The charm of the frontier territories is the feeling of walking the thin line between the infinite and the world beyond the senses, between the grandiose and the terrifying: this is the feeling of the sublime, according to the romantic philosophers of the 1800s.
Facing a landscape never before encountered and unexpected in its disturbing beauty, we feel a little like Caspar David Friedrich’s Wanderer above the Sea of Fog.
This is what happens when arriving on the Lofoten islands, that long and narrow archipelago in the north of Norway, one of the world’s most beautiful and Romantic places (in the philosophical sense).
Previous
Next
“An image for divine eyes – a world that simply takes place on its own, the mute existence of water and earth, a finished and perfect work, truth itself”: for Alessandro Baricco, this is what one feels when facing the sea in a place so beautiful that words are made powerless. The sensation of being overwhelmed will fade, in the spring and summer, during the first long day spent on the fjords, until the midnight sun, for which it’s not necessary to reach the North Cape.
It will be enough to arrive almost at the edge of the world to be faced with the images that are foreboding by night (the sharp peaks of the mountains) and enchanting by day (the colours of the woods and houses, reflected pixel-perfect on the sea): we are on the border between reality and fantasy.
You can try any outdoor sports activity you wish at Lofoten : fishing, kayaking among the fjords, rafting, even surfing, starting from beaches that seem to have come from some much more southern parallel. And then there’s bird-watching, skiing, and of course hiking and cycling.
It will be enough to arrive almost at the edge of the world to be faced with the images that are foreboding by night (the sharp peaks of the mountains) and enchanting by day (the colours of the woods and houses, reflected pixel-perfect on the sea): we are on the border between reality and fantasy.
Previous
Next