We set out from the head of the fjord in late August with an open boat, two oars each and no engine. The plan was simple: follow the old trading route south along the coast, the way goods moved before there were roads, and land wherever the tide allowed.

Rowing by the tide

The first lesson came on day two. You do not decide when to leave; the water does. We learned to read the tables the night before, sleep early, and push off in the grey hour when the current turned in our favour. Fight it and you gain a mile in an afternoon. Ride it and the coast slides past like a scroll.

Most nights we slept on gravel beaches under the boat. Twice a farmer waved us up to a barn. Once we woke to a seal watching from three metres away, as if we were the strange thing on its shore.

What the route remembers

Along the way the old names kept surfacing: a headland called the Trading Rock, a cove known only as the Waiting Place, where boats once sat out storms. The route is still there if you go slowly enough to see it. Three weeks, four hundred kilometres, and a pair of hands that will not forget the oars for a long time.