Varanger, Faraway

The dark sky is ripping at the seams. 

Hurtling from the airport in Kirkenes, Norway, three hours to Vadsø, everyone in the van goes mute, leaving only the crunchy white roar of tires through black ice. We’re gazing up slack-jawed at the phenomenon above us. Aurora borealis dances its ancient, ethereal steps. The ectoplasmic greens look like a beautiful glitch in the Earth’s matrix, flashing rhythmically. It’s like the hand of God clawing at reality’s thin membrane, showing us the cosmos on the other side of Her partition.

I’ve heard that the northern lights emit a sound. A faint crackle-and-popping noise. The hum of two wooden planks rubbing together. A muffled clanging like wind chimes in a burlap sack. A dress dragging over fresh snow. The planets sighing. I want to open up the windows and hear it clearly. Universe, you have my attention. Tell me your secrets. I am all ears. 

Some places can clear the entire history of your psychic browser. That’s Faraway. And Faraway is a hell of a drug. You can get high and lose the farm on Faraway. Sometimes when you follow the compass north, you can’t go any farther but into the clear, dark, cold sea. And Arctic Faraway—that shit hits the bloodstream different from the equatorial kind. Tropical Faraway can always be found. But Arctic Faraway preserves you, hiding you in its colorless quilt. 

Carlos Hernández, who’s driving, breaks the spell and triangulates us. This far up, Norway arcs over Sweden and Finland to French kiss with Russia on the shores of the Barents Sea. We’re nearly 250 miles north of the Arctic Circle Faraway. Varangerfjord is at the top of Europe Faraway and simultaneously east of Istanbul Faraway. Check a map if you don’t believe me. 

I mainline these factotums as Carlos takes us farther. Far, far away. Break the compass, Carlos. Break our hearts. Our van traces the coastline of the fjord, and the Roark gang—Harrison Roach, Nate Zoller, McKenzie Bowen, and Catalina Hotz—begins to ask the rhetorical questions that surfers do when they already know the swell ain’t showing for a couple days: “So, Monday is supposed to build, right?”

*

In Vadsø, Carlos’ humble apartment is 10 feet up an ice-covered embankment. While we find our snow legs, we look very much like cartoon characters stepping on banana peels, hauling boardbags and Pelican cases up the hill. Carlos can tell we’re famished. With the skill of a hired cook—his day job when not instructing or guiding the brave few surfers who come here—he whips up a steaming pot of lentils with reindeer meat.  

Twelve hours later and I’m up and at ’em at 4 a.m., trying to make instant coffee as quietly as a mouse while the others snore off their respective journeys. I stretch and putter and—fuck it, I must sip this Arctic dawn, so I step outside and wander the empty streets, looking for the Starbucks I know not exists. 

There’s something thrilling to walking down a desolate avenue of ice in the morning. Snowflakes funnel into view on columns of wind and stick to my gloves, flaunting their impeccable geometry. The cold cuts through at least four of my five layers. Seagulls sing their familiar, off-key songs in the harbor. I’ve asked Carlos multiple times if there are polar bears ’round these parts, and he’s chuckled ambiguously, claiming they’re all in Russia. Which is, like, a quick swim across the fjord, and apparently they’re amazing swimmers. The buildings are unremarkable, but I come across a red phone booth converted into a compact take-one-leave-one library. The selection ain’t half bad, really. If anything, Vadsø feels a bit like the Alaskan town of Cicely in the ’90s program Northern Exposure. Am I Dr. Fleischman in this episode?

I find a coffee shop that’s open and walk into its warm bosom. A table full of geriatric locals crane their necks in chorus at Mr. New in Town. I wait for a record to skip and awkwardly salute them, shake my head, embarrassed, order a coffee and croissant, and sit alone in Zen-like serenity.

One man can’t stand it any longer and walks over to my table. He asks with curiosity where I come from. I answer a self-aware “Hawaii,” and he puts a hand on my shoulder. 

