Today’s planned hike comes at just the right time—following the coastline, it’ll keep us from ending up in the heights with our view obscured by clouds. This is the route from Eggum to Unstad. That said, the rain that’s bound to show up will probably force us to turn back, so we might have to switch to Plan B.
So we set off this morning toward Eggum without being sure we’ll complete the walk.
The parking is paid—or rather, the road leading to the site is. Oddly enough, you have to drop money into a box, but no receipt is given in return. You can also pay directly at the café next to the parking lot.
Note that on a promontory overlooking the parking area, you can check out the remains of an old German radar installation from World War II.
Before heading out on the hike, we double-check that our rain gear is in the bag—the clouds have never looked so threatening!
After 20 minutes, we come across Markus Raetz’s sculpture—unsurprisingly, though I’d say *almost* unsurprisingly, since we expected it to be bigger. Nope, it’s actually life-sized.
When you walk around it, the perspective changes completely because the head appears upside down. The artist invites everyone to occasionally shift their viewpoint to better understand the world around them.
The inevitable rain arrives after an hour of walking, in the form of a curtain crashing down on us. We have no choice but to turn back, and as we feared, we won’t make it to Unstad, which was supposed to be the endpoint of this hike.
We’ll even have our picnic in the car—the poor table inside the café was already taken.
Plan B, which we had up our sleeve, now takes over: a visit to the Lofotr Viking Museum, just 10 minutes by car from Eggum.
We’ll spend 3 hours there and were pleasantly surprised.
Admission is around 20 € per person. You can download (for free) an audio guide onto your smartphone, so don’t hesitate to bring your headphones. There are 2 large exhibition halls plus a cinema room. The rest is spread out over several hectares. You’ll see, among other things, a large reconstructed farm with artisans working right in front of you. A 1.5 km walk away, you can try your hand at axe throwing, archery, or even take a (short) ride in a longship. Bonus: the sky clears up, which is great since we wander around as much outside as inside in this museum!
Though entirely reconstructed, the museum was actually the site of a Viking farm, and excavations are still ongoing. You’ll learn all about this in the short introductory film in the cinema room.
When we leave the museum, the afternoon is already well underway, and we head toward our next campsite.
You can see the sky has shed most of the clouds that were weighing it down. We look for a spot to spend our second consecutive night camping and find our perfect spot on a tiny parking lot along Fv 862, not far from where we’ll start our hike tomorrow. The only downside is that we’ll be surrounded by marshes. We’ll sleep in the car.
The mountain Hoven, seen here and which we’ll climb tomorrow, is nicknamed the "shark fin," and you can easily see why!
The sun and clouds help create a beautiful scene:
At the end of the day, the sky ignites:
If you’d like more details—photos, maps, GPS tracks, etc.—I’ve laid it all out here: From Eggum to Hoven
Between last night’s dinner and this morning’s breakfast, we can’t say we didn’t take our time admiring this mountain. It’s time to climb up there to see the surroundings from a new angle.
The parking lot at the trailhead costs 100 kroner, but if you park 30 meters farther at the golf course parking lot and grab a drink, the spot is free. It ends up being the same thing, but you get a drink out of it.
Climbing to the top of the mountain is pretty easy, and the view—both over the marshes and the sea with its shades of blue—is, once again, stunning:
After a sustained effort, we reached the summit, and it’s at the very end that the full view of Svolvaer opens up. All that’s left is to walk along the ridge trail:
