Transport: North to Hammerfest

Up from the misty fjord of Bergen, Norway, one morning last week climbed a trimotored Junkers seaplane. For some 275 miles it buzzed north along the ragged Scandinavian coast to Nidaros (Trondhjem), then on for 300 miles across the Arctic Circle to Bodo, finally another 425 miles past Narvik and Tromso to the famed town of Hammerfest, northernmost port in the world, where it sliced into the harbor at 5:15. Thus, in the first trip of a daily service that will last until autumn, did Norwegian Aero Transport Co. inaugurate the world’s most northerly airline. Cost of ticket: $55.

No frozen Arctic outpost is Hammerfest, but a thriving fishing village of 3,300 persons. Because the Gulf Stream curls across the Atlantic to flick the top tip of Scandinavia, Hammerfest’s temperature is warm in summer, rarely gets below freezing even in midwinter, when there is no sun for nearly three months. In the summer, when the sun never sets from May 13 to July 29, remaining visible for 18 hours daily until autumn, there is a busy trade in fish, reindeer, eiderdown, fox pelts, whale oil. Occasionally a cruise ship on the way to bleak North Cape, 75 miles farther on, drops anchor to give its passengers a chance to swim in the warm water, pick flowers, stare at the flat-faced Lapps. The town is not much to see, standing in a few clumps of transplanted birches on a barren island. Largely of wood, it was rebuilt after a fire in 1890, has such modern facilities as electricity.

Heretofore Hammerfest has been dependent entirely upon boats for transportation. Norwegian Aero Transport expects the new passenger & mail air-service to cause a step-up in tourist business. Only three years old, the company has lines around the southern coast to Oslo, last year pushed as far north as Tromso. Technical adviser is famed Pilot Bernt Balchen, who lately returned from a survey of U. S. airlines.