“What bad thing did you do there that they sent you here?” he asks, with a grin and possibly in reference to the regulations of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when convicted criminals were banished to these parts from Copenhagen, not unlike the immigration to Australia forced upon British and Irish convicts. 

“Nothing at all, sir,” I say and smile, placing my hand on his shoulder. “This is my surf trip.” 

He chuckles, confused, and paces back to base camp to relay the message.

Within the hour, Carlos and the rest trickle in for breakfast, each getting wide-eyed looks from the fishermen in sweaters and fur caps: Nate, a stocky pro-surfing vagabond from Laguna Beach, California, often the eager guinea pig when conditions get frightening. McKenzie, a stylish regularfoot from New Zealand, our perennial class clown. Catalina, an adventurer and photographer from Buchupureo, Chile, a smiley young woman who will prove more useful around a campfire than the rest of us when the going gets rough. And Harry, a steely-eyed Australian wave-riding savant and former world champion longboarder, who’s directing a documentary about this experience with cameraman Jake Burghardt—a deed that Carlos will need some getting used to, what with the countless times Jake will ask, “Can we pull over here for a shot?” throughout the coming days.

Carlos explains that it’s still small today, so we should catch king crab off his friend Roar’s sailboat, though we can bring boards and check a couple spots. Fine by us.

*

They say that some men are islands, but maybe some men are fjords. Deep, unknowable, lonesome coves clothed in ice and granite that cradle cold winds and the glowing ember of a warm soul. Perhaps Carlos Hernández is such a man. 

Carlos might be the loneliest surfer in the world. Not lonely in a woeful way, but lonely in a way that heroes are, remembered in the sagas and epics of old. Lonely in the way artists and geniuses are, lost in the work that no one wants to do but everyone eventually profits from. That, and probably just a little lonely-lonely too—something you notice in his sad Spanish eyes. 

Ten years ago, Carlos came to Norway from the Canary Islands, fascinated with Lofoten, which, back then, was considered the wild north of Norway despite being more than 500 miles southwest of Varanger. He was based around Unstad, surfing that zone—far too crowded now, he claims—and fell in love with a Norwegian girl. The two of them quickly had a child, and she wanted to live closer to family, which she had in Vadsø, so Carlos began to make 16-hour drives from Lofoten for surf reconnaissance.

While Carlos was surely not the first to explore the region’s potential, he’s certainly its most devoted, and he has discovered the most spots. While there have been Scandinavians before him who have surfed some beachbreaks around these parts, no surfer actually lives up here like he does. Carlos and another foreign transplant, Shannon Ainslie, a South African who lives in southern Norway and coaches the national surf team, have spent years exploring Varanger, trying to figure out what makes the corners, setups, slabs, points, and reefs tick. Forecasting the Barents Sea ain’t easy. The Arctic Ocean ain’t like the other three. They’ve made a lot of mistakes as well as a lot of interesting discoveries. 

As an ode to the first people of this land, the Sámi, Carlos has given most of the breaks he knows others have never surfed Sámi names, not Norwegian ones. Breaks like Boddu, meaning “to take a break or pause,” because, he explains, the wave made him see everything differently. Or Batni, meaning “tooth,” because he almost lost his front tooth on the bottom there. Ruonas, meaning “green,” though “it’s not the color of the sea,” he says, “but rather when you open your eyes underwater—that shade of green.” 

Carlos moved up to Vadsø full-time five years ago with his family. Then his ex left him, a wound he still seems to wear somewhere in the creases of his smile. To make a living, he’s a chef at a local cafeteria. Nothing romantic, but the dream he’s pursuing is a surf school/surf guiding company here called Finnmark Surf. He has a stable of soft tops, SUP boards, and quality wetsuits of all sizes. 

“That many people up here want to learn to surf?” I ask.

He shrugs and says plainly, “Yes, but they’re a little afraid of the cold water.” 

No shit.  

