Tysfjord, the fjord of Hellemobotn and Rago

Norwegian landscape is represented on the world heritage list only by West Norwegian fjords. Two tentative sites will try to help this out, The Lofoten Islands and The Norwegian Lapponian Area – Tysfjord, the fjord of Hellemobotn and Rago.

The two parts Tysfjord and Rago are about 50-100 km apart, but both are connected to Padjelanta nation park, a part of the Swedish Lapponian area.

Tysfjord is a fairly large fjord, a wide one. It has a narrow inlet from Vestfjorden and then it widens and is a “palm with five fingers” – or five fjords. The southernmost one is the fjord of Hellemobotn. Here Norway is almost split in two, or you might see it differently – the place where Sweden is closest to the Atlantic (10 km on the ground or 6 km as the crow flies).
The fjord is surrounded by high mountains on all sides, but some narrow strips along the fjord are the homestead of some of the Lule Sami people of Norway. At the end of the fjord is Hellemoboth and from there you can hike to some lookout points and further into Sweden.

A local tale says that when God created earth, on the sixth day (see picture – the 6 mark in the mountainside) he took his hand on to the ground from the ocean and all the way to Hellemobotn. He created the fjord and threw the rocks out to sea, thereby creating Lofoten. The people of Lofoten …