Senja is a big Arctic island with two completely different halves. On the outer coast, rock ground by ice rises straight out of the sea as sails and spires. Segla is a 639-metre wall dropping into Mefjorden; the sawtooth ridge of Okshornan, the Ox Horns, better known as the Devil's Teeth, stands in front of the Tungeneset platform. Turn inland and the island softens into rounded hills, birch and pine forest, farms, and the old pine wood of Ånderdalen National Park. Norwegians call Senja Norway in miniature. It is 1,586 square kilometres at 69°N, the country's second-largest island outside Svalbard, and it is still a working fishing island of some 7,800 people rather than a resort. One thing worth knowing before you plan: the famous photograph of Segla is taken from Hesten, the peak across the saddle, not from Segla itself.
Most visitors meet the island on the 102-kilometre National Scenic Route between Botnhamn and Gryllefjord, a narrow road swinging from fjord to fjord. A 44-metre platform is thrown out over Bergsfjorden at Bergsbotn, and a side road drops to Husøy, a village packed onto a rock in the sea where cod still hangs on the drying racks. What you see depends entirely on the light. For about two months around midsummer the sun never sets, and you can climb to Hesten at midnight. From late November to mid-January it never rises, and the days pass in blue twilight; from September to March the aurora works above the peaks. Senja is busier each year but still takes a fraction of Lofoten's crowds. The ferry from Gryllefjord to Andenes sails only in summer; the rest of the year you come over the bridge at Finnsnes and mostly have the road to yourself.