I found my dream trip on the other side of the Atlantic in a land steeped in the folklore of Vikings, ruled by trolls and bathed in the midnight sun.
TRAVELS WITH PAKBOATS
Norwegian Woods
By Rolf and Debra Kraiker (this story appeared in the magazine Kanawa in somewhat shortened and edited form)
My idea of the perfect canoe trip would begin on a mirror-calm alpine lake ringed by snow-capped mountains in the Yukon. The paddle out of this lake would take me down 
a spectacular river canyon where waterfalls cascade from cliffs at every turn. Eventually the river would take me onto the rolling barren lands of Nunavut’s high arctic. From there my dream journey would lead me to the sea where I’d be paddling beside the lush vegetation of a Newfoundland fjord. This summer I was able to turn my dream trip into reality, but it didn’t happen in Canada’s north instead I found it on the other side of the Atlantic in a land steeped in the folklore of Vikings, ruled by trolls and bathed in the midnight sun.
My dream trip began unbeknown to me while I was preparing logistics for an earlier arctic trip. To solve a logistical problem, I met up with Alv Elvestad of Pakboats, the folding canoes that are becoming very commonplace on wilderness expeditions. Alv is a Norwegian now living in New Hampshire with his American wife where he’s manufacturing the folding canoes. We visited them at their home to test paddle the Pakboats and over the years we’ve become friends. Alv and Linda had extended an invitation to join them some summer for a canoe trip in Norway and we decided to take them up on their offer. Our sons Brendan and Kyle are now old enough that our days of tripping as a family might soon be over, so we wanted to make this year’s adventure special.
Norway doesn’t appear very large when looking at a map of Europe and it isn’t very wide, but it is brutally long. After landing at the airport in Oslo, it took us two solid days of travel by bus and train to get to the village where we were to meet Alv and Linda. We were the first of the crew to arrive. Over the next 24 hours we’d be joined at the farm by another four paddlers to make the full 
compliment of 10 in five canoes to begin the trip. My wife Debra is my long-time paddling partner and besides being perfectly comfortable in either end of our canoes, is an expert wilderness cook. Our two boys Brendan and Kyle have been going with us on long wilderness trips since they were infants and can hold their own in the best of company. Ralf was the next to arrive. He came from Germany where he works as an engineer for Mercedes. Laurie would be coming from the US where she worked as an outdoor educator. Espen was another native Norwegian who lived a little to the south of the river where we’d be travelling where he worked as an outfitter and wilderness guide. Espen’s companion Lena was a student from Sweden and an accomplished musician.
When everything was set to go, we took a mini-van shuttle across the border into Finland where Alv had arranged for a bush plane to fly us to a remote lake on the high alpine plateau. When we arrived at the floatplane base, the engine cowling was off the Cessna tied to the dock. We didn’t need an interpreter to understand the situation, one look at the scowl on the pilot’s face was enough to let us know it was unlikely the plane would be taking us anywhere that day. Fortunately, Alv had a Plan B. We transferred our flight plan over to a helicopter stationed a short distance away. Alv seemed disappointed in the turn of events, but the rest of us were all delighted at the novelty of beginning a wilderness trip with a chopper shuttle. The flight to the lake in the mountains was one of the gentlest I’ve ever experienced in bush flying.
On the flight in we noticed a small tent pitched near where we landed. The tent looked remarkably like the “campfire” style preferred by Bill Mason, only made from a shiny silver-nylon instead of cotton. It took us a few hours to get the canoes assembled, tents set up, supper eaten and dishes put away. Once all that was done, Alv hiked over to chat with the owners of the tent. They were paddlers who wanted to follow the Lataseno River towards the Baltic but were stranded. The Cessna that was sitting back at the docks waiting for parts had dropped them here a few days earlier, but failed to return later with their rental canoe. I later asked Alv if campfire style tents like that one were common in Scandinavia but he said not. Apparently the influence of Bill Mason through his books and films is far-reaching.
The traditional tent in this part of the world comes from the Sami (Lapland) culture and is very similar to the north American tipi. Espen, the Norwegian outfitter, brought his Lavvu for the trip and it was interesting to see it in action. It could be erected in a very short time and there was a surprising amount of room inside. On one rain-soaked evening we all ate supper inside the Lavvu, warmed by a fire that Espen lit inside the tent. I was skeptical that a tipi structure like the Lavvu could stand up against the high winds common in the Canadian arctic, but Espen told us that he’d used one on a 50 day trip in the Back River region of the NWT. It held up just fine.
