Reine in the rain, and the morning Norway lost its king

We were standing there with our rain jackets over our arms, about to walk off the ship into Reine. You could feel it move through the whole ship. The crew had been worried about him since he went into the hospital, and now they were in small groups talking quietly, and what came up over and over was how much he loved the people and how much he loved the sea. He was a sailor himself, a serious one, three Olympics and a world championship title in a boat he skippered. A few of them told me he was funny, that he had a sense of humor you don’t expect from a king, and underneath all of it there was a real nervousness about what happens now and about the son who has to step into it. The only thing I knew about him before that morning was that he’d held out for years to marry Sonja, who was a commoner, and I think he made it fairly clear he’d give up the throne before he gave her up. That’s not much to know about a person, and it landed on me anyway. They blew the ship’s horn, one long blast, and every flag went to half mast. We walked into the tourist information office to grab a map, and by the time we came back out it had started to rain, and then it wasn’t raining so much as pouring, the kind that finds the gap between your collar and your neck. Norway shedding its own tears is a sentimental thing to write and I’m going to write it anyway, because standing there in it, that’s exactly what it felt like. We ducked into an art gallery to wait it out. Self service coffee station in the corner, good paintings on the walls, and a window looking out at the water and the mountains that was honestly better than anything hanging near it. We stood there with paper cups and watched the rain come down sideways. It didn’t clear. So we zipped up and went out into it anyway. Reine in the rain turned out to be the version I’d have chosen if someone had offered me the choice. The cloud came down low over the peaks and stayed, and the mist moved through the gaps between them slowly enough that you could watch it travel, and I had the misty mountain song from The Hobbit in my head the entire walk. Bridges run from one small island to the next, so you’re crossing water constantly just to get anywhere. And the red houses hold their color in bad weather much better than you’d think. The drying racks were empty, which surprised me until I thought about the calendar. Lofoten hangs its cod in February and takes it down by late spring, so by the end of August the racks are bare wood standing in rows against the mountains, thousands of them, and the whole village smelled like rain and nothing else. Then we got back on board and Norway handed us the afternoon. The sun came out as we pulled away, and we sat outside along the rail watching the coast unspool, and at one point we came through a passage so narrow it didn’t seem like the ship should fit, and the water underneath us went a blue I associate with places thousands of miles further south. I fell asleep in a deck chair. I am not a nap person. Reine is too beautiful to skip, and I’m saying that after a day of steady rain, which is the strongest version of that recommendation I know how to give you. We had real time in port, enough to walk the village slowly on our own without watching the clock, and enough that booking an excursion instead wouldn’t have turned it into a race. If you’re looking at this itinerary trying to decide which mornings are worth setting an alarm for, this is one of them.