Gullfest 2014 - Touring Varanger / Arctic style birding

Gullfest 2014 was a bit experimental: instead of having a base camp in Vardø like GF2012&13 we designed this years Gullfest to be a tour of Varanger. With our invited guests and contributors we toured Varanger from the Pasvik taiga in the south to Vardø, Vadsø, Vestre Jakobselv and Berlevåg and Båtsfjord in the north. What an amazing experience it was! We managed some spectacular birding, we had three exhibitions, and we gave talks at a pub, a hotel, a guest house, a cultural insititution and a school. Our aim was to inspire people in Varanger with stories from the birding world, and to do some top arctic birding while we where at it!

Varanger in winter / early spring - info on birds, sites, accommodation

We get quite a lot of requests from birders that are planning trips to Varanger this winter / early spring. Varanger has been rated one of the top 100 birding destinations in the world - but locally no one has, until quite recently, paid any attention to these qualities, but this is improving rapidly! I very much appreciate emails and with both feedback and questions from birders, and I try to respond to all mails as best I can. To make your research a little easier, I have put together a short (or long - depending on your bird interest level..) article with some advice and on birds, sites, accommodation and more for a winter or early spring visit to Varanger (V-Fjord / Peninsula + Pasvik / South Varanger). It is based on mails I have written in reply to birder and bird photographers requests. 

New and updated ´Varanger winter birding article´ 
(with new photos, updated info, etc)

Above: -Steller´s Eiders - a Varanger winter / early spring speciality (digiscoped, by the way)

           - Northern lights (Aurora borealis) in february, over the high tundra, Varanger

With our website we aim to present our engagements as architects and birders living in Varanger (we work on pro nature projects all over Norway). To a large extent this includes

Mapping Arctic Norway - birds and sites in Eastern Finnmark

For almost three years we have been travelling around the eastern parts of Finnmark, or ´Arctic Norway´ - the birder term for this region. We are mapping and registrating the birdlife, the bird sites and the infrastructure, the guest houses and towns, etc. In short - we are mapping everything.. Allways with focus on nature and birds.

It is a very rewarding more-then-full-time job. We have covered a lot of ground in this time, allways with an open eye for new and interesting places. Arctic Norway really gives you a sense of wilderness and intact nature, at the same time it is very easily accessible. There are two basic combined reasons for this: The Gulf Stream (simply making it livable this far north), and Norwegian district policy (the will to support living this far north - with almost every modern commodity available). Roughly speaking, this is. 

We started in 2007, on a study trip to Vardø island. For a long time (being birders..) we had been aware of Varangers status as a premium birding destination