Lofoten Islands, Norway 2025
Over the years I’ve heard so much about the Lofoten Islands, seen the pictures of the red fishing cabins set in the fjords, and the views of the mountains surrounding this beautiful area. and many quaint fishing villages with a lot of recreation including hiking, kayaking, and shopping. There are many wonderful restaurants that are so good that we kept going back to the same ones time after time. This trip was hosted by Explorelight.com and Daragh Muldowney, from Ireland, was our guide.
We started the trip in Leknes, and I flew them from Tromso having completed the previous week visiting Senja. Our hotel was the Scandic Leknes Lofoten. The front desk clerk was very helpful and friendly. Note, this hotel does not have an elevator, but the chef is happy to drag your oversized luggage up to the second floor. With that said, the chef had many talents and the food was delicious. I highly recommend the seafood stew. The breakfast was very good. There is an amazing coffee shop, the Kaffebar, just down the drive from the hotel and it is very easy to walk around Leknes with plenty of shops for souvenirs.
Our tour guide met us at the hotel and we set off for the beach to shoot the northern lights. Not quite the show we had in Senja, but amazing nevertheless. We saw a lot of shooting stars/meteors and Daragh made it very easy for us to focus using a small light he brought with him.
The second day in Leknes was spent shooting reflections from the beach which is surrounded by mountains. The sunrise and sunsets were around 9:00 and 4:00 so we had plenty of time to get shots of both along with plenty of time to move around during the day. We stopped at one location that had a fishery with a reflection that showed the building and surrounding mountains. There were numerous boats to add to the picture. On the way in I spotted a church and after asking, Daragh was happy to stop and let us capture shots there as well. It turned out to be a good decision.
On day three, we found the Eye of Uttakliev. This is a rock formation that resembles on an eye. From pictures I saw on-line it looks massive, but we had to hike around a big to find it. We also stopped at a boat shed along the road in Vareid. This had some beautiful shots if you just moved around and was willing to climb down to the shed. Another location was the place I nicknamed Heart Beach. It had a heart-shaped rock balanced on another boulder. We also made a last minute decision to pull over at a roadside stop to catch a reflection of a mountain in the water. We attracted a lot of attention and soon there was quite a gathering of people around us.
Day four found us on our way to Hamnoy where we lodged at the little red fishing cabins called Eliassen Rorbuer. These cabins had kitchens, dining areas, living areas, and bedrooms. I stayed in a one-bedroom and had an enormous amount of space. The place was packed with tourists and we found out that the Chinese New Year was in progress which explained the make-up of the tourist base. We stopped at a grocery on the way and picked up food that we cooked in our rooms.
One the way, we stopped at a number of popular places to shoot including a beach where a woman was pulled into quicksand right in front of us. A small creek was running over the beach and before she could second guess her spot, she sunk almost to her backside. Our guide, Daragh, pulled her out of the situation. Another stop was to shoot a small red shack in front of a fjord along with a hundred other tourists. It was a nice area to walk along the boardwalk. Another stop was at an industrial area where we shot a pointy mountain reflection near a bridge.
That night we ate at a restaurant in Hamnoy called the Restaurant Gammelbua, in fact we ate there multiple times. The food was fantastic. In the summer you’d have a deck to sit on while eating but in the winter time the fireplace was the star. Venture upstairs to see the boats and other artifacts they have on display. After dinner we trekked up to the bridge where all the famous pictures originate from. The northern lights arrived, but so did some blustery weather.
The second day in Hamnoy gave us some great shots from the bridge. There wasn’t much snow so it was a bit icy walking around. Next we moved to the back side of the resort and shot cabins and mountains from other directions. Our next trip took us to Sakrisoy, Norway. There are a lot of shops there and a restaurant with a fabulous salmon sandwich and hot chocolate. We shot a lot of pictures from the village including the fish drying shed, a hike up the mountain, shots from the bridge and a pier on the opposite side. The colorful village stands out well against the mountains.
Our next stop was at Reine, a village in Moskenesoya, Norway. We were on top of an overlook shooting the picture shown in the home page of this web-site. There were a lot of people in this area. We also stopped at a number of places including lighthouses, more northern lights from the bridge, and Skangsanden beaches. Daragh made sure our days were full of shooting opportunities.
After leaving the Hamnoy area, we headed back to Leknes. There had been very, very little snow the whole time we were there. Upon arriving at the airport in Leknes around 1:00 p.m., I unknowingly turned down the last flight to leave that day. Over the next few hours, eighteen inches of snow fell on the airport, and all flights were canceled. The passengers on the flight after hours were shuttled to a local hotel. After waiting quite a while to see if it would let up, and it didn’t, they decided that they were going to ferry us to Bodo. You definitely get to know your fellow travelers when you’re stuck at the airport for hours. Unfortunately, I also was suffering from a case of the Flu.
Our next ride was a short bus ride to the port where we had to purchased our own tickets for the ferry. It was not expensive, but seriously thought the airline would have picked this up. To our surprise, the ferry turned out to be the Hurtigruten Norway Cruise ship. I had seen articles on cruises aboard this ship, but never dreamed I’d get a quick ride. We were not assigned cabins and had to leave our luggage when we checked in with the ticket agent. Of course this meant claiming it at the end of the trip. We all hung out in one of the lounges trying to rebook our travel for the remainder of the trip. I had to spend a couple of days in Tromso waiting on a flight home while some of my fellow travelers returned to Scotland, Ireland, and other destinations.
Arriving back in Tromso took me back to the Comfort Hotel Express. It was mid-morning, but due to my condition, they quickly found me a room and directed me to the pharmacy a few blocks over. The two days in Tromso were no big deal, and the rest of the ride home went well. By the time I got back to the States, I was feeling pretty good.