The North Cape is the highest or farthest north (accessible) point in Europe. I believe that must mean that it’s the farthest northern point of land that can be reached by vehicle. There is another point of European land that is a bit farther north but you would need a small boat or some other means of getting there. The North Cape is where the Barents Sea, part of the Arctic Ocean meets the Norwegian Sea, part of the Atlantic Ocean.

Our ship docked in Honningsvag and we took a bus ride for 21 miles in under an hour, across a bridge, to the northern part of Magerova Island. We drove on the European Route 69 highway, or the E69. How far north were we? The first sign told us that we still had quite a ways to go to get to the north pole. But we were up there.

The town of Honningsvag has a population of 3,000 people. Magerova Island has 5,000 reindeer, a few of which you can see in the second photo. Why so many reindeer? They are brought here by boat to graze in the summer. Why? Two main reasons were given. On Magerova Island, the reindeer have no predators and they have no mosquitoes. Mosquitoes can suck a lot of blood out of the reindeer daily. And while this island would normally be habitable for the mosquitoes, it is just too windy for them, so there are none here.

The North Cape is a 1,000 foot tall cliff with a large flat plateau on top. You can see Vicky and myself at the North Cape Marker in the third photo. It was 35 degrees at the cape but very little wind so it was actually pretty nice. We were dressed for the temperature. The cape has an extensive visitor center, a café, a restaurant, post office, souvenir shop, a small museum, and a video cinema. We saw two short movies while we were here and reviewed lots of exhibits. The fourth photo is just us coming out of the visitor center.

We stopped several times on our way back to Honningsvag. You can see that some of the lakes still had ice on them despite the fact that it was late May and the sun was now shining 24 hours a day. There was also still a considerable amount of snow on the hills.