four hours of blue light, studded tires, a quay in the dark
Reserve an eight night Senja winter trip
Eight nights on Senja are held against one date, 17 January, four of them in a village under a 2,096 foot wall of rock and four on an island village at the mouth of Oyfjorden, from $4,300 per person on two sharing. January is the month the sun comes back at that latitude, and the amount of it changes enough between the first village and the second that you can see the difference without measuring it.
8 nights, from $4,300 per person. Two sharing.
Reserve an eight night Senja winter trip and what you are holding is one date. The 17th of January, out and back, and it runs once this year. Senja is an island of 612 square miles off the Troms coast at 69 degrees north, and its mountains do not rise from the water so much as lean out of it; the highest stops at 3,284 feet, and the ones you stand under are between 1,800 and 2,100. In the third week of January the sun is up for a little under three hours, with four or five more either side of that when the snow goes blue and then violet and you can still read a road sign without a light.
Four nights go in Fjordgard, on the north side of the island, in a guesthouse with nine rooms and a drying cupboard inside the door. Four go on Husoy, a village of about 240 people on its own island at the mouth of Oyfjorden, reached by a stone mole with open water on both sides of it. Between the two is a small car on studded tires that you drive yourself, 31 road miles that take an hour and forty in the dark.
Nothing on this page belongs to us. Not the nine rooms, not the boat, not the car. Third Coast Dispatch Bookings LLC is a booking office in the Kansas City metro, and what it does is place your reservation with the company that runs the week and then stay in the middle of the correspondence while you have questions. That company invoices you itself, on its own paperwork, and no money changes hands at this end. Getting yourself to Norway is your own arrangement; we arrange no flight, and the figure here has never carried one.
When it goes
One departure, 17 January
one fixed date: it runs once this year, and there is not another
What is reserved
An eight night Senja winter trip
8 nights, from $4,300 per person. Two sharing. Send a booking request
The reservation holds two beds for four nights in a nine room guesthouse, two beds for four nights in four rooms over an old landing shed, one small car on studded tires from the 17th to the 25th, three guided days and thirteen meals; nothing on the island moves you except that car, driven by you.
Senja is 612 square miles of rock at 69 degrees north, and its shape decides the whole week: the fjords cut in from the west so deeply that two villages twenty minutes apart by water are an hour and forty apart by road. The rock comes up at an angle rather than a slope, so Segla stands 2,096 feet more or less straight out of the sea a mile behind the houses in Fjordgard, and the water under it is deeper than the mountain is tall. The ocean is the reason the place is livable in January: the sea off the outer coast holds near 41 degrees all winter, and the air at the quay sits between 18 and 30 degrees most days, which is milder than Kansas City manages in the same week and windier than anything Kansas City has. Snow on the road is seldom more than a foot because the wind keeps moving it, while snow in the gullies above the road is measured in yards. The reason to come in January rather than December is arithmetic: the sun is back over the horizon, barely, and it gains about ten minutes a day, so the last morning of the week is nearly two hours longer than the first.
Four nights in a nine room guesthouse in Fjordgard, private bath, two sharing; four nights in four rooms over a working landing shed on Husoy, two sharing; eight breakfasts of oven bread, boiled eggs, brown cheese and herring; five dinners cooked in the house and served at a fixed hour; a compact automatic car with studded tires and a full tank, collected on the 17th and left on the 25th; one three hour outing in a boat certified for twelve, a passage the operating company holds under its own license and runs with its own skipper; one guided walk on the coast with snowshoes if the snow is deep enough to want them; one four hour guided night drive inland on the 21st, with no promise attached to it; a printed sheet of the road with the winter closure points marked; all local bed taxes.
Round trip air from the middle of the country to northern Norway, which is your own arrangement, $760 to $1,420 in January; fuel for the car at roughly $7.90 a gallon, $95 to $140 across eight days; the three dinners not cooked in the house, $38 to $70 a head; lunches and anything bought at the village shop, $14 to $30 a day; a driver alongside you for the two transfer days if you want one, $210 to $320 total; boot spikes and a headlamp if you arrive without them, $25 to $60; a second boat outing if the weather cancels the first, $130 to $190; wool bought on the island, $60 to $220; any night added before the 17th or after the 25th, $150 to $240 a room.
Two of the eight days put you in a small car on packed snow in the dark, on a road that narrows to one lane with pullouts and has water on one side, and if that sentence tightens your shoulders you should not drive it alone. The guided walk climbs 900 feet in the first three quarters of a mile on rock steps that are under snow, and there is no shorter version of it. Husoy has one shop, no bar, no restaurant and about four hours of daylight, and people who need something to do at eight in the evening find the evenings very long. The whole week is also built around a sky that can stay grey for eight days running, in which case you have looked at the underside of cloud for a week.
The light between the sixteenth and the end of the month
At Senja's latitude the sun comes back over the sea horizon around the 16th of January, and for the first two days it is a matter of minutes. By the 20th it is up from about 10:40 to 13:20. By the 31st there are three and a half hours of it, and the gain is running near ten minutes a day, which is quick enough to notice between one village and the next.
