There are a few things you know about the Finnmarksvidda before you go there. It is vast, flat, and teeming with mosquitoes. We found all of this to be true when we walked from Alta to Karasjok in four days. It was 1996, and we did not meet a single soul along the way, apart from a tired cabin caretaker.
If you’re tired of hiking in queues in the mountains down south, the Finnmark Plateau is highly recommended. Here, you’ll find peace and quiet, solitude, and a sense of being far from civilization. You’ll also find mosquitoes. A lot of mosquitoes.
But don’t expect dramatic mountains. As mentioned, it is quite flat. The landscape undulates, partly sandy ground, partly rocky. Mostly low-growing heather, with occasional birch scrub. Streams cut through it. And there are fish, in the streams and lakes. The trails are very easy to walk.
Bojobæskihytta
The Norwegian Trekking Association has some cabins that we planned to use, and we brought a tent. The first leg went to the Bojobæski cabin. We knew there would be mosquitoes and had equipped ourselves with mosquito nets. Mosquito season is over by mid-August, but if you go earlier, you need to use mosquito nets. This is no exaggeration—there are infernal amounts of mosquitoes.
And as we approached Bojobæskihytta, which stood in the middle of a damp birch scrub forest, it dawned on us that this was where the mother of all mosquitoes lived—in the heart of the plateau, in this wet landscape. Here she lay down in the marsh, giving birth to billions of mosquitoes every day, and now they were welcoming us.
We made it safely into the cabin and locked the door behind us. If those mosquitoes had learned to work together, they would undoubtedly have managed to force the door open, so it was best to be on the safe side.
Once inside the cabin, we immediately set about preparing the day’s feast: fried pike. The pike was called Gjermund. It had been given a name because I had formed a close relationship with this fish. We had been fishing in a larger stream channel along the way, and Gjermund lived down there. Gjermund was probably not the sharpest. I had no desire to fish for pike—they are not among the tastiest fish—but Gjermund kept taking the bait, again and again. I threw Gjermund back, but he bit again. Eventually the line snapped, and Gjermund swam around with my lure in his mouth. It was easy to spot him down there in the shallow stream. That made me angry, so I put on a new lure and hauled Gjermund up again to get my lure back. In the struggle that followed, Gjermund was badly injured and had to be put down.
As expected, Gjermund tasted like old wood; salt and pepper did little to help.
In the middle of the night, strange sounds kept us awake. Was it reindeer gone berserk, or wild men on off-road motorcycles? No, it had to be the mother of all mosquitoes lying there, squeezing out her mosquitoes. Eventually, we drifted into a doze, dreading what the next day would bring.
Mollisjok Mountain Lodge
The next stop was Mollisjok Mountain Lodge. The Norwegian Trekking Association had a room there where we could spend the night, and it was also possible to buy food. We had been counting on fishing, but we were a bit short on anything to go with the fish. So we knocked on the manager’s door, hoping to stock up on supplies. Nothing happened, so we knocked again. After a while, the door opened and a little old man in nothing but his underwear peered at us, clearly straight out of bed. It’s easy to lose track of time when the midnight sun is shining, but this was well into the afternoon. Did he have any food to sell? Sure, he had some potato pudding, as he put it.
Mollisjok is beautifully situated by the Iešjohka River, where my buddy caught a fine grayling that he was very proud of. And with good reason—it tasted much better than Gjermund, especially with delicious potato pudding on the side.
From Mollisjok, we made good progress towards Ravnastua, where we stayed overnight, and then on to Karasjok.
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