Rorbu No. 200 in Nusfjord!

Before writing this, I asked myself, ‘have I already written about this place’. The Lofoten Islands in Norway!

Well if travelling for 5 years to this place and it still feels like the first time then might as well write about it like the first time.

In 2010 when I first stayed in the Lofoten islands in Svolver, I loved it. Then over the years as I traveled more and more in the islands the stay always felt less exotic than the travel itself. For, even the islands have hotels with a glass façade where you look out of the window and see the sea but you cant breathe the waters. The group tour dynamics are different and price and food has to be given importance too with the location or the actual authentic feel of the place.

Personally I have always disliked staying in hotels that belong to a chain, or staying in a ‘hotel’ at all. The uniformity simply doesn’t work with me personally and here is the only difference I make between personal liking and what simply has to be done for work to be smooth. I have to choose hotels with a ‘Scandic’, or a ‘Radisson’ in their name to make sure the rooms are available and at a good price. But out of all the ‘chain’ hotels I have stayed in the Lofoten, one hotel I always remember and it was the Hennigsvaer Brygg hotel, which simply means the hotel on the pier of the fishing village Hennigsvaer. The chain is not even a chain and the locals formed a group of hotels in Lofoten to run them in unity and well keep the local spirit intact.

That morning in the June – July of 2010, when I sat looking out at the sea, someone staff mentioned to me, “that’s what we call Rorbu, over there, they are fishing cabins” he said.

A Rorbu, I learnt later, is a  red colour cabin built at the sea. It is a shelter to help the fisherman get some rest after being at the sea for close to 12 - 16 hours of winter catch.  A lot of sights in Lofoten are decorated by these rather simple looking red color cabins. On a clear summer day, the reflection of the red house on the Norwegian bay makes for a more than perfect postcard view. This is all I knew about the word Rorbu till today.

True, Rorbu was only a word for me till today.

The Norway fjords are over on this tour and the Arctics have begun, and the very first night the ‘Rorbu’ made its appearance this time not as a word but as an experience. As we made the 6 kms in road journey from the E 10, into the narrow road towards the Nusfjord, I began to hear expressions of awe from behind in my bus. Awe and Lofoten go hand in hand I know but it wasn’t before we arrived at our place of stay that the awe was replaced by total exhilaration.

Rorbu no. 200 

The Nusfjord was in front of our eyes and the little red cabins were spread out on it. It is midsummer but the weather was not like that, with the clouds looming over us, the people started taking their pictures even before they got the keys to their rorbu’s.

“No. 200 is a slight off track”, the guy at the reception said to me. “You have to go up the hill and then down and you will find it where the nusfjord opens up to the sea”. I know I couldn’t give it to any of my 60 + yr old tourists and so I was the choice by default to go to this Rorbu no. 200.  After showing the way to the Rorbu’s to my guests I started making way to mine, up the hill.  For a moment I wished I had packed light. After following the road for a few minutes I simply decided to follow the waters that lead to the sea. Then a wooden walkway went inwards to two cabins on stilts. My key went through one of them and that’s how I knew it was no. 200.

The Cod Fish .. Symbol of Lofoten

 At first when I entered my Rorbu, I found myself exactly with the same expressions as my tourists. Then I found myself with the camera. It was only after I checked all the rooms and including the living room opening up to the sea, that I went to sit on the patio. The waves don’t make a sound in Lofoten, the silence has its own sound.

I was in a Rorbu! The owners were the same as the Henninswear Brygg hotel, I stayed 5 years ago at.

As I sat there I remembered the time when an American told me some years back as we both looked a huge cruise ship on one of the Norwegian Fjords. “You will own it one day”, he said. I smiled and told him I am not looking at the cruise but at the little cottage behind the huge mass of steel on that hill. He didn’t know what I meant. But I thought, if I ever do find that, I no longer enjoy travelling so much and want to be in one place, this is the place I would be in.

The morning sun on the living area.

This morning as I open my eyes to a clear summer day, I realize I am living in that thought. The Rorbu no. 200 is as close as I have ever been to living on that cottage on the hill. I started writing this last night, but I couldn’t find the inspiration to complete this unless I actually woke up to the morning sun in the Rorbu no. 200.