The first day of travel set the tone for the trip. A lack of rain was going to make it a challenge to find enough water any time the river dropped into rapids. Our trip began in a small chain of lakes that looked remarkably like the headwaters of many of the rivers in Canada’s western arctic – as long as you disregarded the occasional building to accommodate hikers or the reindeer herding Laplanders. The first days involved a lot of wading and lining rapids. The river bottom was mostly boulders and footing was precarious. We’d attempt to sneak down any line that would float a canoe until it inevitably ground to a halt. With so many experienced paddlers on the trip, it was often a challenge match to find the best lines and see who could go the longest before stopping. The esker campsites and rolling tundra all reminded me of the Canadian arctic, but coming around a bend in the river to find fly fishermen casting was a surprise I never got used to.
The river taught us that Norwegians have a talent for understatement. We soon learned that when Alv suggested the next rapid would be “easy”, it meant some tricky wading and lining. A “moderate” portage meant scaling a cliff skirting a waterfall and lowering the canoes down the other side on ropes. An “interesting” rapid would guarantee at least a few white knuckle moments. None of us wanted to hear him say the next challenge would be “difficult” – thankfully he never did.
After a few days travel, we stopped at a cold war era border post called Munnikurkkio at the river’s edge. We explored the abandoned buildings and learned a little of the area’s history. The landscape looked very familiar to our Canadian trips, but the architecture was completely foreign and seemed out of place. In a day’s travel we’d be crossing the border into Norway, but Alv assured us that it would be quite unlike what we saw here. Where the river widened and became swampy, we stopped in an otherwise unremarkable bend and Alv located the old portage crossing a height of land into a small chain of lakes. Before putting into the lake, we had to disinfect the canoes and our footwear against a parasite found in the waters of Finland which the Norwegian Salmon had no resistance to.
Struggling against a head wind until we reached the outlet creek at the other end of the lake, we found there was barely any water flowing. A long session of dragging and lifting only netted us a few hundred meters of progress with many more to go before accessing the next lake. A portage wasn’t possible through the swampy brush, so we lightened the canoes by removing most of the packs and dragged them beside the creek. The outlet to the next lake was the Kautokeino River which would take us through the heart of the Sami region. Crossing from Finland to Norway was simply a matter of ducking under a reindeer fence. The shallow river was very narrow and the interlocked canopy of trees growing along the banks created a tunnel. We spent a lot of time hopping in and out to get past shallow spots and progress would often grind to a halt when fallen trees straddled the river. It was a lot of work, but the realization that we were nearing a lake gave us hope – until we encountered another Norwegian understatement. Alv didn’t think it was important to mention that the last pitch to open water was impassable by river and we’d have to bushwhack the gear around the obstacle.
The river picked up more flow as we dropped elevation and it wasn’t long before technical paddling in white water replaced wading. This section of the river reminded me very much of the Athabasca sand dunes of northern Saskatchewan. Campsites were in sparse pines growing on flat, moss covered, sandy sections and the river cut through massive dunes of sand. The plan was to end this leg of the journey in the community of Kautokeino. Here we’d rest for a day and re-configure the gear to prepare for the more challenging Reisa River canyon and explore the community. Highlights of our stay were visiting some of the local artisans and the museum. It was interesting to see that many residents of Kautokeino still wear the traditional Sami garb on a daily basis. We visited the cemetery at the local church to see the unusual cast iron tombstones. The Samis are the local equivalent to the Inuit of the Canadian north, but they are quite unlike the Inuit in many ways. Like most Norwegian towns there was a ski jump in the community, but it was built on the steep bank of the river and the run-out at the landing ended in the river.
Linda and Lena from the original team wouldn’t be coming on the second leg of the trip and the smaller crew meant we could switch to solo canoes for the more challenging paddling of the Reisa. Another mini-bus shuttle got us close to the headwaters lake of the Reisa, but it took a few shuttles with a 4X4 pickup to get our gear to the water’s edge. The landscape constantly reminded me of driving to Yellowknife, except for the reindeer enclosures.
