Hammerfest
Arctic town on the island of Kvaløya in Finnmark, northern Norway; see Norway (Literary) and the Travel note Norway.
At a glance
| Source | Author | Role | In one line |
|---|---|---|---|
| Neither Here Nor There | Bill Bryson | setting | Bryson spends weeks of polar night here waiting for the Northern Lights. |
Sub-places
Neither Here Nor There — Bill Bryson (1991)
Source: Readwise highlight
After the war the people returned to Hammerfest to find nothing standing but the chapel. With their bare hands and almost nothing else, they built their town again, one house at a time.
- Role: setting
- In the book: The opening chapters. Bryson takes the thirty-hour “Express 2000” bus from Oslo through Sweden and Finland, crosses the toll bridge onto Kvaløya, and finds not a village but “a golden little city.” He waits out the polar night at the Håja Hotel by the quay, walks the harbour street and the headland, sits in Kokken’s Café, interviews the mayor, eats reindeer with Ian and Peggy Tonkin, and on his sixteenth day finally sees the Northern Lights. Peggy tells him how the retreating Germans burned the town in 1944 and its people rebuilt it by hand.
- Why it matters: Hammerfest is the book’s starting line. He chose the North Cape so he could travel south to Istanbul, and the town’s darkness, boredom and quiet decency set the tone for the trip. Its slowness makes the rest of Europe feel loud. The rebuilding story is one of the few moments where Bryson drops the jokes (“I don’t think I have ever admired any group of people quite so much”).