That is the horizon. The village floor is a separate question. Fjordgard sits under a wall that runs to 2,096 feet a mile behind the houses, and the sun does not clear that wall until the first week of February, so what January gives you is the far side of the fjord going copper while you stand in shade with the temperature at 24 degrees. Husoy is out from under the wall, and around the 24th, if the cloud lifts, the light comes flat across the water onto the white houses for roughly forty minutes. People come outside for it and then go back in.
The aurora is the other reason people go north in January and the one nobody can promise. The island lies under the belt where it happens on most clear nights, and clear is the variable: weather arrives from the southwest in long grey runs, and the same ocean that keeps the January average near 26 degrees rather than ten below is what parks the cloud overhead. You may get it four nights out of eight. You may get none. The guided drive on the 21st exists to take you inland to a fjord where the cloud sometimes is not, and it is four hours in a cold van with nothing owed you at the end.
the sun sets for the last time around the 26th and the village does not see it again for seven weeks
no sun at all, about four hours of usable grey at midday, the strongest southwest wind of the year
sun back over the sea horizon on the 16th, up 10:40 to 13:20 by the 20th, gaining ten minutes a day
the sun reaches the houses in Fjordgard in the first week, cod landings every morning, seven hours of light by the 28th
day and night level on the 20th, the deepest snow of the winter on the tops, mornings still near 20 degrees
the road is bare by mid month, the summits stay white into June, the ptarmigan turn brown
meltwater in every gully above the road, the shop goes back to summer hours, nights that no longer go fully dark
no sunset from the third week, every bed on the outer coast taken, walkers on the ridge at one in the morning
Fjordgard first, then Husoy
The guesthouse in Fjordgard has nine rooms, each with its own bath, a boot room that smells of wet wool, and a woman who puts dinner on the table at seven. Not from seven. At seven. If you are still on the shore road at ten past, your plate is on the counter and the kitchen light is off. Breakfast is bread out of the oven, boiled eggs, brown cheese cut with a plane, herring for anyone who wants it at that hour, and coffee that does not stop coming.
Husoy is four rooms above what used to be a fish landing shed, and the shed underneath is still working. The boats come in between five and seven most mornings in January and the sound carries through the floor, so if you sleep lightly, ask for the room at the north end. The one shop opens 10 to 4 on weekdays and 10 to 1 on Saturday, and it stocks what 240 people need rather than what a visitor wants on a Sunday; buy Sunday's food on Friday. There is no bar and no restaurant. Dinner is in the house at half past six, and it is fish four nights out of four unless the weather has kept the boats tied up.
The cod come in this month. Fish that have spent five years in the Barents Sea move down onto the banks off the outer coast to spawn from about the middle of January, and the first real landings of the season usually fall in the last ten days of it. You will see them going up the quay in crates. The drying racks do not fill until February, so in this week you get the smell of the sea and not the other one.
The outer road in January
The county keeps the outer road open and plows it early, but open does not mean quick. Those 31 miles narrow to one lane with pullouts in three or four places, run along the water and then over a saddle, and the plow has a route that you are either on or behind. Reckon an hour and forty, in the dark at both ends. When the wind gets over about 45 miles an hour the exposed stretch above the fjord closes, sometimes for two hours and sometimes for the day, and there is nobody to argue with about it.
The car has studded tires because in Troms in January that is what a car has. It is a small automatic with heated seats and it will do everything this week asks. If you have never driven on packed snow in the dark, this is a poor week to learn alone; say so when you write, and the operator can put a local driver alongside you for the two transfer days, at a figure that goes into the quote.
The two seasonal crossings that make this island quick in summer are out of the water in January. Both stop for the winter, so the way onto Senja is the bridge at Finnsnes and the way out is the same bridge; there is no shortcut over the sound and no boat waiting at the far end of one. Allow three hours from Fjordgard to the airport at Tromso on the 25th, and start it in the dark.
What it takes to hold the seventeenth
Write, or call, and say who is going and where from. A figure built against your own names and your own dates takes two to four working days to come back to you in writing, because it is assembled by the company that runs the week rather than pulled off a screen while you wait. It says what the beds are, what the car is, which three days are guided, and what sits outside the figure.
Third Coast Dispatch takes no money at any point, in any form. The operating company sends its invoice to you directly and you settle it with that company, on its terms and its schedule, which are set out in the quote before you say yes. This office is at 600 SW Jefferson St, Suite 302, Lee's Summit, MO 64063, the number is +1 (816) 525-2846, and requests reach us at bookings@thirdcoastdispatch.com. If anything on this page is wrong, and on a page with this many numbers on it something eventually will be, corrections@thirdcoastdispatch.com goes to the person who corrects it. Third Coast Dispatch Bookings LLC is registered in Missouri and operates under the name Third Coast Dispatch. Requests sent overnight are answered within one business day.
Send this office a booking request
Open 24/7, this form will take a booking request whenever you write it. Nowhere on it is a card number requested and nothing is charged, because no money is ever owed to this office. Whatever reaches the form is opened in the order it landed, and an answer goes back inside one working day.
Nowhere on this page is a card number requested, and none is kept by this office anywhere. Writing costs you nothing and ties you to nothing. Asking is not the same as holding: your date belongs to whoever asks next until the operating company has confirmed it on paper and you have read what it requires of you.