The Reisa began with drop and pool rapids more like the Canadian North. The river runs through a spectacular valley that is largely protected as a National Park. Compared to the previous trip, there was more opportunity to run rapids, but the portages were not as optional as before, significant drops meant no choice but to carry.
Brendan took the opportunity to shop for fishing gear in Kautokeimo and when time permitted he tried his luck in the pools at the end of the carries. Fishing certainly wasn’t as productive as we were accustomed to in Canada’s north and it would be several days before anything expressed an interest in his lure.
Alv warned us that there’d be two significant portages on the Reisa. Travel in the backcountry of Norway isn’t normally done by canoe and any trails around rapids were obvious near the brink, but they’d soon lead away from the river and become less obvious. Hiking and skiing are much more common than paddling and that became painfully obvious at the first long carry. We began the carry on a trail, but it disappeared quickly. The portage was grueling and by the time we got all the gear close to the river, there wasn’t enough time left in the day to get back down to the water, so we set up camp on the canyon ledge. The next day saw us lowering equipment by rope to the river. From there on, we’d be committed to paddling the gorge as there was no way back out. The rapids were often runnable, but many required tricky wading or lining. Scenery was spectacular and my neck would often be stiff at the end of the day’s paddle from looking up at the surroundings.
Campsites were often at tributaries where more water entered the river in a cascading waterfall and it felt like a little slice of heaven. Brendan took every opportunity to use his fishing rod and several very nice arctic char were added to the evening meal. Each new day seemed to be more spectacular than the one before and the hard work and challenge of moving downstream was amply rewarded by the visual feast of the journey. The canoes were being subjected to a lot of punishment, but each evening’s inspection revealed little damage. The fragile looking folding canoes were holding up extremely well.
There were three waterfalls that stood out among the many. The first was Tierta Falls, a pocket canyon where the river simply disappeared over a ledge. We arrived too early in the day to camp, but the portage around revealed perfect moss covered ledges to set up tents overlooking the wall of water. More rope work was required to get the gear back down to river level, but the carry around was short.
The second waterfall involved a portage of more than a kilometer, but we did it in stages by camping on the canyon ledge part way through. The river carved a passage through the rocks and dropped from a dizzying height in a series of channels into a pool below. It was called Imo Falls and it was spellbinding to watch. The trail skirting the gorge was created by hikers and it was a challenge to thread the canoes though the obstacle course of trees where hikers could easily pass. We chose to get back to the paddleable section of the river earlier than the hiking trail permitted. That meant setting up several rope relays to pass our gear down the 200 meter drop to the river.
The last drop was Mollis Falls which posed no obstruction to us as it was a tributary that dropped almost 300 meters from the mountain plateau in an almost uninterrupted stream into a pool near our campsite. We brought one of the canoes up the path from camp to paddle in the pool at the base of the falls. The force of the water had carved a notch in the rock at the base of the mountain. Wind and spray blasted out of the notch with a tremendous horizontal force that shot the canoe across the pool in an instant as soon as it entered the notch. The boys loved the challenge.
Mollis Falls marked our return to civilization and we began to see more people and the occasional Norwegian river boat zipping past, driven by a small outboard. We encountered many more rapids, but there was ample water in the river now and none presented a significant challenge.
As we dropped lower into the river valley, the vistas opened up more and there was a constant panorama of snow-capped mountains on either side. The trees on the banks were huge in comparison to rivers this far north in the Canadian Arctic. One long day’s paddle brought us back to Alv’s family farm where we started the journey two weeks before. We spent some time at the farm before continuing on one more day to Storslett where the river emptied into the sea.
It only seemed appropriate to continue our journey home by water as long as possible. After helping Alv pack up the gear, we said our goodbyes and boarded the coastal steamer to make our way back to Oslo. The steamer makes it’s passage through the fjords close to shore and stops at many of the communities along the way. It lessened the sense of loss that we often experiences after returning to civilization after a wilderness trip. There were numerous places along the way that bore remarkable similarity to Newfoundland and we felt quite at home. Once the ship docked at Trondheim, we boarded the train back to Oslo and reversed out path to journey home. Even now, months later, the boys are still enthused about the trip which made the whole effort worthwhile.