On Top Of The World

I felt very small indeed on Day 2 of the voyage as we made our way into the Geiranger Fjord, a blueprint of what a fjord should be: deep blues and greens garlanded with rainbows in the spray of countless waterfalls. As if this lost valley wasn't marvelous enough, there are abandoned farms clinging to impossible places hundreds of meters up on the sides of the thickly forested canyon. According to our guide, children had to be tethered to the houses to keep them from tumbling into the fjord. The last hanging farm here was given up in 1981 by a bachelor who despaired of finding a wife.

On the Hurtigruten, places that would defeat mountain goats are accessible to people for whom even the stairs are a challenge. Women sit knitting in wheelchairs, and a baby from South Africa drifts off while a Swedish passenger plays his accordion. A German loans me the perfect MP3 soundtrack: Peer Gynt, composed by Edvard Grieg for the eponymous play by another Norwegian, Henrik Ibsen. It was inspired by this very landscape. Later, we sail past Ibsen's house in Hellesylt in the Geiranger Fjord.

Day 4 and the Lofoten Wall suddenly throws itself up across the horizon, a marine maze of rock and ice 100 km long and, in some places, well over 800 m high. I watch from the Olympian heights of the bridge as the crew negotiate a route through. These days, gps, radar and the automatic tracking pilot do most of the routine navigating, but the captain takes the helm manually as we slalom through Lofoten and inch our way down the narrow Trollfjord, with just a few meters' clearance. In the final cul-de-sac, Captain St[ri {a}]le Torhus pivots a deft about-face, possible only because the 121.8-m, 11,200-ton Kong Harald must have a tighter turning radius than my Audi A4. All of this is thrillingly new for me but intimately familiar to the crew. Their only surprise comes when I accidentally lean on the Emergency Astern button, sending the engineers into a momentary flurry of crisis maneuvers.

For isolated coastal folk, the twice-a-day Hurtigruten is as good as a clock and better than neighbors. One woman in Ornes never fails to greet the passing ships in her bathrobe, and the ship salutes her with a blast of its horn. The crew notices even the slightest changes on shore, and if something looks amiss, they radio to make sure everything is O.K. Occasionally, even post-mortem passengers board the ships. The Kong Harald has a Mortal Room for coffins on their way to their final resting place. Sometimes, too, there are prisoners in the grim ship's brig, which at least is more spacious than most of the cabins.

Each Hurtigruten is a self-contained world, and each has its own distinct personality, thanks to its crew. Year in, year out, each crew member works 22 days, then goes on leave for a matching period. Knut Storø, the burly first mate, will not be home for his 16th wedding anniversary, but then again, he missed his 5th and 10th as well. "It's amazing what flowers can do once in a while," he laughs. I wonder what the divorce rate is at sea. Karl Helge, the navigational officer, is taking no such chances. His sweetheart comes aboard for a dinner cruise as we pass near her house.

Passengers like George and Isabel Harris from the U.K. are almost as dedicated as the crew. Every year for the past five years, they have made two consecutive round trips on the Kong Harald. "It's so relaxing," says George, whose wife made her first Hurtigruten voyage in the 1950s and still feels that she hasn't seen all its subtle shades. "I'm stricken with Norway," she says. They live for the moments when the ship goes "off course." Maybe a choir will come aboard, or the Hurtigruten will get a request from the Bodø lighthouse to scare a few dinner guests by threatening to run aground. "On this ship," says George, "you never know what's going to happen next."

For other passengers, this is not a regular journey but the trip of a lifetime. A group of Norwegian high school students celebrating their graduation worked three years to pay for a few days' cruise beyond their home in Stonglandseidet, which looks like a dollhouse village from the ship. They love the attentive service and fancy Scandinavian buffets of smoked salmon, pickled herring and chocolate mousse. When we cross what Isabel calls "troubled waters," they are crowded against the front rail, jumping with each swell and screaming into the wind with joy. Amused, the pilot turns off the stabilizers for a few seconds to give the ride more exhilarating bump.

BARRY LEWIS for TIME

NORTHERN HIGHLIGHTS The Hurtigruten ships call at 34 ports, including the small but lively city of Tromsø, with its distinctive triangular Arctic Cathedral whose architecture echoes the jagged landscape and cruel climate

The teenagers are right. The rail is the best place to appreciate the full spectacle. The pale pink mountains are more immediate, bigger. The wind roars louder than the engine, and endless sunlight tumbles in the water, falling away under our bow. Sometimes there is a lighthouse clinging to a rock, sometimes sea eagles or even puffins. Muffled in my thick windbreaker, I can't tell if my breath is being ripped away by the scenery or by the keen, clarion air. I stop listening to Peer Gynt because the landscape is making its own music.

On Day 4, I am at the port rail at 7 a.m. to watch for the Arctic Circle, when we cross the invisible line where the sun merely kisses the horizon on the longest day of the year. There are fewer people and more birds, and almost no trees at all. The arctic vegetation is miniaturized while the sense of wildness grows larger. It's a land of extremes. The sun now stays up all the time, to make up for months of absence. Over the next two days, we pass Europe's northernmost university, northernmost city, northernmost cathedral, golf course and Lion's Club. And on Day 6, we pass the North Cape itself, the farthest north you can go in Europe.

I have been almost this far north before in Finnish Lapland, but the spiritual difference between a seven-day Hurtigruten voyage and a one-hour flight from Helsinki makes all the difference in the world. At sea, north becomes a state of mind. On land, in a bus, I was a tourist. At the North Cape, indigenous Sami entrepreneurs offered reindeer-farm visits and trinkets, and a photo-op globe on an impressive cliff represents Europe's northernmost point. At sea, alone at the Hurtigruten's rail, the only transaction is between me and the rush of the salty north wind. I wish the voyage would never end. Maybe I'm a cruise person after all. "This isn't a cruise," George wags a gnarled finger at me. "It's a voyage of discovery." I stand corrected.

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