The Lofoten Islands

New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 137, 6 February 1942, Page 5

The Lofoten Islands

‘TAKE the Lofoten Islands-they’ve been in the news a couple of times recently. This group of islands is off the coast of Norway, high up, right inside the Arctic Circle. They are actually further

north than Iceland. We are apt to think of any land ‘beyond the Arctic Circle as being, to our comfortable standards, much too cold for ordinary living. It suggests arctic conditions, frozen harbours, locked with ice for many months, ahd all the land deep under snow. But as a matter of fact, though the Lofoten Islands are inside the Arctic Circle, they are not such a frozen waste as might be imagined. They are planted right in the course of the warm Gulf Stream, which sweeps across the Atlantic from the Gulf of Mexico, bringing some of that Mexican heat, a little watered down, of course, right across those miles’ of ocean, to act like a nice hot water bottle in this arctic cold. The vegetation is extraordinarily luxuriant for such a latitude. Ferns two and three feet high grow on the lower slopes. The warmth of the Gulf Stream even makes the climate a little enervating, which seems strange in these latitudes. We usually associate that with tropical, or semi-tropical heat. In a good winter, even the sheep may remain out of doors right throughout \the season, as there is little snow. And another amazing thing about these Islands up in the Arctic Circle, is that the sea around them, even the sheltered harbours. are never frozen in

winter.

— ("Shoes and Ships and Sealing Wax."

Nelle

Scanlan

2YA, january 9.)