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Published: October 4th 2009
Tromso Cathedral
They say this is the northernmost cathedral in the world. It's built of wood. Isn't that a bit odd?Five days in the land of midnight sun and reindeers
If you follow this blog you know that I, Ake that is, two or three times a year can take a vacation when Emma has to be home working. As long as I visit places Emma doesn't want to see I am permitted to travel on my own. Emma is not very interested in visiting northern Norway but I have for several years been thinking that a trip up to the land of midnight sun and reindeers could be interesting. So to northern Norway I went on a trip this summer.
The trip started with a flight from Stockholm to Tromso in northern Norway. At least that is what I thought. I came to Arlanda Airport in Stockholm and checked in on the flight in one of the self service machines. I checked in my luggage, passed security check and slowly made my way to the gate. Not until I was at the gate I realised that the plane wasn't going to Tromso at all but to Trondheim. For a while I was afraid that I had mixed up
The Arctic Cathedral, Tromso
I decided to skip the Arctic Cathedral when I found out that they charge a large entrance fee to visit it Trondheim and Tromso with each other when I bought the ticket on Internet. I had a copy of the booking confirmation, but before I managed to get that out of my bag and could see for myself that I really was booked all the way to Tromso and only changing planes in Trondheim I was actually a bit nervous.
When I arrived in Tromso I took the airport bus to town. I went to the youth hostel and checked in. After that I had a look at the town.
Tromso is a small and quiet town. There aren't really any big tourist sights in town. The places where tourists normally visit are the centre, where there are many preserved historical wooden houses, the Arctic Cathedral and Storsteinen, a mountain that can be reached via a cable car.
I thought Tromso was a nice place to walk around in for a few hours. The wooden houses in the centre gave the town a very special character. I skipped the Arctic Cathedral when I found out that they charge a large entrance fee to visit it. I did go to the top of Storsteinen. The view over Tromso was
Wooden house in Tromso
Radstua or the Town Hall from 1864 easily worth the fee for the cable car.
The major tourist attractions in Tromso were not the most interesting things I saw there though. I visited two other places there that I thought were much more interesting.
Outside Tromso is an island named Hakoy. The German battleship Tirpitz was moored there in November 1944 while the Germans were repairing damages she had suffered during an earlier attack by British air force. The British air force then launched a new attack that sank Tirpitz for good. After the war the Norwegians cut up the ship and today there is very little left of Tirpitz. There is a memory plaque near the shore where she sank and some pieces of scrap metal can still be seen. Also at least two bomb craters, craters from bombs that missed the target when the British sank Tirpitz, are visible near where Tirpitz sank.
In the days when I was travelling around in northern Norway I also visited another place connected with Battleship Tirpitz. I'll get back to that later.
The other thing I saw in Tromso that I found more interesting than the tourist sights was a tunnel connecting the town
Empty Norwegian road
One of the best things about travelling around in northern Norway are all great views centre with the airport. The strange thing about this tunnel is that in the middle of the mountain there are roundabouts. I found it incredible that they have built the tunnel in the first place. The mountain really isn't that big. There are roads going across the mountain and in my opinion they could easily have used them for the traffic to and from the airport. But my guess is that in winter those roads get slippery and then it could make sense with a tunnel instead. But apparently they thought it wasn't enough to just build one tunnel through the mountain. They built
three tunnels and in the middle of the mountain they have built additional tunnels that connect the three tunnels with each other. To make traffic move smoothly they have also built three roundabouts in the mountain. I don't know if these roundabouts inside a mountain are the only ones in the World or not but they sure are the first of its kind that I've ever seen.
After half a day in Tromso it was time for me to leave for a four day tour of northern Norway with rental car.
The first day
A fjord
One of the best things about travelling around in northern Norway are all great views on this tour I left Norway for a few hours and went into Finland. I wanted to see
The tripoint monument, a border marker at the spot where the Norwegian, Swedish and Finnish borders meet. The border marker isn't not more than a chunk of painted concrete in the middle of a small lake. Not a very spectacular tourist sight to be honest.
