MS HANSEATIC ON THE NORWEGIAN SEA -- On our final night at sea, we finally saw it. After a week blanketed by cloud, this day ended with clear skies.

As we watched the sun's golden orb sink slowly into the vast horizon spreading off the ship's stern, I kept glancing at my watch. At 10 minutes to midnight the final fiery comma melted away, but even then there was no darkness. An hour later, the Earth's curve was still clearly defined by the heaven's solar glow.

Welcome to the sea of the midnight sun.

The notion of an ocean cruise conjures different expectations, but for me, a shipboard experience offers a comfortable, convenient chance to grab a sense of interesting places I might never visit otherwise. If the itinerary is somewhere exotic, that's even better, adding the opportunity for adventures.

In fact, it was the "Summer on the Ice" itinerary that captured my interest when I came across the cruise offered by a venerable German line, Hapag-Lloyd. The 14-night "expeditionary" voyage on the MS Hanseatic sailed from northern Norway to Jan Mayen Island, a volcanic upthrust in the Arctic Ocean at 71 degrees north latitude, then south to Iceland and on to Greenland.

With just 180 passengers, the Hanseatic may be a small cruise ship, but by expeditionary standards, she's a large and luxurious vessel. Built in 1993 with an ice rating of "A1Super" (the highest given to cruise ships), the ship combines five-star accommodations and amenities with a hull tough enough to maneuver safely through iceberg-strewn seas. Catering primarily to Germans and other Europeans, the line offered the prospect of continental class.

That also entails such formalities as wearing a jacket and tie for dinner and set table seatings. Most shipboard communications is conducted in German, a language with which I have some familiarity.

Although circumstances permitted us to take only the first week of the cruise, debarking in Reykjavik, Iceland, it still sounded like a cool way to escape the July heat. My wife, Sari, was quick to agree.

We boarded the Hanseatic in the port of Tromso, Norway, some 200 miles inside the Arctic Circle.

Although not huge, our cabin was more than ample and handsomely fitted with lots of mirrors and polished wood, and a wide, rectangular window. Two comfortable beds featured fluffy duvets and high thread count sheets. The sitting area by the window had a settee, chairs, a table and a desk. A beautiful white orchid on the table was the perfect decoration.

The cabin included a flat-screen TV with a selection of channels and movies, as well as free e-mail. The neat bathroom had a large, glass-front shower faced in rosy marble. All in all, a cozy abode for an adventure at sea. Three of her six decks are primarily occupied with passenger cabins with a large lounge and two dining rooms, a lounge/library, saltwater pool, exercise room, sauna, and hot tub. A small auditorium. on the lowest deck is the venue for a schedule of lectures by a half dozen naturalists and scientists who were on-board.

In the main restaurant the first evening, we met our dinner partners for the voyage, the other native English-speaking passengers on the ship, two brothers from New Zealand, Richard and Colin Adams and Carol and Brian Scheer, who run a large farm in Australia.

Jan Mayen Island

By the morning of the second day, we had covered more than 300 nautical miles into the Norwegian Sea and were approaching Jan Mayen Island. Despite the prevailing cloud cover and warnings that clear views of the 7,500-foot-high Beerenberg Volcano at the island's northern end could be rare, we were in for a treat.

As we neared the island, a window opened in the clouds. Backed by blue sky, the enormous, perfect cone loomed large and clear, with huge, shimmering glaciers streaming down its flanks. The world's most northerly above-water volcano, it last erupted in 1985. Even from more than a mile off shore, it was a stupendous sight. As the ship circled slowly a safe distance offshore, Dr. James Webster, a volcanologist from the American Museum of Natural History who was along as a lecturer, provided expert commentary.

Calling our attention to a sheer cliff that plunged hundreds of feet into the sea, James Webster, a volcanologist from the American Museum of Natural History, pointed to a filigree of light gray rock radiating vertically up its flank. It was a volcanic cone literally sheared in cross section. Because Jan Mayen lies directly on the mid-Atlantic Ridge, the tectonic boundary that runs nearly pole to pole, it is estimated this rare phenomenon might have literally resulted from a crack in the Earth.

A pod of orcas appeared off the bow, and for a half hour we tailed them at a respectful distance.

Then we turned and cruised south along Jan Mayen's 34-mile coast. Completely uninhabited except for an 18-person Norwegian weather station, the island harbors virtually no animals other than birds or plants larger than moss or lichen. However, its waters teem with life.

When we reached the weather station about 2 p.m., the ship dropped anchor and passengers were shuttled into a black sand beach by the station in small Zodiac boats to explore.

Talk about off the beaten path. The Hanseatic was the first cruise ship to visit the island this year. Jan Mayen is so off the charts, it doesn't even qualify as one of the more than 300 world destinations listed by the Traveler's Century Club.

With the snowy volcano looming in the distance, virtually everything in between was empty and ebony: broad black beaches, precipitous black hills, towering black cliffs and imposing black peaks with only occasional sparse patches of green scattered about, the earliest vestiges of life in the most primordial of landscapes. It was unlike any place I had ever seen.