Carlos’ findings up here have recently attracted Scandinavians like Freddie Meadows, from Sweden, and some national surf brands, who’ll come up for weeks to base with him or do a strike mission where he’ll guide them in the right direction. His operation is a little greener than we’d imagined, but there’s also something beautiful about being at your favorite band’s messy first shows and realizing that they are definitely onto something. 

Lapland, of the Finnish word Lappi, signifies the “end” or “limit,” potentially referring to the far reaches of the known world. Yes, reader, Faraway is indeed a hell of a drug. You want more and more of it and can find yourself family-less, alone, with nothing, suddenly lovesick and loaded on the stuff. But such is not a junkie’s unhappy ending. Isolation is the point. The point of no return is the point. 

*

Norwegians can be a stoic, cold folk, but also incredibly thoughtful and surprisingly quick to smile. Arctic Norwegians are even more so. Captain Roar Bekkelund follows this mold. He, too, chooses Faraway. 

While sailors often share some qualities with surfers, Roar is not a “let’s see what happens” type of guy. Roar preps. Roar has waivers. Roar gives us a PowerPoint presentation before we set sail. Once a merchant marine, he and his partner decided to spend 16 years seeing the world by sea before settling back up here, where he’d grown up. They’ve since started a charter company, Sailing the Good Life, on the same boat. 

As Carlos explained back at the coffee shop, it’s a down day surf-wise, but the sail gives us all a proper sense of the coastline and potential setups. Nate and Catalina jump in and paddle around just to feel how cold “almost freezing” really is. We pull up king crabs half as big as our bodies in the traps and eat a lifetime’s worth by the time the trip’s all said and done. 

Back at the dock, while unloading gear, Roar tells me that when he and his wife finally moved home, they couldn’t sleep in a normal bed. It felt too frighteningly large.

“Why do you stay up here?” I ask.

“The air,” he answers quickly. “Up here, it’s like you’re drinking it.”

*

Far and deep into Varanger National Park, we collectively crane our necks at every bend in the coastal road, emitting the grotesque, sensual sounds that surfers tend to make when they think they’ve seen a rideable wave after checking countless ones that are not: “Uhhhh-oooohhhh-aaaawww???” 

We gallop farther, beyond Christmas-colored fishing villages freed from their snow globes. Hours go by without a structure in sight as the wind-whipped asphalt cuts through opaque mountain passes, the muted sun casting bizarre Arctic lighting on the foamy expanses. Who knew so many shades of white existed? I ponder as terrifying slanted granite spires burst through ice like the backs of dragons. An Arctic sunset this time of year is lazy and lingering, like a drunk on a barstool, until the night finally says it’s cut off. 

We stop and check a couple beachbreaks that very well could have their day, but this day isn’t it. We pick a spot to set up camp with Carlos’ tents, sliding all the gear and ourselves down the side of a hill on rescue sleds and finless surfboards, ignoring how difficult it will be tomorrow to hike back up. Nothing slides up a hill. That’s just physics.

Carlos assembles two portable stoves in each tent and pokes a pipe through their rooftops. We have aims of a proper camp feast and have brought supplies to facilitate that end, but ultimately it’s mostly Isbjørn beer and unremarkable pasta. We practice positive thinking, seeing a few lines begin to wrap around the point and discussing tomorrow’s potential. I can see in Carlos’ sad Spanish eyes that it’s a long shot. 

The next morning, soft right-handers limp into the beach in front of camp. It was a long shot. Harry is over not getting a session in, so he suits up and takes a log out with no leash. On his first wave, he cross-steps to the nose and hangs 10 for a handful of seconds. He gets a few others for the next half hour, but not quite enough to rouse the gang’s interest. 

We break down camp to hunt for something larger, an hour-long process of fighting physics, and follow the dragon’s back from whence we came, spotting an odd little wedge with a side wave and asking Carlos if it is what we think it is. He shrugs. He’s never surfed this non-wave, let alone given it a name, so novelty wave it is. 