To visit The tripoint monument the easiest way is to take a boat ride from the village Kilpisjarvi in Finland and then walk roughly three kilometres to the monument. It also possible to walk on a hiking trail from a position beyond Kilpisjarvi, a walk that takes over two hours one way. I was a bit short on time on this visit so I opted for the quick visit.
The area where The tripoint monument is located is a protected nature reserve and the nature there offered a few nice views. The weather unfortunately killed any chance of getting good photos. But the reason for me to visit The tripoint monument was not the views but rather to be able to say "Been-there-done-that". The tripoint monument is the northernmost spot in Sweden and it is a well
The tripoint monument
A border marker at the spot where the Norwegian, Swedish and Finnish borders meet. known place. I wanted to see it and now I have.
Next place I stopped at was the glacier
Øksfjordjøkelen. From the car park I had to walk for a while to get a good look at the glacier. On the way to the lookout I passed a small stream of water where I filled up my water bottles. In these parts of the World it is safe to drink water out of a lake or from a stream. It felt a bit strange at first but it tasted good and I didn't get sick from it either. If you ever try it just be careful so you don't get any reindeer droppings in your water bottles.
Northern Norway, together with northern Finland, northern Sweden and the Kola Peninsula, is home of the
Sami people. One of the traditional trades of the Sami people is keeping
reindeers. When I was travelling around in Norway I saw quite a few reindeers and along the roads the Sami people had market stalls where they were selling reindeer meat, reindeer furs and Sami handicraft.
The reindeers are a bit shy but they are in general not afraid of humans. They can
Oxfjordjokelen
The glacier Oksfjordjokelen easily be tamed and it is actually possible to have reindeers pulling a sledge. I did actually go on a ride in a sledge pulled by a reindeer in an amusement park in Gothenburg some years ago. However, reindeers are much smaller then a horse so consequently they are not very strong. I guess that is the reason why none other than Santa Claus make use of reindeers as working animals on a regular basis.
I found that it was easy to get close enough to the reindeers to take photos of them but if I got too close they walked away. There was no point in trying to get close enough to touch them.
Next place I stopped at was a fjord named
Kafjord. It was in Kafjord the Germans had the Battleship Tirpitz moored for the better part of World War II.
The
Battleship Tirpitz was in the early 1940-ies one of the most feared ships sailing the seas. During most of the war the Germans kept the ship inside Kafjord well protected by antisubmarine nets and antitorpedo nets. For some reason the Germans didn't sail her much. She did take part in a few attacks
Tap water northern Norway style
In these parts of the World it is safe to drink water out of a lake or from a stream on commercial fleets in Barents Sea and she also sailed on a mission to Svalbard. The attack on Svalbard was made only as a publicity stunt to get some nice war propaganda to feed the German people. They used Tirpitz for the attack because it was the largest and most impressive battleship in the German navy. As such it makes for good photos. In fact Svalbard was hardly protected at all and the worst enemy the Germans faced when they landed in this isolated chunk of land deep in the Arctic was the local polar bears. But they used Tirpitz, had her fire a few rounds from her cannons and in no time at all they had some nice footage to view in the cinemas in the Third Reich. As propaganda nothing beats a large battleship sailing into the sunset.
Even though Battleship Tirpitz was hardly used at all during the war she was of great use to the Germans. The British were terrified of Tirpitz and they tried every trick in the book to destroy her. Tirpitz was attacked at least twice while she was moored in Kafjord and at least twice more when she was positioned outside
Tirpitz mooring site
Here in Kafjord the Germans had the Battleship Tirpitz moored for the better part of World War II. Tromso being repaired. The mission of sinking Tirpitz kept hundreds of British soldiers busy for years. In the various missions the British used the most skilled aviators they had,
Royal Air Force Squadron 617, a.k.a. the Dam Busters for instance, and they were flying the best planes available, keeping them away from other missions for months on end.
Tirpitz was such a hard nut for the British to crack that the military and the engineers had to think up new methods and weapons to destroy her. In one attempt the British used several minisubs. The subs were very simple and not very reliable. One of the submarines had to abort the mission before they had started it and one of them disappeared in the waters of Kafjord without a trace. But two of the submarines managed to get inside the torpedo nets protecting Tirpitz and set off the explosives close enough to cause considerable damage to her. They didn't sink her but put her out of action for a few months.
