An islet to ourselves

The sun tickles us awake. It's day one on Bukkholmen, across Borgundfjord from Ålesund.

We're at the center of 360 degrees of idyll. The sun is shining, and we have no driving, no chores, all day.

This baby approves.

Our affable host, Reidar, took us across from shore last night in the boat that comes with the rental. I'd called him earlier from the supermarket to let him know we were just a few minutes away. “That would have been you I saw then, in the big Volvo with the red license plates,” he says, in the north-west brogue that tells you he's grown up here. “At the Bunnpris at Vedde. I thought to myself that must be guests of mine.“ Everything in Norway is local, you understand. This is a country that names every bridge and every tunnel, and when I grew up in Hokksund every hill and every turn of every street had a name. Even though the Ålesund area has a fairly large population, as these things go in Norway, it's spread out around the fjord and on various peninsulas. Every nook and cranny has a name, and everyone knows everyone else locally. Of course, we also stick out like a sore thumb, what with the “S” for Sweden sticker, “Gothenburg Factory Delivery” license plate holder, and signal red plates Volvo has adorned us with.

Those red license plates, in particular, got a lot of attention throughout our trip. Norwegians are curiously aware of license plates. The plates tell you where someone's from. Norway's history is one of mostly small towns and difficult travel. Everything was local, and that mindset persists today. Not in a bad way, not as in suspicion, just curiosity; where you're from says something about you. And license plates carry some of that information. Those red ones, however, were vexing, because nobody had ever some plates like that before and couldn't place them. And then whenever we stopped and piled out of that car with the Sweden sticker on it we'd carry on in both Norwegian and English. We were a mystery wrapped in an enigma.

I digress. So here we were, on our own island, or more accurately islet, small as it is, in one of the two apartments in Reidar's very reasonable Bukkholmen Rorbuer.

Just off Langevåg, on the Sula peninsula, across the Borgundfjord from Åleseund, to be precise, and precision matters in Norway. The sun is shining. We have fishing rods and spearfishing gear. Time to finally dip into some salt water.

At the end of the day, the haul is one crab, one scallop, three pollock, and one mackerel. Two snacks and a dinner.

We're rested and fed. Which is good, because tomorrow we haul out to the outer edges of the Atlantic coast to hike up and see some puffins.

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