We suit up. There’s an expanse of snow-covered stones between our van and the sea. My feet are already cold in wool socks and boots. This is happening. I change in the van because I’m soft. I notice Carlos in the side mirror dropping trou, putting on his wetsuit completely buck-naked in the ice. They don’t make ’em like Carlos no more.

We dart across the frozen beach and paddle out through a channel where the powder has melted into saltwater. As dark as the sea looks, it’s actually surprisingly translucent and clean-feeling. We catch a few sideways waves. Although indeed a novelty, the session was necessary.

“What is…a ‘novelty’ wave?” Catalina asks, adorably, back at the van.

We attempt to explain the concept.

“It’s, like, a weird wave that you wouldn’t surf normally,” Nate suggests.

“It’s, like, a wave you surf for the sake of surfing,” McKenzie adds. 

Novelty is hard to translate.

“Is this a novelty trip?” Catalina asks. 

It’s a question we hadn’t dared articulate. 

We get back to Varangerfjord in the light of a 15-watt evening and look at a few waves off the highway—through snowy fields, past barns, beyond whipped-cream-covered beach dunes. Nothing. Not even novelty. 

Carlos takes us for a cultural stop before dinner. Past an old church in a cemetery, we come to a large black ship seemingly floating above the shoreline 100 yards from the sea. The structure is Steilneset, a memorial to the dead who were burned in Finnmark during the seventeenth-century witch panic. We walk through the eerie bow and look at the 135 names, Norwegians and Sámi, mostly women. A marker reads, “Rasti Rauelsen. Accused of casting a spell on the late Oluf Rasmussen because of an argument about a cow. Was ordered to undergo the water ordeal. Sentenced to death in fire at the stake.”

“What’s the water ordeal?” McKenzie asks.

“It’s when they’d throw you in the sea, and if you floated, you were guilty. Only witches float,” Carlos says matter-of-factly.

At the end of the ship, a path leads to an open-air glass structure with mirrors inside that surround a lone steel chair emitting a propane-fed flame burning skyward from its seat. It’s an interesting monument to the accused and burned.

What witchcraft would they have accused us of—witches and wizards who voluntarily throw themselves into the sea to float on the breakers their local ships strove to avoid?

*

The trip begins to reek of mutiny, and the lot of us can’t seem to wipe the stench. We’ve gone from “Is that a wave?” to doubting our guide’s bona fides. Questioning his years of experience. Wondering if the reason the ocean isn’t cooperating with us has to do with a language barrier on his part. We are getting delirious, suddenly marveling at a moment when we realize each of us has the same hazel-colored eyes. What are the odds? 

Our filmer, Jake, reads us the notorious Shackleton ad to boost morale: “Men wanted for hazardous journey, small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful, honor and recognition in case of success.”

I don’t have the heart to tell him the ad might never have really existed, that most historians concur that it’s a hoax. I am not the moment’s myth-buster. 

We begin to ponder trip extensions and change fees and missing spousal birthdays. Nate and I wonder if we should hop into the river for the hell of it after lunch. Before we decide, McKenzie’s mid-air off the dock in his tighty-whities. Then he’s dancing to no music on a slab of ice for a minute too long. (His feet still haven’t thawed out.)

We begin suggesting that if we don’t in fact score, this story could be about getting skunked. Because that’s what’s real, right? And people want what’s real, right? 

They don’t. 

We are fucking losing it. And Carlos can sense it.

We roll up to a point beyond a few barn houses up to their necks in snow. A right-hander and a shorter left peel off a shallow patch of reef, and everyone focuses their attention seaward, uttering, “Waiiiit a seccc.” The left looks like it just spit. Harry yelps. Nate gasps. McKenzie squeezes out a fart that sounds like an infant sneezing. This is no maybe wave. It appears better than novelty. Post-novelty, even. 

