Bodø; Friday, 26 May, 2023

Back to the travelling and after a leisurely breakfast we caught a cab down to the station to pick up the first train of the journey and the longest single leg by both distance and time, the full 729km of the Nordlandsbanen from Bodø down to Trondheim.

We’d booked tickets in the Premium carriage, which whilst it doesn’t have any bigger or more comfortable seats than the regular standard class carriages does come with a coffee machine and regularly replenished snacks, which on a near 10 hour train journey probably saved us more than the price difference.

The train pulled out of Bodø on time and started its long journey south initially by heading East back along the fjords towards Fauske before meeting up again with the E6 and running alongside it for most of the journey south.

About an hour after leaving Bodø the train slowed down to a crawl and the driver sounded the horn constantly as we passed two small pyramids, one on each side of the tracks, topped with a metal globe. These are the markers that indicate the location of the Arctic Circle and the point where we left Arctic Norway and the end of 24-hour daylight.