January 2026
We rode a dog sled driven by seven working dogs, the seventh a young dog in training, and a man standing on the sled behind us taking us through the icy landscape of Kirkenes, that borders Russia and Finland in Norway’s far north. It was freezing cold, fast and incredibly beautiful: frozen lake, rolling snow covered hills, bare trees, and a sliver of pink sky. The last two dogs seemed to argue a lot and one kept turning around and looking at us, as if to say, “See, I’m right and he is wrong,” or something.
There is nothing sedate about dog sledding, nothing gentle. It’s heart pumpingly scary as one whizzes around tight corners. A couple of times, I thought I’d be flung off into the snow. My face hurt with the pain of cold, but I absolutely loved it and I loved the countryside. It reminded me of the landscape of my family and I felt at home in this border land.
As we crossed the solid lake, I remembered the Ukrainian composer, Prokofiev’s opera Alexander Nevsky, the 13th century Prince of Novgorod, about a battle fought and won on the frozen lake between the Teutonic knights (Germans) and the Russians, a lake that borders Estonia and Russia and the lands of my mother’s family. My mother was Russian, born in Pskov (on the lake’s edge that borders Estonia and Russia, mentioned in the opera), her mother was Russian, her father, Estonian and originally Baltic German. The land they lived was historically disputed as a site for conflicting ideologies and language (just like the war in Ukraine and Russia at the moment). I note here that Prokofiev is claimed by the Russians as a Russian composer! Kirkenes had this quality, of being between places. It’s disputed territory, and interestingly, these days, Russians and Norwegians can freely move across the border, at least within the fairly tight parameter of forty kilometres. What are borders anyway, but a human construct, and we are all humans claiming “mine versus yours” stuff, just like the two sled dogs.
I found the whole thing of being here deeply moving, stirring something profound within me. It was against this backdrop of deep remembering that I met a few of the little puppies who begin training to pull sleds at a young age. One little guy and I totally fell in love. We nuzzled each other and held hand in paw and I wanted to take him home to Australia, but, of course, I couldn’t.
Back home, I have much to think about. Our Norwegian journey was only two and half weeks long and most of it was done travelling on a Hurtigruten ship from Bergen to Kirkenes. In some ways, the trip was far too short, but perhaps not. It was quite restful not having to do much at all. The ship stopped often, mostly merely to collect mail, but sometimes we could disembark and wander new streets, but unfortunately never to do anything but scratch the surface of any place. I guess, it was because dog sledding had a dangerous quality to it and that physically engaged us in that experience that this felt the most real of the entire journey. Everything else became much like drifting through time and space as nothing more than a tourist with a camera.
One place that my friend and I stopped at enroute from Oslo to Bergen, where we boarded the ship, was Flam in the fjords. The landscape was magnificent: mountains, cliffs, rock formations that blew our minds, but the hotel we stayed at was a theme park. Their restaurant was set up like a pseudo-Viking feast house, complete with tall blond Viking man with a suspiciously northern English accent (!) who would sell his grandmother at the drop of a hat, animal hides, carved wooden chairs and tables, a booze bar, etc etc. I felt almost sick with the silliness of it; a museum piece designed for tourists. If this is what travel has become, I’m not sure I want any part of it.
I suppose what I gained most from my journey was connection with my familial history of border countries/cultures, meeting and loving the dogs, and understanding what matters most to me. The rest can be forgotten.
