Some 2 billion years ago, give or take a couple of months, Mother Earth gave an enormous belch off the north coast of Norway, though Lord alone knows what sector of the globe it was on then, following up with a whole series of new belches over the next 2 billion years, doing some magnificent architectural tectonics in rock building.
Then, over the past few hundred thousand years, give or take a week or two, Mother Nature decided to work her own wonders with a series of ice ages, the last starting 20,000 years ago, give or take a couple of days, depositing a massive layer of ice over a mile thick, then gouging out a superb kaleidoscope of exquisite rock towers, monoliths, ramparts, buttresses, saw-tooth ridges, cirques, moraines, precipitous fjords and plunging valleys as she sent the ice cap scurrying back north again.
Today, you have the Lofoten Islands, a 150-mile-long archipelago some 125 miles north of the Arctic Circle, a magical wonderland of mystic proportions as Mother Nature continues to work her wonders, this time garbing the precipitous slopes with forests of short trees and a carpet of lichen ranging from deep emerald to yellow-green to enchanting sage that stretches up to the bare grey summit crags.
The sea shines all shades of green and blue, white-capped by strong winds as it laps the shores and invades the fjords. There doesn't seem to be an inch of level ground on most of the islands, and now in June they're bathed in the midnight sun's 24 hours of daylight.
The islands are on UNESCO's World Heritage Sites candidate list, and not for nothing does Lonely Planet invoke the 'Tolkienesque landscapes and glacier carved landforms' that endow this 'magical archipelago' with a 'supernatural beauty that is truly special.'
The phantasmagorical shape of the rocks and mountains, spiked, twisted, folded in on each other or standing in splendid isolation as solitary monoliths towering over little villages of brownish red and yellow-ochre wooden houses, the lakes, the myriad plummeting waterfalls coursing down the wooded precipices, leave little doubt as to why the Norse created trolls and giants, gods and demons.
What better setting to host myths, mystery, enchantment and otherworldly beings.
It's pouring with rain, we can barely see the huge snow-streaked crags towering over Svolvær, the islands' little capital, their shapes barely piercing the dark swirling clouds before being swallowed up again, and Rivka has just visited another 'ten plagues' upon the hotels' breakfast buffet table, transforming tons of plunder into doorstep sandwiches for our little excursion, but that's another story.
We're lucky I booked the tour on Lofoten's Arctic Buss some weeks ago on the web; we're the only two on the huge bus and I'm sure they wouldn't have left had we just shown up. The islands are joined by hump-backed bridges, and the winds reach such car-defenestrating or rather de-bridging force that they are closed when it's blowing more than 23 metres per second.
The wind's so strong that it's gusting huge sheets of spray off the fjords, but again we're in luck - it's just dropped to 22 metres per second.
So we pass over from Austvågøy, Svolvær's island, to Vestvågøy where in 1981, in the tiny village of Borg, a farmer's plough hit the ruins of a 275-foot-long Viking chief's house, now replicated in the shape of an upturned boat along with a museum of Viking history. What's more, the weather is clearing nicely.
Modern 'rorbuer' based on the simple huts that King Øystein built for the fisherfolk in the early 12th century now welcome tourists in many a cove hamlet with the mod cons that the originals never had.
As the tour doesn't go further south we commandeer the guide, rent a car for an obscene sum and get him to drive us to the very end of the narrow, winding, twisting and turning road to Moskenesøy Island.
Wherever you go, you come across large wooden racks loaded down with fish drying in the gale force winds.
For over a thousand years fishing has been the islands' lifeblood - so much so that a local Banksy has captured Lofoten's spirit and fate on a wall in Henningsvær village on Heimøy island. It shows a rugged, hatted and bearded fisherman, and in now fading paint proclaims: In Cod We Trust.
Now Wales might have the world's longest town name:Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, but Norway has the world's shortest - the tiny hamlet of Å (from the word for river), the road's terminus.
Before you get there you pass through the village of Reine; the spectacular location with red rorbuers hugging the shore of a blue fjord against the backdrop of massive Reinebringen's sheer triangular rock face has become the iconic image of iconic Lofoten, and of Norway as a whole.
First, though, you can make a short diversion on Flakstadøy Island to Nusfjord, another little village in a stunning location where the precipitous mountain walls open up to the sea - a UNESCO World Heritage site.
It's pure Tolkien or Narnia scenery wherever you look.
You can even go to Hell, if you're prepared to walk or take a tossing, rolling boat, the second place thus named in Norway after the better known mainland village with the much photographed name sign. It derives from hellir, the Norse word for cliff overhang.
And did you know that Satan's hell is a freezing place in old Norse lore? No nice warm hell's fires for them since they'd have done anything to get there just to get out of the cold.
Moskenesøy's Hell is a decrepit village beyond Å, overlooking the mighty marine whirlpool of Moskstraumen, the second strongest maelstrom in the world and the one described by Jules Verne in 'Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea' and Edgar Alan Poe in his short story 'A Descent into the Maelström.'
But we don't go there; we already visited Saltstraumen, the world's strongest maelstrom when the coastal ferry stopped off in Bodø yesterday.
We all looked very cute, dressed from head to foot in fat bright yellow rubber suits and hoods. You could be forgiven for mistaking us for pregnant penguins with jaundice - even if you don't have penguins in the Arctic - squashed on iron seats on a so-called RIB, a rigid-hulled inflatable boat, speeding in a mighty spray across grey waters under lowering clouds.
And Rivka was not amused. 'What are we doing this for,' quothed she. 'Well, dear, we're on our way to see Saltstraumen, the world's most powerful tidal current. Four times a day 13 billion cubic feet of water are forced in and out of a passage 490 feet wide and 103 feet deep. On this exciting journey there is a good chance to observe sea eagles. We sit safely and comfortably in sturdy rubber boats...'
OK, I didn't actually say that, the excursion book does. But the point is all this power produces maelstroms, whirlpools up to 33 feet across and 16 feet deep. And they are indeed a wonder to behold, even if I do almost drop the camera in the deepest, swirlingest one.
We also saw the collision of continents, or rather the result thereof, the multi-ribbed cliff faces of the Caledonian Fold Belt where 490 to 390 million years ago, give or take a couple of weeks, the palaeocontinents of Laurentica and Baltica got into a bit of argie-bargie.
[Upcoming blog next Sunday: Telemark, site of Norway's wartime heroism]
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By the same author: Bussing The Amazon: On The Road With The Accidental Journalist, available with free excerpts on Kindle and in print version on Amazon.