Joanna Lumley in the Land of the Northern Lights Page #2

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Ohh.

I think this is quite incredible.

That's due north.

Excellent job, dogs!

'I'm in the Arctic now

and for the rest of my journey north

'I can obviously call myself

an explorer, not a tourist. '

'It's time to stop hurtling around and

give myself a chance to stand and stare.

'I've chosen a region renowned for some of

Scandinavia's finest scenery and richest fishing waters -

'the Lofoten Islands,

'but I'm drawn mainly by the charm

of a name on the map.

'It's not A, but "Aw". And it's not the first,

but the last letter of the Norwegian alphabet.

'Arriving by night, A certainly

feels like the back of beyond.

'Cloud cover rules out any prospect

of seeing the Northern Lights. '

This is right out over the sea.

'Retired schoolmaster and local bigwig Otto Schotz

shows me to my own rorbu, or fisherman's cottage. '

Oh, how wonderful!

Why did you choose Norway

and this Nordic Norway?

I must tell you. I've had a dream

all my life of coming to the north.

When I was a child, I had this idea

of seeing the Northern Lights.

And in my books I could read about the

snow and the north and I longed to go there.

And, in fact, once, as a child,

out in Malaysia, for the coronation,

when the Queen was crowned in 1953,

my sister and I dressed in fancy dress and here is

me, seven years old, dressed as a Norwegian girl.

My mother made fancy dress costumes

for my sister and myself.

She plaited our hair very carefully

to look like little Norwegian girls.

Do I look like a Norwegian girl? Yes, I think

you already here dream about the Nordic countries.

You can see it?

I can see it in your eyes.

Do you think I may have

Viking blood? Yes, that, too.

Are you a Viking? I think you are. Yes,

I must have Viking blood in me, yes.

Well, this is just fantastic.

It's so beautiful.

'One thing that didn't feature in my

childhood dreams of the north was dried fish.

'So what's this swinging ominously

in the middle of the room?'

Yes, this is a cod. Yeah. But this is

a special cod. Yeah. Called king cod.

King cod? Yes.

They wanted it to tell them the weather.

How? How did it do it? Did it...?

Before the weather changed,

it started to turn out.

People could read out from that indications

of storms and other changes in the weather.

Such a fish, would it hang

in every rorbu? Yes.

In every rorbu and in many homes.

They also brought luck.

It's dark outside, but tomorrow

I can't wait to see where I am.

GULLS CRY:

Astonishing!

Well, this is just unbelievable. It's

just... It's just fabulously beautiful.

All through the night, I could

just hear this water dashing under

and the seagulls crying and crying.

'Time to explore A

'and an unmistakable smell

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