northern province of Norway & mdash; Finnmarka, from May 16 to July 26. Polar night when the sun is not shown because of the horizon at all, & mdash; from November 23 to January 18. In the winter the sky over the city is painted by the dancing spolokha of the polar lights & mdash day and night; up to 70 different flowers and shades. Scientists, as usual, explain the unique natural phenomenon prosaically & mdash; a luminescence of the rarefied atmosphere layers under the influence of the microparticles getting from space. Aboriginals of the North, Sami, believe that it is souls deceased send live the messages. In 1899 on the Mount Halde (1141) over Alta the first-ever observatory for observations of the polar lights was constructed; now in the city the special scientific center on studying of this phenomenon works. What Alta is still interesting by, so it is the biggest site of rock paintings in Northern Europe which are from 2500 to 6500 years old. The territory, available to survey, is in several kilometers from the downtown, on the bank of the fjord, before Alta Museum. On a slope a planked footway from which it is convenient to consider creations of prehistoric artists & mdash are laid; for greater presentation they are led round by claret paint. Deer, bears, dogs. Boats and plagues. Scenes of hunting and fishing, ceremonial dances. Some muffled plots opening a scope for imagination: whether it is the ships of space newcomers?. In gift shop of the museum it was difficult for me to keep from temptation and not to buy the image probably the first in the history of the skier. It managed cheap & mdash; in only 185 kroner. The skier on a piece of heavy-duty altinsky slate which is exported to many countries of the world is cut out. It, for example, laid out a floor of opera theater in Sydney.

The having one and a half hundred glaciers of Lyungenskiye Alpy with the top point of 1833 m grow directly from the fjord. They therefore make so strong impression that are directly over the sea & mdash; over that level from which height of all mountain tops in the world is counted. The great view of the Lyungen array opens from the southernmost tip of the island Uloya, from the town of Havnes. Since 1795 there was here a trade pier where inhabitants of the North and South of the country met and exchanged goods. Since 1868 the cape and all constructions which are on it, the oldest of which under two hundred years, belong to family Yever. It is interesting that, leaving Norway at the end of World War II, the Germans applying "tactics of the scorched earth" did not touch this idyllic place. When in 1945, after the forced evacuation, Havnes's owners came back home, on doors they found a note: "Adequately gift. Not to burn!" The hereditary family business Yeverov is engaged in preparation "стокфиш" & mdash; dried cod and haddock. The annual output is about one thousand tons. The most part goes for export. On the place it is possible to buy this small fish melting in the mouth at the price of 400 kroner for a kilogram, here and to use under specialty tromsovsky Mac beer. Or to Moscow to take also mdash; it is stored stokfish long. I hope, at you it will turn out. We finished off the stocks the next day Е