20260613 Saturday, June 13, 2026. Honningsvåg, Norway

We awoke this morning to dense fog and an in-stateroom announcement that due to anticipated high winds, our docking at Honningsvåg, Norway, was canceled with our port of call being converted to tender operations.  

After breakfast in the restaurant, we went ashore to explore the city of Honningsvåg.  This is a small city— in fact, probably the smallest official city in Norway because it was declared a city in 1996 just before a law was passed that required cities to have a population of at least 5,000. Honningsvåg has a year-round population of only 2,245.  

Today, in addition to the Viking Neptune, two other cruise ships, including the huge Celebrity Apex, and one large inter-Island long-distance ferry will be calling on it.  

Nearly private tender with only one other couple aboard.

When we got ashore, it was raining steadily and there were moderate winds. There is a gift shop and tourist information center at the head of the cruise ships’ docks, and they were jam-packed with tourists to an uncomfortable degree.  There was a rack of stockfish heads set up at the cruise ship dock for display.  Honnigsvåd also engages in the stockfish trade.

We rapidly exited the gift shop and started walking around the waterfront and did a loop tour of the town, covering it from one end to the other in under 3 miles. 

There are a number of public art installations on the waterfront, including a bronze statue of a dog named Bamse, which is Norwegian for “Teddy Bear”.

 

It is a duplicate of another statue installed in Scotland, where the dog became a local legend and WWII hero.  He was the official mascot for the Free Norwegian Forces during Nazi occupation of Norway and belonged to the captain of a Norwegian whaler that was converted to a minesweeper after the capitulation of the Norwegian mainland to the Nazis.  Legend has it Bamse could ride the bus between the wharf where the boat was stationed and the pub where the crew hung out.  He had a bus pass attached to his collar.  His image was featured on Easter and Christmas cards during the war.  Upon his death, he received full military honors and was posthumously awarded the animal equivalent of the George Cross for valor shown during WWII.

Honningsvåg is home port for many crabbing boats that target the King crab. The marina is picturesque, even in the rain.  

We walked out to the breakwater for a picture of the ship and found it littered with sea urchin shells.  Back home, seagulls will pick up and drop mussels onto pavement to make a meal of them.  The seagulls here appear to do the same with sea urchins.

The Honningsvåg Church was built in 1885 and was one of the only churches in Finnmark County that was not destroyed by the Nazis as they withdrew towards the end of the war.  The Nazis practiced a scorched earth doctrine where they burned or destroyed anything of potential use to enemies.  Nearly all of the rest of Honningsvåg was burned to the ground as the Nazis left.  
There are Sherpa steps here in Honningsvåg heading up the hillside behind the city.  We could see what looked like some construction crews working on a part of the steps from a distance.  

Today also happens to be a race day where people run, cycle, or walk between Honningsvåg and North Cape. This 21.9-mile route has an elevation gain of 5,383’.  

We returned to the ship for lunch in the buffet and then got back to shore for our inclusive excursion.  This was a bus ride to North Cape, so we basically got to cover the Honningsvåg to North Cape race in the comfort of a tour bus.  We actually rode in an all-electric bus, which was eerily quiet with only the whining or whirring of the electric motors during acceleration.  

The bus ride was marred by terrible weather conditions with fog and rain the entire ride.  It was nearly impossible to see anything out the windows for the entire 45-minute ride.  When we got out of the bus, it was extremely disorienting because it appeared that they just dumped us onto the pavement in the middle of nowhere with blinding wind and rain lashing our faces.  

You could barely make out the vague outlines of a building in the distance, which was hard to judge given the conditions.  As we approached, it became clear that this was a large complex built to serve as a tourist center with restaurants, shops, and a museum, including a multimedia theatre.  Even from inside the building and looking out the view windows, it was impossible to see anything outside more than a hundred feet or so. 

 
The movie showed us that there is a monument shaped like a globe set upon the top of a huge cliff, perhaps a thousand feet above the sea.  It was hard for us to believe that was what was outside the building given the conditions at the time.  But we did venture out of the building following directions given by staff and did find the monument in the dense fog and mist.  If you got anywhere near the fence marking the perimeter of the cliff, the wind was so strong that it threatened to rip your smartphone right out of your hand, but the fog was so dense, there was absolutely nothing to see beyond the fencing other than an apparent cliff top crumbling into the fog.  

We suppose that our experience might have been awe-inspiring had we been able to look out to the horizon from that cliff top, but most of us felt like that excursion was pretty much a bust.  At least as we left, the fog had lifted a bit so that we could catch a few glimpses of the snow patches and tundra at the higher elevations, and a herd of reindeer in a meadow area.  

From the movie, we learned that all the reindeer in Honningsvåg are owned by the Sami indigenous people.  There was a clip in the movie where a herd of reindeer were herded out of the bow of a landing craft ferry as they were being moved from one grazing area to another.  The reindeer normally migrate from northern Norway about 250 miles south into Finland to escape the worst of the winter.  

After returning to the ship, we hit the hot tub for a soak and then joined our travel companions for dinner in the restaurant.  One of the featured entrees was scrimp and scallops, which Jan was really looking forward to, and when they delivered it, it had lived up to expectations. 

 
Shortly before the evening theater show, we met briefly in the World Cafe buffet to sample some sushi.  Even though we were pretty full from dinner, it was still nice to sample some fresh and well-made sushi.  

We finished the evening with a new entertainer, Kyle Esplin, who put on a phenomenal show of boogey woogey piano pounding and singing.  He had some interesting mash-ups that he arranged, including one mixing Beethoven and Billy Joel, and another amped-up version of Fulsome Prison.  He had the energy level turned up to 11 the entire show and earned himself a standing ovation from the audience.  

Tomorrow is a sea day as we make our way to the Svalbard  archipelago. This lies at the convergence between the Atlantic and Arctic oceans.  The largest island is Spitsbergen and Longyearbyen is the largest settlement on Spitsbergen.  Longyearbyen is at 78º N latitude.