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More than a century ago, the marine diesel engine redefined the meaning of “remote”, bringing once isolated locations within easy reach and transforming the lives of communities that once lived on the edge of the world. For some outlying fishing villages, however, sited in extreme places and inhabited only for their accessibility to sailing and rowing boats, ease of travel meant they were abandoned. Life was too harsh and challenging on the margins.

Nyksund was one such abandoned fishing village. It is located on the extreme north-west edge of mainland Europe, isolated from the rest of Norway by a maze of twisting fjords and snow-capped inner islands. But there’s a difference to this village: the people are coming back. Because these days, the challenge for many in our overcrowded and noisy world is to find a patch of wilderness that hasn’t already been overrun.

As our writer Kevin Rushby discovered on a recent visit, the residents are now wondering what kind of future their village might have. This is a place of rocky islets where orcas swim past. There are colonies of seals, puffins, kittiwakes and sea eagles. On the windswept summits, juniper bushes grow horizontally. At the height of summer the flora blooms under a sun that never goes down.

The residents of Nyksund realise that they need some development, but what? They know what they don’t want. And that is the crowds of tourists that social media has brought to the Lofoten Islands which lie to the south.

It’s a dilemma that many places are facing, and one that Kevin sums up aptly: “In the past, perhaps, remoteness was as plentiful as the fish. Now the challenge is to make this most capricious of commodities into something sustainable.”