The session’s a clear green light, and we deliberate life’s big questions: Change in the van, then run the half mile out through the snow in booties? Or keep the land boots on and change at the shore? I opt for the van, and halfway through pulling on my suit, I realize I’ve left my skivvies on. Fuck it. I am too far gone. I find a knife and cut away the fabric of my Hanes as if they’ve spontaneously caught fire.

The wave on the point feels a touch novel, and just as we’re becoming cynical, McKenzie breaks a fin on a rock on the inside and runs in for a new board. As he’s running back out, he waves at us frantically to paddle down the point. One by one, we follow—eu-fucking-reka. Consistent, head-high rights rifle down the snowcapped cobblestones. Our own private head-high Lower Trestles.

We surf our brains out for five hours straight. For all we know, this could be it, and, although grateful, we must gorge on this freshly killed carcass. Barents Sea swell period is like the douchebag in a nightclub making it rain, and every one of us fills our pockets with bills. Carlos, o Captain, our Captain—we never doubted you for one minute. Wouldn’t think of such treason, good sir…

*

In the beginning, we had plans for a dog team. And possibly snowmobiles. And maybe some sort of high-speed boat to zip us around headlands to wave-rich outer reefs. But the dogsled guy flaked. Claimed climate change made the trails too slushy for their paws. And snowmobiles aren’t allowed in the nature preserve where we’re going. Gas for the boat has since skyrocketed—Russia’s fault. 

Thus, near the end of the trip, we’re hoofing it—was it three clicks or five?—crunching through a couple feet of powder in snowshoes, dragging sleds with all of our boards, gear, firewood, and food behind us, straining against harnesses constructed of surf leashes, up a lovely point that reminds one a little of Jeffreys Bay, post-blizzard. Did I mention we’re checking the surf in snowshoes? It’s better this way. 

Distances and swell heights can be hard to judge sometimes with Carlos. You ask him a pretty simple question, like how big the waves will be, and he hems and haws and answers a totally different query about what the tide is doing. You ask him how far a walk is, and he looks up to run the numbers in his head, shrugs, and answers, “Two…maybe 6 kilometers?” It’s hard to say if it’s ADD, a language thing, or just his way of protecting his precious Arctic babies. 

Swell lines fill into the bay on our left as we follow the hint of a snow-covered trail up the point. Through the morning mist, we begin to hear swell thundering around the bend. Several reindeer spot us and retreat into the frosty sedge. Our sleds glide over the powder behind us, emitting the faint soundtrack of passing cars whooshing in and out of earshot across an invisible highway.

We arrive at one of the few slabby peaks Carlos points out to us, although it’s difficult to say how big it is without perspective or scale. 

“Hey, it’s proper out there,” says Harry, frowning ecstatically, and we all agree.

Carlos suggests we wait an hour or so for the tide to fill in, so we feather some wood and construct a fire for coffee and breakfast. Catalina, a bit of a bush culinarian, finds a thin, flat slat of granite and makes a hot stone to heat up tortillas and melt the cheese for prosciutto empanadas.

The tide fills in, and everything comes together—swell building before our eyes, right-handers capping on an outer reef before doubling up on the patch in front of us, walling down the point before hitting another takeoff spot doing a similar version, then another. There’s what looks like a channel in front of us, but Carlos suggests a keyhole off the point that certainly seems like it requires the timing of a Swiss watchmaker—especially in well-overhead surf that’s 2°C. 

Harry, McKenzie, and Nate get out there and begin nabbing wave after wave, backdooring slabby sections and arcing turns across the bountiful open faces. It is indeed larger than it looks, and with considerably more power than one would expect from, well, the Barents Sea. 

I hop in after Catalina and scrape past the first line of whitewater, not particularly excited to duck dive. From the lineup, I regroup and watch Carlos hop in through the keyhole without even waiting for a break in the sets. He takes three consecutive sets on the head, dunking about 15 waves, then proceeds to go left and pulls into a closeout on this predominantly right-breaking wave. 

