On the coastal express and without the favour of the gods

Skip the approach stages, train to Hamburg, ferry from Hamburg to Bergen, hotel accommodation and, the next day, rush to the port to board the Coastal Express.

But no. The Coastal Express is complete until the following week. The group begins to have doubts about my abilities as a leader, and little by little a trend of common sense emerges: a week in Bergen is too much; two volunteers decide to go and enquire about a flight that might take us directly to Bodø, just across from Lofoten. A subgroup - moved by the conviction that it is better to think about it before deciding - takes tickets for an open-air concert of selected pieces by Grieg, on which the continuation of the trip will be decided the next day, after the cultural interlude.

The next day, the split is made: four friends decide to travel by plane, I am stubborn because we cannot give up the Coastal Express (about fifty stops before the dreamed of archipelago). Giovanni, who has always loved surprises and invents rituals wherever life takes him, agrees to wait a week in Bergen and organises himself effortlessly, in his own way: for him there will be the hour of maximum excitement of the harbour seagulls, the hour when the little train with the white curtains leaves for Oslo, the hour when the sailors gather to eat oily slops made of whale meat and smashed potatoes and to drink (conscientiously, in silence, from 3pm onwards, as long as the body holds out).

The golden light of that Wednesday, perhaps it was already late - does the time still count after a few days without sunsets? - when we make our way to the embarkation point with our bags, our jumpers over our shoulders, our sunglasses. A man runs up to us, young and cheerful. 'I sold you the tickets, there's a problem: an electrical fault, your cabin is burnt out'. Pause. Our booth. "Don't make those faces, it's solved: the captain is giving you a smaller cabin, without portholes unfortunately, but you will be his dinner guests every night."

The cabin turned out to be little more than a shoebox, with no air, two overlapping cots 60 cm wide and a 24x12 sink. Conrad would have loved dinner with the captain: the man would arrive at the table, his eyes bleary; he would look at his plate and its contents, sighing. Then he would leave with a tired gesture of his hand. The cook would open the porthole, tip the contents into the sea amidst the seagulls' cries of jubilation.

However, this invitation to the captain's table allowed us access to the upper deck and the assembly hall where we spent our days looking at the incredible landscape that paraded before us. A cliff, another cliff, a cleft of rocks, a very thin strip of flat land, sometimes a mountain road from which a jeep could be seen descending, a coloured house, a cliff, a crag. The clouds would rush over us and then run away. Fellow travellers were silent, polite, the vast majority English and Scottish. I remember two young ladies from London who every afternoon, greeting me, would gasp, 'Oh, what a pearly light, oh, what a pearly light...'. Every four or five hours, the Coastal Express would do its duty. It would pull up, violently with great clangours, the boys would unload mail sacks, refrigerators, small farm machinery, bicycles. Sometimes the owners were there, sometimes the parcels were abandoned on the quay. And the boat would set off again.

On the third evening, a train driver reached us and interrupted our contemplation: 'A telex has arrived for you. It says that your hotel in Lofoten has burnt down". A little astonished at our consternation, he offered to call an uncle of his who was a pastor in Svolvær and who had a billiard table in the small room attached to the parish: nothing would have been easier than to convince him to allow us to sleep on the billiard table, he was a very affectionate man, he would have welcomed us with pleasure. I confess that I would have agreed to sleep in the Svolvær pastor's party room.

John laughed. Two close fires were too many, it was a sign from the Scandinavian gods, the third fire would catch us in our sleep and goodbye to our beautiful and intrepid youth. The time had come to disembark without making a fuss, to respect the evil spirits of the Nordic Olympus, to say goodbye and thank you very much. Lofoten are there anyway, and they are not moving. We'll be back another summer, don't worry, we'll have another fine July without sleep, after all, no one is running after us.

We disembarked in Trondheim. We gave the tickets for the cabin without air to two hippies. In the evening, in a hotel where everything was red hot, I let myself slip into a peaceful sleep.

For decades, whenever summer approached, I thought back to Lofoten. I have since then had a red cardboard box where documents and maps have accumulated. I know everything about that archipelago that had made me dream so much. I can recite litanies of place names. But, in the early years of this century, I realised that I would never go there again. Lofoten are among the most beautiful places in the world and are now very easily accessible. In Svolvær there are more hotels and B&s than fishermen's houses. Tourists' opinions accompany every 'spot', comment on every 'traditional' dish (they have miraculously multiplied), suggest where the photos come out best, explain how and where not to waste your precious time.

Dear gods and spirits of the place, where have you gone to take refuge? Have you abandoned your wild islands forever? And one last question: did you have a grudge against me?