Nordic Harley Days in Svolvaer, Lofotens

Zagan the motorhome’s been to the Nordic Harley Days (presumably a play on ‘holidays’?) Harley Davidson festival held in the unlikely location of Svolvær, on the remote Lofoten Islands, in the Norwegian Arctic. Click here to see just where on Earth we are. Having been partially deafened by fabulously loud exhaust pipes, we shifted on last night to the fishing village of Henningsvær, kipping in the jam-packed car park just outside the port (N68.1566, E14.20755), unable to hear the squawking seagulls above.

Free overnight motorhome parking in Henningsvær, Lofotens

Roughly nine years ago, Ju and I were about to get married when I fell off my TRX850 motorbike on the way home from work, wrecking it, and receiving barely a scratch in return. Racing leathers, back protector, boots, gloves and full-face helmet saved my skin (in more than one way, with a wedding looming), but I’m still grateful to the gods for having me fall off just before that lorry, the one I later saw queuing down the road, crushed me like a dry leaf. Since then, I’ve not done a huge amount of motorbike riding, but I still LOVE the raw growl of a big bike (or that of a Cub 90 for that matter), the sensation of freedom from just being alongside one, and the slight naughtiness of it all.

What’s not to love?

That’s why I dragged Ju back into Svolvær to go have a Saturday look at the Nordic Harley Days meet-up (at a location which MUST be a contender for ‘daftest distance to ride to’), on the day an expected 1200 bikes would be present. The day before, on a beautifully remote part of Austvågøy, we’d been fooled into thinking a helicopter was cutting low across the valley when a string of Harleys rode down the adjacent single-track road, pipes loud enough to stun a whale. Although these kinds of bikes never really did it for me, more roaring form than raw racing function (the Ducati museum nigh-on had me in tears), I do delight in the gleaming glamour of these machines.

Nordic Harley Days

Checking on autotrader.co.uk just now though, the cheapest Harley available was £3000. Ouch. The most expensive? Cash in your ISAs folks. Sell your wedding ring. Get on the phone to the Halifax. You’re going to be needing £100,000. That was for a custom job mind, a one-off, most were a meagre £25,000 or so. And who can afford the time and expense to ride/transport the bike to the Arctic for a few days of £5 a pint lager (very reasonable in the land of £14 a drink)? 2000 folks it would seem, most of whom appeared to be retired garage owners from every corner of Europe, some pulling off a very good impression of Grizzly Adams. All but a few looked ten times tougher than I ever will, all no doubt were having the time of their lives.

We headed for the main drinking and music area alongside the port, free to wander during the day. The entrance was flanked not with burly security guards but with dried cod, something the Lofoten Islands are famous for. The frigid waters up here are rich in the winter with these low-fat fishies, the air just the right temperature and humidity to dry ’em in sized-pairs on open-air racks. The racks we’ve seen were all-but empty, presumably the cod’s been flogged, but the Harley folks running the show clearly wanted us all to experience the nose-wrinkling fish-niff that accompanies the ages-old preservation technique (the Vikings perfected it).

Drying cod at Nordic Harley Days

A chap sat on stage strummed out country and western as the leather-clad congregation tucked into hot dogs and the cheap(ish) lager. Out on the port, more waist-coated riders thumped boots along gangways onto boats to be whisked off into the Norwegian Sea, down the Trollfjord for an eyeful of cliff-face at close quarters. Later on the entire town came to a standstill as the police (there are police in Norway, who knew? we hadn’t seen any) blocked off roads and 1000 bikes thundered their way around the roundabout, in the opposite direction to the way everyone expected them to come from, including the organisers. Sadly only one fella had Viking horns on his lid (helmet), but the sweeping sensation and opportunity for a noisy right-wrist twisting mini-hoon as they exited the scene presented quite a buzz.

Nordic Harley Days Rideout

As the sound of the procession raced off into the distance, we bought more milk, and had another laugh at the pre-tin-foil-wrapped baking potatoes in the supermarket. The word is, Norway is uber, nay UBER rich. Continuing oil finds out in the North Sea have propelled the country from being fishermen and small scale farmers, to being fishermen and small scale farmers with an OUTRAGEOUSLY RICH government. I just checked, and Norway’s sovereign fund (the world’s biggest, as it happens) is worth $870 billion – $160,000 for every man, woman and child living here. The government’s refused to play it fast and loose with the cash though, carefully investing it internationally, only spending 4% a year here in Norway. They’ve chosen to effectively extend the oil wealth far into the future, partly to help prevent the collapse of all other industry, which might happen if they unleashed the mighty wonga beast. What that’s got to do with tin-foiled-wrapped-spuds, I dunno – maybe Norwegians are getting a bit lazy, like me?

Pre-wrapped baking spuds in Norway

Down the road we passed a wedding gathered outside one of Norway’s many Lutheran wooden churches, folks dressed in traditional garb, apparently. I couldn’t see as I was too busy trying to miss the wig mirrors of 10,000 other campervans currently marauding the Lofotens. We later met Richard and Jenny, who told us they’d been beside the church when the bikers had howled their way past, with the wedding party either waving to the bikers or gesticulating for them to, well, eff off, no-one was quite sure.

Not all Harleys – the odd Indian and a few other marques present

Leaving the E10, the main (currently camper-clogged) artery through the islands, we headed south down to Henningsvær, the road strung out along rock a few meters before it slid into the green glass ocean. Passing places all the way, no-one using any of ’em but me it would seem. Maybe I’ve gone wuss. Or I was always wuss. Or I’m getting more wussy. But the sight of yet another Norwegian car ploughing along a track barely wide enough for me to walk down (drunk) and refusing to pull into any of the double-width M-marked sections had me ready to dig deep for one o’ them Harleys. Thankfully the two deer-leaping bridges between the islands on the way to the village had traffic lights, and we finally rolled into town in one piece.

Sidecar and trailer, but hey, it’s better than a car, dammit!

Back tyres fatter than Zagans

£30,000 for this beast. Even after a thousand (or 2000) mile rides, the bikes all gleamed.

For the next fascinating chapter (ahem) in Team Zagan’s Henningsvær adventure, check out tomorrow’s blog post (which I’m just about to write, so unless I’ve gone back in time, I’m cheating a bit here. Call it artistic license).

Cheers! Jay

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