Lofoten, Norway

Europe

15 Mar

Written By Simon Campbell

Midnight golf, cod fishing and a round on a Norwegian Arctic links course.

The dark skies of Norway’s Arctic north are the celestial playground of the most famous light show in the world, the Northern Lights. Seeing nature’s pyrotechnics is a wonder of travel worth making every effort for, but then combine it with golf at Lofoten Links and you have a very special experience. On a land famed for the Viking adventures of its former chieftan, Tore Hjort – there’s two Viking tombs on the course – you can begin a golf adventure amid a landscape carved among snow-capped Arctic mountains.

The course first follows alongside the crystal-clear icy waters of the Norwegian Sea, before heading back towards those mountains. Holes that were once protected by deep-blue water now have craggy rock borders or deep bunkers, the Troon-managed course holding signature holes for everyone. Or, as the greenkeeper puts it: ‘sixteen signature holes, and that’s being unfair on the other two’. The course is on the island of Gimsøya, part of the Lofoten archipelago far north of Norway’s Arctic Circle, an area that gives so many unique experiences to the traveller from catch and cook codfishing experiences to the most refreshing of swims in icy waters.