The bus driver taking me from Tromsø airport to the harbour strikes up a conversation about my photography gear. He tells me he is a nature photographer too. Sheer passion flashes in his eyes as he describes a large family pod of orcas he watched that very morning in the bay just off the airport. “Residents”, I suspect — it is mid-March, and the migrating whales have most likely moved on. A tingling feeling stirs in the pit of my stomach; I believe it is called a thirst for adventure.
When, a little later, I spot the Rembrandt van Rijn at the Cruise Ship Terminal in Tromsø harbour, my budding enthusiasm suffers an abrupt setback. Since even a small fishing boat on Lake Zug turns my face — in the words of my friend André — a dreadful shade of green, I swallow hard. I had been hoping, after all, that my holiday vessel would have something to set against the swell of the wild northern seas. Doubts creep in as to whether that holds true for the unexpectedly flat schooner that is to be my floating home for the next seven nights. A confirmed landlubber, I do not yet know at this point that my worries are entirely unfounded. The Rembrandt van Rijn has been criss-crossing the world’s oceans for around 100 years, has seen the shores of the Galapagos Islands in the Pacific and has traversed the Arctic Ocean countless times, from Greenland via Svalbard to Norway. My journey, however, will hug the coast, taking me into fjords largely sheltered from wind and waves, north-north-west of Tromsø.
Rock, ice and snow
The Rembrandt takes a maximum of 33 travellers and twelve crew members, who live rather more rustically here than on luxury cruise ships. The cabins are small, the berths narrow. (A tip: if you have the choice, take the lower berth, which is considerably wider than the upper one. The latter, however, scores with a porthole — and you run no risk of accidental head-bumps when your travelling companion makes nocturnal trips to the loo. Not unimportant either.) On this voyage, though, the Rembrandt’s cramped quarters are entirely beside the point, as they serve solely for sleeping; the life of adventure takes place on deck, on the water and ashore. Or in the ship’s restaurant, which proves surprisingly roomy and cosy and includes a very well-stocked bar. Alcoholic drinks aboard the Rembrandt, incidentally, are far more affordable than in the average Norwegian bar.
The days on board follow a clear structure: as a rule, the anchor is weighed after lunch and the afternoon is spent sailing to the next destination (note: the crew speak of “sailing” even when, for lack of wind, the ship chugs along under engine power). In the late afternoon the three-master moors, usually in the small harbour of an island, and stays there for the night. Most passengers spend these hours on deck, admiring the passing landscapes of jagged rock, ice and snow. Some scan the sea with binoculars for seals, seabirds or whales. On the very first day, always close in to the coast, we repeatedly spot the fins of harbour porpoises. I marvel at how smoothly the Rembrandt glides through the waves. My stomach, at any rate, does not rebel, dutifully keeping the galley’s cooking down.
After individual shore leave, a surprisingly opulent dinner is invariably served in the cosy on-board restaurant. Afterwards, the passengers wait at the bar for the famous Northern Lights.
Elk, mountain hares and sea otters
The nights on board are pleasant. The ship’s gentle rocking lulls me to sleep rather than upsetting my stomach. After breakfast I join the snowshoe team each day. On hikes of two to four hours we explore the islands we call at. We wander through untouched landscapes still largely locked in ice and snow. And yet: here and there the first tufts of grass peek out of the cold crust, heralding the approach of spring. Although, as far as observing the native fauna is concerned, we find ourselves between seasons — the migrating great whales have already left, and the migratory birds have yet to arrive — we cross the tracks of elk, occasionally spot a mountain hare or startle a ptarmigan into flight. We even catch sight of a sea otter, and several times we watch the rare white-tailed eagle circling in the sky above.
The Green Lady shows herself
Above all, though, I am on this journey to capture the Northern Lights, the so-called Green Lady. On my trip the Nordic beauty proves a little shy, showing herself after nightfall only as a faint green glimmer on the horizon. Knowing she can be rather temperamental and vanish as quickly as she appeared, I rarely join the merry bar crowd in the warmth below deck. Instead I hold out on deck for hours on end, thickly wrapped up. Even as the other passengers gradually disappear into their berths around midnight, I doggedly stand my ground. Not that I am fond of Arctic cold — quite the opposite: my favourite destinations are all distinguished by year-round flip-flop weather — but I have set my heart on good photographs of the northern polar lights.
My patience — my friend André, oddly, calls it stubbornness — is rewarded: Lady Aurora shows me her loveliest side several times, sometimes well after midnight. I fulfil a long-cherished dream and finally take my Northern Lights pictures. And although during the cold nights on deck I repeatedly longed for tropical beaches, after my voyage on the Rembrandt van Rijn another expedition to the Arctic no longer seems far-fetched at all.
The Rembrandt van Rijn
The passenger schooner is just under 50 metres long and a little over six and a half metres wide. Her hull has been specially reinforced for sailing Arctic waters. Should the wind die away, she is driven by two diesel engines delivering almost 1500 horsepower between them. The ship’s current owner, Worldwide Expeditions, offers expedition-style cruises aboard the Rembrandt. Wildlife can be watched in comfort from the schooner’s deck. The ship also carries two dinghies in the form of Zodiacs with powerful outboard engines. They make possible close encounters with great whales on open water (provided any are sighted), exploration of the coasts by kayak, and of the mainland and islands on snowshoes.
Around midday we usually arrive back at the Rembrandt at much the same time as the kayak team. While we were out on our snowshoe hike, they have been paddling the coastal waters, attempting the same thing as us walkers: to sweat off the traces of the far-too-good ship’s food.
The Northern Lights, a natural wonder
Aurora borealis is the scientific name for the Northern Lights. This luminous phenomenon in the sky occurs (almost) exclusively in a narrow band around the magnetic pole of the northern hemisphere. The fluorescent glow is caused by electrically charged particles of the solar winds colliding with nitrogen and oxygen atoms in the outer layers of the Earth’s atmosphere. Because the aurora mostly manifests itself in green, it is fondly known as the Green Lady. Lady Aurora is another common name for this natural spectacle. Since the phenomenon plays out in the Earth’s outer atmosphere, a clear night sky is the most important prerequisite for the Northern Lights to appear. Other relevant parameters — the strength of the solar wind, its particle density and the alignment of the magnetic field between Sun and Earth — influence the probability of its appearance, its intensity and its form. Polar lights also occur, incidentally, around the pole of the southern hemisphere. There, fittingly, they are called the Southern Lights — or, scientifically, Aurora australis.
Detailed information and aurora forecasts can be found at https://www.spaceweatherlive.com/, also available in German. Numerous free mobile apps offer daily aurora forecasts. The author recommends https://aurora-alerts.com/de/
Travel information
Voyages on the Rembrandt van Rijn can be booked from Switzerland through the operator Ship’N’Train Travel, a specialist in extraordinary travel offers which earns top marks from the author of this article — above all because, throughout the travel preparations and despite the difficult circumstances of the pandemic, it showed unshakeable patience and unflagging helpfulness. The voyage described here is called “Norwegen – Nordlichter, Wandern und Kajak”. Ship’N’Train Travel, tel. 031 313 00 04, www.shipntrain.ch/ship
This article appeared in MEN issue 1/22 (May 2022).
