A Very Personal Norwegian Odyssey

Norway, Sweden, Finland in April 2022

by Neil Pitts

Between January and April 2022 two friends and I attempted to ski the length of Norway.

For me it was a very personal journey. In April 2020 I sat for two days with my mother as she slowly died of Covid, a then little understood virus. Within days, I too became extremely ill. It was just the beginning of what turned into a 16-month struggle with an illness that, at the time, had no name, now known as Long Covid. I was transformed from an extremely fit and active person to one who could barely string a sensible sentence together. For nine months my horribly debilitating symptoms – severe fatigue and nausea, headaches and heart issues to name just a few – slowly got worse.

Early in 2021 I began to notice tiny improvements and decided that I needed a challenge, something to aim for that would prove that I could and would beat this horrible condition. A friend, David Hamilton, had told me that he was going to attempt to ski the length of Norway the following winter, the first half alone, the rest with a Norwegian friend Trond Eilertsen. Despite still being quite ill and having never been on Nordic skis before I was accepted onto the Trond team, giving me a little less than one year to get both better and fit for this epic adventure called Norge på langs (literally, Norway lengthways). This classic long-distance trail is almost exclusively completed during the summer months. In the winter it is a completely different challenge. At around 2,700km – more than twice the distance from Lands End to John O’Groats – it has only been completed by 75 people since 1951. Many quit.

It was 16 long months from contracting the disease before I finally declared myself free of Long Covid, leaving me four clear months to get fit and learn to ski. What could possibly go wrong? Quite a lot! I tore a calf muscle, which put me out of action for six weeks. An accident on my roller skis (so much for learning to ski) stopped me for two weeks. Then, just six weeks before we were due to fly to Norway, I managed to break a rib ending any chance of getting fit in time for the trip. To top it off, the day before we were due to fly, I caught a terrible cold. By the time we reached our start point at Norway’s southernmost tip, Lindesnes, on 3 January 2022, I felt awful and was about as unfit as I had ever been.

Five days later, after 122 kilometres of hiking, I put on my Nordic skis for the first time ever and, still feeling dreadful, donned a 20kg rucksack and set off to ski into a storm that was forecast to last a week. Six days after that, following a fall through the ice and yet another broken rib, it had become clear that certain elements of our plan were flawed. Our camping kit was woefully inadequate and our skiing skills left much to be desired. On 13 January, after just 11 days, we quit. We skied down to the road, got on a bus and returned to Oslo to lick our wounds.

Back in Oslo we consulted with the third member of the team, Trond, who encouraged us to rethink our approach. We borrowed extra kit, a better tent and a pulk (sledge) and spent three weeks practising with our new equipment. On 9 February we restarted our journey from Sandvika in the Trøndelag county. We would not be skiing the whole distance as time was against us, but there were still 1600km and 60 days between us and Norway’s northernmost point, Nordkapp. It remained a huge endeavour.

It was a “big snow” year and during the first week the extra snow made progress relatively easy on the well-ploughed roads, but my crash course in Nordic skiing was about to really begin as we left the towns behind and headed into the wilderness. I learned to ski along lakes so big they took three days to cross, in temperatures so cold that the nights saw the thermometer inside the tent drop below -20°C and in snow so wet it stuck to our skis reducing our progress to less than 1km/hr. It was a steep learning curve. The terrible winter continued and soon we were spending day after day battling our way through white-out conditions and gale force winds. It was 18 days before we took a rest and then only because we were forced to sit out a particularly bad storm. I was exhausted and permanently hungry. We were expending more than 6000 calories a day with my inefficient skiing technique costing me additional calories.

By the time we crossed the Arctic Circle on 26 February, despite having, or perhaps because we had encountered every type of snow, I had become an almost competent skier. I still struggled to keep up with both David and Trond but had at least mastered skiing both up and downhill with the pulk, now affectionately known as ‘Pulky.’ After 21 days David left the team leaving just Trond and me to continue alone. Our next few days were appalling. Complete white-out conditions and winds of almost 100km/hr harried us for four days all the way to the border with Sweden where, quite suddenly, the clouds lifted, the wind dropped, and the sun came out. There followed eight days of perfect conditions. Conspiracy theories abounded as we crossed back into Norway and the storms returned.

For more than 30 days we saw only one group of skiers on the trail, but by mid-March we began to encounter more and more. But after just two short weeks of intermittent, but always delightful, encounters the popular ski areas were left behind and we were back to being the only skiers for miles around. We saw and ate) a lot of reindeer and occasionally would meet a reindeer herder and his dog on the ubiquitous ski scooter, but never any other skiers. I will, however, forever remember that part of Norway for the kindness of the people we met in the settlements, all of whom went out of their way not just to house and feed us (usually reindeer) but help us with our onward journey.

At 15.46 on Thursday 7 April 2022, despite all the setbacks and a particularly ugly winter, Trond and I reached Nordkapp, Europe’s northernmost point. I had skied a total of 1553km over 71 days. What better way to celebrate than with coffee and waffles?

Neil has written a book about his epic journey and is seeking a publisher.

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