As we explored the beaches, members of the ship's crew hooked nearly 100 pounds of cod, which showed up on that evening's dinner menu, poached with chardonnay sauce. Talk about fresh fish.

After an unscheduled side trip to Grimsey Island, a sliver of rock off the north coast of Iceland that's a noted birdwatching spot, we steamed into Akureyi fjord, a wide channel perhaps 20 miles long that led to the port.

With about 16,000 inhabitants, the city of Akureyi is relatively new, the oldest buildings dating to about 1900 and much of it constructed in the past 20 years.

The next morning, we took an eight-hour bus expedition outside of Akureyi touring the thermal area around Lake Myvatn.

The first stop was a thermal field next to Namafjall Mountain, a moonscape of boiling mud pots and sulfuric steam vents. Then we had a short visit at the lake itself, a huge but shallow watery expanse in a volcanic depression. I was surprised to discover the interior of Iceland to be agricultural, with sheep and cows, and fields of huge white plastic-wrapped hay rolls.

Lunch was at a lakeside restaurant in an area dotted with pseudo-craters. Seating ourselves at the only remaining open table, we were soon joined by two couples from Japan, part of a 30-member tour group on the ship. They spoke no English, we spoke no Japanese, but soon the Japanese group leader came up and introduced us.

In English, she explained that they were from Yokohama, the port of Tokyo. When she asked where we were from, I replied Pittsburgh.

The other gentleman immediately brightened up and said, "Pirates."

I nodded, answering, "Baseball."

He quickly responded, "Clemente," and after a moment, "Ichiro," and then "Matsui."

Naming major league baseball players was pretty much the end of our conversation, but somehow the ice had been broken. Sports and the places we called home had given us a point of contact, not much perhaps in terms of international understanding, but at least now we knew something about each other.

After lunch, our first stop was Dimmuborgir, a old lava maze of odd basalt formations, columns arches, tubes and tunnels. Then before heading back to Akureyri, we stopped at Godafloss, a waterfall with twin cataracts about 25 feet high, something like Niagara, but nowhere near as impressive.

Icelandic legend has it that it was here a 10th-century chieftain was charged with deciding whether the island's population would continue to follow the old gods or become Christian. Having made his decision, he pitched all of his idols into the waterfall.

Next stop, Isafjordur

The Hanseatic's next port of call was Isafjordur, the largest town in the western fjords region of Iceland, although it has just 4,000 inhabitants. Situated on flat land that is essentially a sandspit in between the towering hillsides of the fjord, the town once prospered as a fishing port, but the industry has declined.

We took two of the bicycles from the ship's small fleet and rode along the west side of the fjord to the tiny town of Bolungarvik. The pedaling was easy and the scenery stupendous, towering green slopes on one side and the broadening fjord on the other.

It took us about an hour to cover the 10 miles to Iceland's most northerly settlement, situated just south of the Arctic Circle. Coasting down into the estuary, we passed several old stone buildings, the reconstructed remains of an old Icelandic fishing station. Yet, half a mile further, we passed an 18-hole golf course, which seemed somewhat incongruous for the setting. It didn't take long to explore the tiny village, but we did go down to the beach.

Our next adventure was just around the corner.

Riding back to the ship, we passed through a nesting area for Arctic terns. Suddenly, in a scene reminiscent of Hitchcock's "The Birds," we were swarmed by flocks of furious fowl, squawking and dive-bombing us to protest our presence.

One of them even attacked my wife, landing a plop of bird dung on top of her head. Fortunately, she had a hood on and we escaped with no further damage, pedaling back to the ship, the last mile or so in a soft drizzle.

We still had a few hours before departure, so I walked back into the village. I strolled past shop windows, realizing how expensive things were when I converted the prices in Icelandic kroner into dollars. I was also somewhat surprised to discover copies of the new Harry Potter book in the bookshop window just two days after it had been released to the world.

That evening the sky was finally clear, and we made a multinational happening out of watching the sun set, or at least dip below the horizon. It seemed a perfect coda to our enjoyable adventure.

On to Reykjavik

We awoke the next morning in Reykjavik, the final stop for us, although the ship was continuing on to Greenland. At first somewhat sorry to be missing that part of the expedition, we both felt our week on the Hanseatic had been a good amount of time.

As we were flying back to Baltimore the next evening, the Iceland Air plane passed over Greenland at 38,000 feet. The sky was brilliantly clear, and it revealed a landscape of rocky points poking up through snowfields. It took me a moment to realize I was seeing the top peaks of mountains that were otherwise entirely buried by frozen water, the vast Greenland Icecap. As we winged south, the enormous blanket dissipated, unveiling an endless serration of sheer, jagged mountains, with enormous glaciers plunging into the frigid-looking fjords below. And further on, after Greenland ended, I could see the broad confetti of giant, glittering icebergs drifting south toward warmer climates.

It occurred to me that this awesome vision was different certainly from the ones our Hanseatic shipmates were enjoying at that time, but inspirational nonetheless.

After all, a comprehensive perspective requires having many points of view. This is the one of the inevitable lessons of travel.