In one of the earlier attempt to sink Tirpitz they used standard bombs. They managed to get several direct hits but still the ship survived. That forced the engineers to create
It's cold!
Swimming in Barents Sea is an interesting experience. It's cold but still not as bad as you think a new kind of bomb. The new bomb was much heavier, had better aerodynamic properties and could penetrate much deeper upon impact than the bombs previously used. It was one of these bombs that eventually sank Tirpitz.
One of the goals with this trip in northern Norway was to reach
North Cape. At 71° 10' 21'' N it is the furthest north you can go on the European mainland. I was hoping to see some nice views and enjoy the midnight sun when I was there but any chance of a view was effectively killed by a really heavy fog. From what I understand there is very often a heavy fog at North Cape so most visitors going there sees just as much as I do, which is next to nothing. But North Cape to me is just like The tripoint monument, a place that I visit just to be able to say "Been-there-done-that".
On the way to North Cape I passed a town called Honningsvag. Honningsvag claims to be the northernmost City in the World. But that is a title that at least three other communities, Hammerfest in Norway, Longyearbyen on Svalbard and Barrow in Alaska, are also
Reindeers
A common sight along the roads in northern Norway claiming to hold.
I only spent enough time in Honningsvag to take a photo. I stopped by a tourist information sign but there didn't seem to be anything there making it worth making the stop longer than absolutely necessary.
The day after I left North Cape I went by Hammerfest too. It took a few hours to drive there but the route was scenic so I enjoyed it.
First I planned on just going to Hammerfest to take a quick look and leave again. But when I got there I looked though some tourist information I had with me and learnt that they actually had a tourist site there that I wanted to see.
In the first half of the 19 th century a group of scientists under the command of Friedrich Georg Wilhelm von Struve conducted a geographical survey including hundreds of measurements to determine the exact shape of the Earth. To make these measurements they set up a large number of survey points in an as straight line as they could possibly get though Europe.
The project was named
Struwe Geodesic Arc and the starting point of these measurements was in Hammerfest in northern Norway
Honningsvag
Honningsvag claims to be the northernmost City in the World and they last of the reference points they set up was in Ukraine at the Black Sea. The measurements they made showed that the Earth is not completely spherical but actually slightly compressed or flattened at the poles.
These survey points of the study can today be found in ten different countries in Europe and they are recognised by UNESCO as a World Heritage. Being a scientist I, of course, had to visit the survey point of the Struwe Geodesic Arc in Hammerfest.
When I looked for the tourist information to ask for directions to the Struwe Geodesic Arc monument I stopped next to the Swedish consulate in Hammerfest. Before I left for Norway there was a heated debate in the media about plans to close the Swedish consulate in New York City. I find it ridiculous that Sweden has a consulate in Hammerfest in Norway and think about closing down the one in New York City.
Struwe Geodesic Arc was not the only World Heritage I visited in Norway this day. A few hours after I left Hammerfest I arrived in Alta at the site of the visitor centre for the
Alta rock carvings. In and around Alta
North Cape
At 71° 10' 21'' North Cape is the furthest north you can get in Europe. It is one of those places where you just have to have a photo of yourself to prove that you have been there several thousands of these rock carvings have been discovered. This kind of carvings can be found in several hundred different places in Scandinavia and they are the oldest surviving pictures made by man in this part of the World. The area was so large that I easily could have dedicated an entire blog entry to the site. But that would have been pretty boring to read so I only publish three photos from Alta.
On the same day as I visited the World Heritage of Alta rock carvings my parents visited the World Heritage of
Tanumshede rock carvings in Sweden. That was not planned, it just happened by coincidence.
After Alta I drove back down to Tromso where I left the car at the rental agency and took a fight back home to Stockholm again.
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Jag sa väl att jag och pappa klättrade upp på Treriksröset, men det gjorde inte du? Förresten var det ju fusk med de där nya träbryggorna, sådant fanns inte på min tid ;-) När jag var däruppe då för hundra år sedan, tyckte vi att renar fanns på vägarna i Sverige, men så fort vi kom in i Norge så var där får! Inget du märkte?