Finding True North with Ben Aitken

An unforgettable Norwegian cruise with bestselling author Ben Aitken, where the Northern Lights come with a side of Norse mythology.

By Ben Aitken

At one point during my two-week cruise of Norway, I found myself in a hot tub gazing up at the Northern Lights while being lectured on Norse Mythology by a retired P.E. teacher from Wales. What’s more, it didn’t even feel odd to find myself in such a position, which gives you an idea how delightfully novel a fortnight within the Arctic Circle can be.

Earlier that day I’d been dragged around a frozen trout lake by eight Alaskan huskies. Two days before that I’d donned a pair of snow-shoes – think giant flip flops – and plodded around the northernmost 18-hole golf course in the world. Two days before that I’d whizzed around the most powerful maelstrom known to man on a high-speed inflatable. And in roughly sixteen hours I’d find myself in the thick of a relatively heated dispute with Gloria from Hartlepool about a questionable bingo claim – within four metres of a moose.  

They say that travel can broaden you and I fancy they weren’t just thinking about the lunch buffet ramping up your midriff. The ship I sailed on – Ambition – had a resident lecturer, who gradually acquired cult status onboard by providing pithy overviews of Bergen and the Vikings and the size of Norway’s Sovereign Wealth Fund, which at 1.5 trillion is roughly 1.5 trillion bigger than the UK’s.

Further education was provided by the ports of call. Trondheim presented a world-champion cheese (Nidelven Blå) and an ancient fort erected to frighten off Swedes. Tromsø delivered a Troll Museum, a harbourside setting that brought a frostbitten Sydney to mind, and an encounter with Roald Amundsen, who pipped Captain Scott to the pole that time. Bodø supplied the almighty maelstrom previously mentioned, while Bergen issued the paintings of Edvard Munch and a gorgeous undulating old town. By the end of the cruise, I was broadened to the point of bursting.

Which was why the ship’s gym and sauna were an absolute godsend. I’d head up to the spa whenever I needed to process all the Nordic intel I was consuming, or whenever the buffet-bulge was threatening to get a bit over the top. On account of the boat’s toing-and-froing, I often felt absolutely trollied when running on the treadmill. On the plus side, the gym’s location at the fore of deck 12 meant that my power-walking was occasionally improved by the sight of a killer whale frolicking in an apparently endless sea.

The sauna, meanwhile, was the best I’d perspired in. Its chief virtue was the huge starboard window that offered ongoing views of sea and sky and mountain and (if you were lucky) even the Northern Lights themselves. The phrase ‘to be all at sea’ often felt inappropriate onboard Ambition. The expansive views and celestial spreads encouraged periods of reflection and reckoning, the outcome of which, more often than not, was a more settled mental state, a more shipshape sense of self. Not to be sniffed at.

Meaningful reflection wasn’t only prompted by the vast, mind-bending vistas; it was also prompted by the likes of Nelly from Rotherham, who informed me halfway through an omelette that she was struggling with a complicated and incurable affliction. I laid down my fork, gave it a second, then asked what her condition was exactly. ‘I’m a Chelsea fan,’ she said, leaving the table with a wink.

There was also Kelvin from Somerset who won the bingo six times and wouldn’t be seen in public without a tripod twice his height. There was Eddie from Bali who could turn a bath towel into a monkey while replenishing a fridge and fluffing a pillow. There was Jamie the idiosyncratic pianist, and there was Kyle the idiosyncratic vocalist, whose Frankie Valli cabaret would grace any stage in the land. There was Nick and Barbara, Leslie and Jean, Joan and Ray, and roughly four million Ian’s, the name having trended in the second half of the 50s.

As we pulled into Tilbury Docks, our cruise coming to a close, a man called Ian sidled up to me at the back of deck 10. He told me that the Windrush generation landed at Tilbury Docks, and that the fort over there, just beyond the Hyundai plant, is ever so historic and worth seeing if I get the chance. Despite Ian’s friendliness, he seemed a bit crestfallen, and I wondered if it was his name getting him down or the fact that the cruise was through and the real world beckoned.

In the event, it wasn’t the sense of an ending that had caused Ian’s upset, but rather a falling out with his partner. It turns out that Ian had somehow managed to delete all the Northern Lights pictures off his phone, with the result that his wife hadn’t spoken to him for days. I offered my condolences. Ian waved them away. ‘We’ll get another chance next week,’ he said. ‘We’re back on for the Iceland cruise.’

About the Author

Ben Aitken is the bestselling author of The Gran Tour: Travels with my Elders, The Marmalade Diaries: The True Story of an Odd Couple, and Here Comes the Fun: A Journey into the Serious Business of Having a Laugh.

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