Midsummer Fjord'n'Fire: Slinningsbålet 2019

We set out to sea to watch the world's second largest bonfire* in a boat best described as rustic, yet solid. Let's call her Old Blue.

If you're going to see the city of Ålesund's annual Midsummer bash, Slinningsbålet, we reasoned, you should see it from the fjord. The bonfire is the reason we're here on this day: The seeds of the Fjørdgasm were sown some time last year when Traci saw a video of the massive, flaming tower of wooden pallets and said, “Hey, that looks cool, can we see that?”

And yes, yes we can, so a trip was built around this date and this place. And here we are, the kids freezing their asses off a bit — we've got an overcast and blustery evening — in the middle of an armada of small craft, watching the fire creeping down the tower from the top like a slow-motion giant match.

Reidar, our affable AirBnB host, has lent us the sturdy old 25-footer. Maneuvering her involves bouncing back and forth between the wheel and the two levers poking up out of the mid-board thunk-a-chunk diesel, one for fuel and the other to engage the gears forward and aft. Being that I'm the only one among us with any experience on the water, I'm tonight's helmsman and ranking officer on deck. Convincing Old Blue to go in any particular direction takes a bit of planning, forethought, and much adjusting of wheel and levers. It's an exercise in multi-tasking.

Slinningsbålet is clearly a big thing. Everyone is here, including the cruise ship in the snapshot above, which at that point looked like it was headed straight for us — and by the looks of it, approximately 90% of the population of the greater Ålesund area has a boat or knows someone who has. The stiff breeze does its best to drift this entire armada past the Ålesund harbor entrance and away from the bonfire. Every 15-20 minutes, you'll need to fire up the motor and push upwind to get back in a decent position. Which is fine, except there are hundreds of others doing the same thing, all of them seemingly in far more nimble craft than Old Blue. It's a game of two-dimensional strategy, trying not to bang into everyone else while at least doing your best to look perfectly nonchalant about the whole thing. This is a town with a thousand years of seafaring history. It does not do to tool about out there like some kind of landlubbing stumblebum.

The old whale gets the job done, though. Certain kids, whose names shall not be named, had not prepared with enough layers of clothing despite all my nagging, and they're now complaining of the cold. Old Blue has a little cabin, however, where you can huddle from the wind, so we press on for a couple of hours. I mean, how many chances do you get to celebrate summer solstice cruising around on the Borgundfjord with Sugar Loaf Top and the open Atlantic to your starboard, snow-covered mountains to port, and a 120-foot fire in front of you? Once in a lifetime, kids. Once in a lifetime.

There was grilling from a helicopter involved at one point. Because in Norway that's a thing now.

By the time we capitulate to cold and impatient kids and grind Old Blue back across the fjord, the fire has crept halfway down and the king and queen came by on HNoMY Norge. We've had our On-the-Fjord Experience™ and will be content to finish watching the blaze and final collapse from the balcony of our beautifully situated AirBnB.

Nobody got seasick. Nobody went overboard. We're warm and snug, and tomorrow it's chillout day: No driving, and blue skies in the forecast.

* There's a bit of competition going on with that, wouldn't you know it. Ålesund and Slinningsbålet took the world record in 2010, but the town of Lustenau, Austria, grabbed the title just this year at almost 200 feet. Oh, well. It's tall enough, and it could be worse: At least we weren't beaten by Germans.