Guiding in Norway Part 3 – Thoughts On The Future for Guiding on Lofoten

Continued from: Guiding in Norway Part 2 – Disfunction in the North

News of the enforcement of the commercial driving regulations in the Lofoten region has begun to spread in the background of the photo workshop community. Many of the more serious (international) guides have already been using legal and licensed transport in recent years, but I still see multiple workshops driving around in rental vans or cars on a daily basis while I’m out guiding myself. I’m sure many are completely unaware of the laws around commercial transport, as it is not exactly easy to find the info buried within various government websites and mostly in Norwegian. But the law is the law, and it will likely come as a cold shock to some when they are pulled over and the photo workshop is forced to come to a stop.

Lofoten has become an important destination in the photography workshop world. But what has previously existed will not likely exist in the future as the guiding scene here becomes more regulated. What is likely to disappear first are the cheaper price point tours. And this goes not only for photography workshops, but for hiking tours, skiing, etc. If you want to get a quote from a local bus company for a 17 seater mini-buss, you are looking at a starting price around €1.000/day. That is just for a person to drive, not guide, not teach, not know the weather, just the cost of getting from point A to point B. Small operators like myself might be slightly cheaper, but with a 9-seater van, groups are limited to 6 clients + guide. There will likely be some international guides who have to make the choice between a lower price-point but larger group, vs. higher price point and smaller group. All in all, this will likely increase any workshop price by €1.000 or so for a week long trip.

The days of a photographer driving a small group around will probably soon becoming to an end on Lofoten. I’m sure some will continue to try and fly under the radar, rent 2-3 small vehicles and not a large van with a bright yellow Hertz sticker on the side. I’ve seen some think they can form a ‘club’ and have the ‘members’ be on this trip – good luck arguing this with Norwegian police after being pulled over and asked for paperwork. The police have even told local guides to report suspected illegal operators, and I know this is being done. Any vans or groups of vehicles without license numbers on the side of the doors stand a high chance of getting reported. Unfortunately, it looks like guiding in Lofoten going to become like life in the former East Germany and we have to fear our co-guides and neighbours will report us to the Stasi.

I do have some questions about the burden of proof required to accuse someone of illegal guiding. In some cases, like a British guide in a vehicle with mixed national clients, it will probably be pretty easy. But how are they going to distinguish between a small group of friends, especially if one or several of them are professional photographers in their home country, but just here on Lofoten to shoot their own work? Will it be guilt first, and prove innocence later? …After you’ve been stopped from driving for several days and lost half your trip. I cannot answer this, but at the moment it’s looking more like the inquisition, guilt first and innocence later. Not the best news after you’ve already been burnt at the stake for heresy.

I’ve seen some online grumblings that that this will greatly benefit local guides like myself, who can then begin to charge extortionately high prices in the El Dorado of northern Norway. True, perhaps, especially if I could multiply myself 10x during the winter season and then hide in a cave the rest of the year. The reality of guiding photography workshops on Lofoten is the season is very limited: there are about 7-8 reliable weeks in winter, and maybe 2-3 weeks in Autumn. So it is not a particularly great amount of time to make up the costs for operating and living in Norway. Not all that glitters is gold – says my rusting skis which haven’t been touched in 2 years because I barely have a day off in the winter season for recreation, let alone for my own photography and exploring new places.

Local businesses have already been following these laws for many years and were forced to purchase vehicles solely for guiding use, at great operating expenses to ourselves. So to see some Germans complaining that Lofoten is now expensive to run trips to, well, dudes, welcome to the fucking club! It’s not cheap of any of us either! And nor has it been to those who also operate legally with a local tour provider these last years. So be glad you’ve been able to sneak in and undercut all local guides for years without any enforcement of the laws the locals have been following and paying for for years – like the €5.500 deposit for having a taxi license and €10.000 deposit for booking tours. And if any Europeans had wanted to make Lofoten/Norway a mainstay of their business, they could have done so much easier than myself as an American. But to complain that you can no longer have cheap trips in one of the world’s most expensive countries feels a bit…

Without even knowing what is going on, the energy already feels strange this year, quieter than expected. There was a conference in early February about how the driving regulation enforcement is affecting local businesses. I’ve heard one of the local car rental agencies is selling a sizeable potion of their vans. I suspect there has been a growing panic in the background and many have canceled their workshops, and this is spreading out to Lofoten’s tourism industry as a whole, which is around 30% of the local economy.

For better or worse, it was largely the small photography guiding community that put winter on Lofoten on the map long before the now growing amount of ‘normal’ tourists. It was photographers who kept the cafe’s and restaurants in western Lofoten open throughout the winter, when only 10 years ago it would otherwise be a ghost town. If Norway was smart, it would at least setup a system similar to Iceland, which allows international guides to operate as long as they have all their qualifications and paperwork in order. Norway’s black or white system seems overly harsh, and is probably not doing much to address the major issue of safe driving on Norway’s winter roads anyhow. It will be like all prohibitions: expensive for those to operate legally, while still allowing for a large underground market.

For my final words on the subject. It would be good if the national and regional travel agencies like Visit Norway and Destination Lofoten put an overview of the rules for commercial driving on their websites, and even better if in several languages. There are lots of people getting paid lots of money all over Norway in which this should be their business. Yet here I am, just a random dude, writing all this for nothing on a blog barely anyone with reads, to hopefully inform at least one person on what is now happening here. But I suspect these laws are not which many in the tourism industry want to be shared. If the law comes down heavy, it will not be good for business on Lofoten, that is for sure.