Svolvær; Tuesday, 05 May, 2026

I had been intending on having a bit of a lie in, but the seagulls out in the harbour decided to have a full on pitched battle at 7am so I was forced from my slumbers and decided after lying there listening to them for a while that I was unlikely to get back to sleep. In the end this turned out to be for the best as it meant I had an earlier breakfast than planned and was out of the hotel going for the morning bus rather than the lunchtime bus to Henningsvær, if I’d caught the later one I probably wouldn’t have seen as much as I did.

Henningsvær is a small fishing village located at the very end of the land as the bigger island fragments into lots of small islands and islets. The village itself is located on two islands that have been joined together by the filling in of the channel between them, that also created a harbour for the fishing boats as they got bigger, meaning the village survived the move to powered fishing boats unlike places like Å.

The journey down to Henningsvær is as much a part of the experience as visiting the village as the road hugs the coastline all the way down the peninsula until the land runs out and it then soars across the sea on two impressive bridges before reaching the larger of the two islands that the village is located on.

I hopped off the bus here and just started wandering, taking in the many views of the harbour, village and surrounding islands to be had from lots of different viewpoints either at waters edge or up on the headlands at the end of the islands.

The village is also now home to a thriving artists community so there are lots of galleries to look around if you were interested in that, but I just spent my time walking, covering almost all of the islands that you can reach on foot, ending up at the northern point of the smaller island, furthest in distance by road, if not as the crow flies, from the main bridge off of the island about 10 minutes before the bus was due, having filled the full three hours between buses without any difficulty. My original plan had been to catch the bus that was just pulling in now, which would only have given me about 90 minutes to explore which clearly wouldn’t have been enough.

Rather than head all the way back into Svolvær, I hopped off the bus in the small village of Kabelvåg, which the bus from Leknes had stopped in on the way into Svolvær the previous afternoon, and the bus out to Henningsvær had stopped in this morning, and on both occasions it had looked like a very pretty village.

I had a long wander around the village centre before heading out along the harbour breakwater for views back over the village and the surrounding mountains. From there I decided, as it was only just over 6Km, it would probably be a nice walk back into Svolvær so instead of waiting for a bus I started to walk and it proved to be very pleasant, especially as the rain showers held off for the entire time.

A little way out of the centre of the village I came across it’s two main attractions, one is a rock with the names and signatures of some of the modern (post freedom from Sweden at the start of the 20th century) Kings of Norway, and a little further on the large village church which, due to its size has earned the name Lofotkatedralen.

In the end the walk back took nearly two hours as I kept stopping to take photos of the scenery so I decided just to pop to a supermarket and pick up some things for a light dinner before heading straight back to my hotel room to get my shoes off and relax for the rest of the evening.