At our first dinner on Hurtigruten’s MS Trollfjord, my parents and I spent most of the meal imagining what my 3-year-old son would have thought.
Aksel would have picked at the bread, asked how many courses of “real food” were left before dessert, and probably driven his Hot Wheels through the butter.
Instead, he stayed home in Denmark with my husband while my mom, dad, and I sailed south from Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago in the High Arctic.
Outside, black mountains and sharp cliffs rose from the Arctic waters. Inside, the aquavit was so strong my mother took one sip, winced, and passed the glass to my father.
Since Aksel was born, I hadn’t…
