Northern Adventures

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Tromsø, Norway

2014/12/30-2015/01/05

After celebrating Christmas with my family and skiing for a few days, my mom, her best friend and I flew from Vienna to Tromsø, losing our luggage in Oslo at a layover.

Tromsø is a beautiful town with approximately 72,000 inhabitants, situated 344km above the polar circle, in the province Troms, in northern Norway . It’s famous for the most northern university, most northern beer-brewery and most northern cathedral worldwide.



Not quite the expected

When we arrived it was dark, even though it was just around 4pm and it was raining- not at all what we expected, visiting a place so far up north. We thought it would be a few degrees below zero (°C) and it may be snowing. But due to extensions of the Gulf Stream the climate in Tromsø is quite mild. However, there were huge piles of snow behind every corner and the streets whichweren’t heated were difficult to walk on because they were covered in snow and ice.






A new environment

The 31^st started great, as our entire missing luggage got delivered (Thank god!). We decided to explore the city a little bit and started off at around 11 when there was the most “daylight”. Around this time and only for a little bit more than 2hours, it is a bit lighter than the rest of the day. It’s quite similar to twilight but everything has more of a blue/purple-ish tone to it.


The city is divided into two parts by a fjord. Both parts are connected by a steep bridge for cars as well as pedestrians. On the island are many Hotels, the city centre, the Polaria museum, the university, the brewery and the airport. On the mainland there are mostly private homes, as well as the arctic cathedral and a mountain. To go up this mountain, there is a cable car. From the top you have a stunning view over the whole city and its surroundings (as long as the weather conditions allow it).


In the evening, we had a delicious dinner in a restaurant that offered everything from burgers to Mexican or Italian food, every other restaurant was either closed or already booked out. Afterwards we went down to the harbour to watch the fireworks that were fired from the top of the mountain. The fireworks were huge, colourful and stunning even though it was raining quite a lot. Next to us there were two giant Hurtigruten-boats, displaying fireworks as well (smaller ones) and exactly at midnight they had some sort of siren go off.


Happy New Year!

On January, 1^st 2015 we had booked a tour to go reindeer-sledding but due to the heavy rainfall the last few days the snow wasn’t solid enough for the sleds so we just went to a place where the reindeer were held, fed them moss and even petted them a tiny bit (although they don’t really like that). Afterwards two guys explained Sami-culture to our group and offered us some kind of stew with reindeer-meat (it has a strong taste of its own but I quite liked it, as long as I knew I didn’t have to eat it very often) and vegetables and some hot drinks.


The best day of my life!

The next day we had a similar activity planned as on the previous one- DOGSLEDDING! This time everything worked out as we hoped. First, we were brought to a farm for huskies. There were around 300 trained dogsledding-huskies which we could pet before the proper adventure even began. All of them were really happy as soon as someone walked up to them to pet and play with them. I’m a dog lover and huskies are one of my favourite breeds of dog so to me, it felt like heaven. All of the dogs were really cuddly, playful - just the cutest animals I have seen in real life for a very long time . Two of them peed on my mother’s shoe, which was hilarious but nothing got to her socks because her shoes were water- and apparently also pee- proof.

As soon as the sleds arrived where we were supposed to get in, all of the dogs went nuts and yelped, rolled around in the snow and wanted to be petted. We got into the sleds- always 2 people per sled plus one guide who commanded the dogs where to go. During our 45 minute journey, our guide told us something about his life, how he got into dogsledding, about the dogs (they are Alaskan huskies, a breed especially made for dogsledding because they are strong, fast and very persistent) and what his orders meant. It was an amazing experience and something I’ve always dreamt about. Afterwards, we got served a hot meal (reindeer-meat again) and petted the dogs a little more.









In the evening we went on a so called "aurora hunt". We were greeted by a serious looking Norwegian lady called Marianne and her non-stop joking Scottish husband, George. They took us and about 10 more people on two minivans to a few places where the weather forecast claimed there would be no clouds.

The aurora is a phenomenon caused by ionised plasma in solar winds, entering the earth’s atmosphere and there colliding with oxygen- and nitrogen-atoms. They can be seen in Polar Regions and very high/low latitudes. The aurora can occur in different shapes and colours and changes constantly. However, even in regions like northern Norway, where aurora borealis is something usual you do need a pretty much clear sky so you can see it, if the solar activity isn’t extremely high. That can sometimes be quite tricky like in our case.

Thankfully we did find a great spot with hardly any clouds. We stopped at some kind of beach, where a fjord ended. There were rocks, sand, water, snow (sand and snow is a weird combination if you’re not used to it and link a sand-beach to hot places :D) and you could also see some mountains on either side of us as well as a village across from where we stood. We took tons of photographs and watched the phenomenon for about two or three hours before our guides served us some hot meal and drinks.

Afterwards we drove around a little more, hoping to find some other places where we could watch the colours in the night sky but we weren’t lucky and got back to our hotel in Tromsø at around 2am.









! I have to admit that though the colours seem very bright in these pictures, they aren’t as intense in real life as they seem. I didn’t edit them but to properly capture them in a picture, you need longer exposure time and so they end up that intense. Just so I don’t put your hopes up too high, if you ever plan to see aurora yourself. Either way, the lights still look unbelievably spectacular and stunning so I’d say it’s definitely worth it 😉!




Tired...

The next day, on the 3^rd of January, a half-marathon took place in Tromsø, called the Polar night half-marathon. My mum took part and the whole city (especially all the tourists that were mostly there for the marathon) was in a festive mood. The streets were still decorated from Christmas and it finally snowed- a lot! That’s how I had imagined the weather before- it was gorgeous! After the marathon, we just relaxed since the previous day was extremely exhausting.



Bye-bye, beautiful!

On our last complete day, we visited the Polaria museum. That’s a museum dedicated to everything that has to do with arctic habitats. We watched a short film about Svalbard; a group of islands situated very high up north that still belong to Norway. There was also a show with seals; 2 big and 2 quite small ones. They jumped through rings, played some kind of game where they had to identify signs underwater and played fetch with a ball- adorable!

We wandered through the city a little more before we flew back home the next day.



All in all, I am incredibly happy to have been on such an adventure. I fell in love with the city of Tromsø, as well as the landscape of northern Norway. At some point in my life I definitely want to lead my own dogsled and maybe also live somewhere similar to Tromsø for a while. The people of northern Norway are really sweet and genuine. I’d like to visit this area again someday and I especially want to experience the northern lights again.

Thanks for reading, see you soon 😊

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