We docked at Tromsø on Tuesday morning. The main part of the city sits on a small island, one that is relatively densely populated for this part of the world. The city and its environs have about 130,000 inhabitants and is the world’s third largest city north of the Arctic Circle. They call it “The Paris of the North” because it is relatively cosmopolitan. Foreigners make up 10% of the population, and it’s a major hub of Arctic scientific research.
It was from here that Roald Amundsen and Fridtjof Nansen set off on their polar expeditions in the late 1800s and early 1900s. We learned about their voyages in a visit to the Polar Museum. It’s almost impossible to imagine the hardships suffered by these explorers and others who tried to make their living in the Arctic back in those days.
Marking a quite different era in Tromsø’s cultural history is the Arctic Cathedral, which opened in 1965. It’s a soaring aluminum and concrete church on the mainland, across the bridge from where our ship was moored.
Near the cathedral, we took an aerial tram to the top of a mountain for a beautiful view of the city. After trekking across the snow-covered peak for better views, we stopped for a mug of hot chocolate and a traditional Norwegian waffle before going back down to meet our bus.
Chasing the northern lights
We had just enough time to grab a bite on the ship and change into warm clothes for our evening excursion — a van ride out into the countryside to see the northern lights.
Our guides took us out about 20 miles west of town, where they looked for a spot with a good view and a place where we could set up temporary camp. They found a good location at the edge of a fjord. They built a small campfire, and the auroras began appearing almost immediately after we got set up.
I’ll save the best photos for another post, but it was a breathtaking couple of hours in the bitter cold. The first-quarter moon illuminated the landscape around us, and the auroras stretched from horizon to horizon.
After the display dimmed a bit, we got back on the van. Mark and Mike (our guides) then passed around bowls of reindeer stew. It was delicious, and perfect for taking the edge off the cold.
Dogsledding
Our main adventure for Wednesday, March 4 was dogsledding on the tundra about an hour east of the city.
I was thankful that our sled had a musher — no need for us to learn how to steer the sled, just sit back and let the dogs do the work. The sled dogs were not purebred, just Border Collie mixed with who knows what else. They were super social and friendly. They barked incessantly and were eager to run. They seemed really excited when we got underway.
We had six sleds, each pulled by eight or nine dogs. We followed a winding trail (dug out by snowmobile) with beautiful views of the mountains all around. I was reminded of a quote from Jack London about a landscape betraying “no evidence of Man or any of the works of Man.” However, I had to laugh that right beneath all this snow was the world’s farthest-north golf course, which is open in the summer months.
We stopped after about 20 minutes to stretch our backs and pet the dogs. Jane discovered that her phone had fallen out of her pocket somewhere along the route. The musher assured her that someone would find it before we left for the day.
Back at the camp, we sat inside a teepee for cake and coffee around a fire. A man dressed in traditional clothes told us what it was like being of Sami heritage. The Sami are the indigenous people in the Arctic regions of Scandinavia.
We visited a few reindeer and then went over to pet some sled dogs. They were among the friendliest dogs I’ve ever encountered, delighted to let complete strangers rub them and hug them, and jealous for attention!
Jane’s phone did indeed turn up. It had fallen, face down, into the snow along the track. The back of the case bore the marks of sled tracks, but miraculously the camera lenses were unscratched. The female musher who found the phone had taken selfies with it as well as videos of her driving her sled back across the tundra! What a great souvenir!
We cleaned up, had a relaxing few hours, then grabbed dinner on the ship. We walked a block from the ship to the Magic Ice Bar, just to say we’d seen it. The interior of the bar is kept at -5°C (23°F) to preserve the ice sculptures (and the furniture and glassware, also made of ice).