He pops up hooting, laughing maniacally. Perhaps an ice bath is the best medicine for loneliness, and Carlos is tipping back the bottle. We shake our heads in disbelief. After paddling over to us, Carlos outstretches his hands and proudly exclaims, “This is Arctic swell, not Atlantic! This all came from the east!” 

He isn’t wrong.

We surf the whole rest of the day. The waves get increasingly bigger and stronger. In the water, curious giant seals swim up territorially and eye every one of us. We each feed the running fire on the rocks when we come in, until our firewood is gone and we feed it instead with driftwood lying on stones covered in neon lichen. I plod through the snow and up into the tundra to have a look at the lineup from above, the spongy earth painted in a rich, fiery color that I may need years to name.

*

Above a table covered in dishes brimming with reindeer ribs, smoked meats, king crab claws, bone marrow, urchins, mussels, cod, and scallops, the bending sound of a fjordal wind washes over us. The intonation—some faraway rhythm with no words, half-chant, half-song—floats through the room and tussles our hair. It cuts through our sweaters. It prods at our souls. 

This is Lise’s yoik—a Sámi incantation, she explains, that embodies the fjord. A song she’s been working on mastering for years. Considered pagan chants, yoiks are said to have the power to drive off wolves, even harness the weather. Some Norwegian sailors are said to have “bought” wind off Sámi shamans through their yoiks. Trances brought on by yoiks were supposed to enable travel between the spiritual and material worlds that made up the Sámi cosmos. Others have said that the yoik is not about something; it is that something. That a yoik does not begin, nor does it end. Like the wind.

Whatever it is, it’s a fitting soundtrack to Faraway if I’ve ever heard one. Our group tunes into Lise’s frequency with reverence. She and her sister, Kajsa, are cultural ambassadors around Varanger for the Sámi and have invited us over for a final meal. Carlos may be trading surf lessons for it—apparently something they’ve expressed they’ve always wanted to do. 

The song dissipates and leaves us speechless, with bated breath. Lise opens her eyes, looks down at the table, and blushes.

“Sorry, but we are hunters,” Kajsa says, and shrugs.

“All of this, we caught or grew in the garden,” adds Lise.

“Everything but the potatoes,” Kajsa divulges with regret. “Those, we had to buy.”

Meat sweats be damned, we feast on the gracious spread, sipping beers by Qvænbrygg, a local brewery. Certainly an appreciated meal, having worked up an appetite surfing Ekkerøy for hours again that morning, albeit at a more manageable, playful size.

Outside, the Arctic wind howls, and we search the sky for the northern lights. But after just a week, the seasons already have begun to transition. The snow is starting to melt off the taiga, and polar night will be surrendering to midnight sun within another two weeks.

Tomorrow, Carlos will schlep us back to Kirkenes to leave you, Faraway. The comedown is never easy, even with a wife and kids and a comfy home in the tropics, where waves are easy to come by and no neoprene is necessary. Even then, there are withdrawals. Maybe not physical, but metaphysical. Acid flashbacks that flicker in broad daylight like the aurora borealis clawing at the horizon line whenever one opens the freezer or smells firewood burning. All of us will hop on the plane and try to kick the habit. 

All of us except Catalina, that is. The Chilean has a tolerance beyond the rest of ours combined and will stay with Carlos and the Sámi sisters. She’ll squeeze into a 7 mil and dive the cold fjord with the two huntresses to catch king crabs and scallops. Then she’ll teach the sisters what it feels like to slide not on snow but on sea.

And I’m still not sure if she’s returned home. It’s impossible to know. Loaded on Faraway, your shared location might show one thing, but your soul may still be somewhere well above the 66th parallel. Somewhere up a point hosting long, sweeping right-hand walls, wandering from the dwindling campfire onto the spongy ground that the reindeer devour, searching for more driftwood to feed the flame and just the right word to describe the color of the tundra.

[Feature Image: Varangerfjord sight line. How many such scenes might exist in the area? It’s anyone’s guess]