Love and loss in the Lofoten Islands

It all began on Tinder. “I was not looking for love or anything, just someone to do fun things with in the outdoors.” Myrtille Heissat is explaining the improbable story of how a French girl from Annecy, who was not a pilot, came to take up flying in the Lofoten Islands with a Norwegian called Marius. The result is a lovingly written hike-and-fly guidebook to the islands – and a baby called Malya, now one and a half. But this is not a happy-ever-after story. 

It begins with Mymy, as she likes to be known, growing up in Annecy with a love of adventure. Initially that led her to the sea, where she became a surf instructor. At the age of 20 she found herself working on the west coast of Ireland but something was missing in her life. 

Speaking from her new home in Molde on the Norwegian mainland she picks up the story: “I was like, f*&!, Ireland is kind of flat! I still need the mountains! Then someone told me about the Lofoten Islands and I saw there was a surf school. So I applied and got a job as a surf instructor.” 

Mymy worked many happy years on the island on and off until the great life disrupter that was Covid came along and she ended up back home in Annecy. 

And that’s when she remembered her father had an old paraglider in the house. “My best...