At breakfast today we were rewarded by the sight of a pod of pilot whales who decided to swim alongside us for a while, one of them even gave a little display of breaching to keep us occupied, this meant that we were a little late crossing out of the Artic circle as we slowed right down to watch them, but it did mean that by the time we did the sea mist was starting to clear and we got a good view of the marker. This is our final full day on board and our final trip which is to visit the Vega Archipelago which is another UNESCO sight but before we could do this we had to collect our sandwich boxes so that we can get our picnic lunch to take with us. The islands have been UNESCO listed because of the unique relationship the islanders have with the Eider ducks which are farmed on the islands. We got off our ship and then had to wait a little while as our transport – another significantly smaller ship hadn’t arrived but a few minutes late we were picked up and then we were off. It was a little way to the Vega archipelago but the journey was nice as we passed the seven sisters mountain this time rather than waterfall of the other day although the story is the same, then the Dorma Mountain that is so called because from the right angle and with the right imagination it looks like a sleeping man, we also passed a few islands that still has some houses on them, the majority of houses were removed when people moved off the islands as the building materials were very expensive so they took them with them to use wherever they moved to. These are very low islands, and the official figure is that there are 6500 islands but this is at high tide so at low tide there are possibly a few thousand more. We passed an island that has a few buildings and a church, apparently the biggest of the buildings used to be a shop and people would come across to the island and go to church then the shop would open and they would pick up everything they need and head back to the island they lived on. The population of the islands reached its peak around 1900, Vega municipality had a population of 2,891 at this time there were about 7,000 nests and as one duvet was worth as much as a cow it made some of the islanders quite rich. The outermost islands were important to the fishing industry and the government paid for new breakwaters and wells to be dug. However it was a difficult existence and around 600 people from Vega emigrated to America between 1880 and 1925, this was partly because the motorisation of the fishing industry meant that not as many people could find employment in the region, on one island Tavares, 11 out of 13 siblings emigrated, all nine sons and two daughters. At the end of the Second World War people were forced to leave the island, it was believed that the way of life was backward so they were offered grants to move, the treasury believed it was unprofitable to invest in the infrastructure and by 1985 the final school was closed as well as shops and ferry routes to the island. In spite of that there were still 66 permanent residents in the archipelago in 1983, one of which was Sven who is still living on one of the islands. He has sheep and Eider ducks and he actually came out to wave at us, possibly because he recognises that he is a tourist attraction! Farms used to be across many islands as the islands are quite small, different islands were used for different things such as agriculture, animal farming, even some that provided water as not all of them have a fresh water supply. The animals were quite often taken from one island to another, the cows were made to swim and the sheep were taken by small boat, apparently it was said that when you were buying new cows you tried to establish how well it could swim as much as how good its milk yield would be. Everything was done by boat, children went to school, you went to the shops, you visited the rest of your farm all by rowing boat. Some of the islands were called Rubber Islands as at low tide you could walk to them as long as you had your wellies on! We arrived at the new UNESCO building, this was only opened on Thursday and they are very proud of it. It explains the process of Eider farming and the relationship the farmers have with the ducks which is why the UNESCO listed was given, the down is so light and it takes approximately 60 nests to produce one quilt which is probably why anything with Eider in it is so expensive. We were given some time to walk round after we had been through the museum and you really get a feeling for how isolated they are here, I actually think a great trip would be to fly over the archipelago to get a view of the size of it. People are moving back to the island, although not in great numbers and most are involved in the tourist industry although some do actually commute to Bronnoysund as there is an express boat which only takes 35 minutes, also children use this express boat to get to senior school as there still isn’t a senior school on the islands and they don’t seem to have boarding schools, it does make me wonder how much school they miss in the winter as I am sure it is not as nice a trip as it would be today. We got back on board about 15 minutes before we left and went to the observation deck to have a drink and a relax before dinner this evening. Apparently a lot of people get off at Trondheim so we had a drinks reception and a chance to meet some of the crew then hopefully get a relatively early night as we dock in Trondheim at something like 6.30 tomorrow morning!
