Hammerfest is the most North place we’ve been to. It claims that it’s the most northern town in the world and that any settlements further north are mere villages. The town has other reasons to be proud. It’s home to the Royal Ancient Polar Bear Society (amazing!) and it’s also the staring point of the Struve Geodetic Arc. In the first half of the nineteenth century scientists from Russia, Norway and Sweden, lead by Russian astronomer and geodesist Friedrich Struve, decided to check out Newton’s idea that the Earth was not a perfect sphere, but instead was more flat at its poles. To do so they measured lots and lots of triangles forming a chain from Hammerfest all the way to Ismail by the Black Sea, observed the stars and the angles between them and the vertices of the triangles on earth, employed trigonometry and some other more advanced maths and hey presto after 39 years of work they confirmed that Newton was indeed right. Their measurements and calculations helped to learn more about the size and shape of the Earth. In the 1970s when satellites were used to measure the same thing it turned out that Struve and his team were only about 100 meters out with their measurements. Considering the arc (triangulation chain) was 2,821,853 km long that’s pretty impressive.

The small Polar Bear Society museum was interesting, although somewhat different to how I thought it would be. There was lots of interesting stuff about the voyages that had set off from Hammerfest to the north – often to hunt polar bears and the like. There was some information about polar bears too of course, and a display about the pollutants which were affecting polar bears in the Arctic (amazingly though nothing about the shrinking ice caps). We considered joining the Polar Bear Society – you can become a member only in person in Hammerfest. Allegedly even Elvis Presley was refused membership when he wrote requesting to join. Despite the obvious bragging rights we weren’t really sure it was worth £20 a piece for a little polar bear pin and I was a little unsure as to where the money was actually going – as far as I’m aware it’s not directly connected to any conservation work, as I sort of feel such a thing should be. With more planning and a little more money you can also be knighted a member with a walrus penis-bone in special organised ceremonies. THAT might just have made it worth it!

When it became obvious to the Germans during WWII that they were fighting a lost cause and that Russians were advancing in Finnmark, they decided to turn back and adopt the ‘scorched earth’ policy. Consequently Hammerfest (along with many other towns and villages) was burnt to the ground in 1944. Today the valiant efforts of the people of Finnmark to return to their devastated homeland and rebuild their homes and lives are remembered in an inventively put together museum. The museum focuses on the theme of home as it shows photos of the burnt dwellings and proceeds to lead the visitor through life size models of temporary shelters, Sami homes, architects’ rooms, and new Norwegian houses. There’s even an exhibition within exhibition, all about telecommunication in Finnmark: starting with smoke signals and post that took weeks to arrive, through telegraphs, faxes, telephones, radios, video broadcasting and now the internet and mobile phones. A museum definitely worth a visit if you’re in the area.

Having seen the three main sights of Hammerfest we made a quick detour to a viewing point up a hill which have us this wonderful view, then proceeded onwards in the car towards our next stop of Karasjok.

We were hoping to see the northern lights again tonight, as solar activity was still supposed to be high and the weather forecast was looking decent too. We parked our car some distance from Karasjok. The sky cleared beautifully and I’m pretty convinced the lights are there, but there’s also an extremely bright moon out there (it was actually casting shadows and if someone was determined it would be possible to read in its light), so I just can’t be sure. It’s pretty spectacular in its own right actually, but I wish it would hide and stop gleaming.