Tag:solliveien

Tromso and the northern lights

One big bucket list item was Tromso and the northern lights. Tromsø is 350 kilometres north of the Arctic Circle and is the largest city in Northern Norway. From September to March, many people come to Tromsø to see the northern lights”

Tromso

Tromso may be ‘easy’ to get to, but it’s a long way from Australia.  We left Melbourne Airport at 10.30 pm on a Thursday night flying 14.5 hrs to Doha with Qatar airlines. In Doha, we had a two-hour stopover before getting back in the air for another 6.5 hrs to Oslo, which finally put us in Norway. Stop over this time for six hours.

The final leg of two hours to Tromso has us arriving totally worn out 31 hrs after leaving Melbourne.  We were staying at the Viking Hotel in Tromso, a ‘budget’ hotel but still nice.  The rooms were warm and clean, the reception was super helpful and friendly. We were an easy walk 10min to the port, shops, and restaurants.

We were in Tromso for four nights, with plans to take a Fjord tour and two Northern Lights hunts.  The weather while we were there wasn’t great, overcast and showery, but not too cold.  In fact, we were expecting it to be a lot colder.  Waking up each morning, we had a view over the city rooftops to the mountains beyond. And every morning there was a little bit more snow in the mountains than the day before.

We attended a Tromso and the Northern Lights Photo Workshop on our first day with Wandering Owl. Not having photographed the lights before, we wanted to nail down the technique and settings.  The workshop was good.  Interesting and informative.  Following the workshop, we went out for dinner and then back to the hotel for an early night.  We were all still recovering from the long flight and had a Fjord tour planned for the next day.

Rain, rain, go away

Rain and Fjords

The weather the next morning was horrible, bordering on dreadful.  Very windy, cold, and raining.  Tour still went ahead, though, and we saw some fabulous countryside, including Kaa Fjord, where the German battleship Tirpitz was sunk on Nov 12, 1944, with a loss of approx 1000 german sailors.  The tiny rocky ‘island’ to the right of the image was nicknamed ‘corpse rock’ by the locals after they stacked the recovered bodies there while they worked to collect all the bodies for burial.  At low tide (according to the guides), you can see the outline of the Tirpitz resting in the waters below.

Tirpitz resting place

Leaving Kaa Fjord, we travelled on to Ersfjordbotn Fjord before stopping for lunch hot BBQ, hot dogs, marshmallows, and hot chocolate.  Totally delicious though I had never thought of barbequing a hot dog before.  A hardy lot, those Norwegians. We watched quite a lot of them out surfing in the rain while we ate our lunch. With water temp around 4°C, they were in full wetsuits, and even then, I reckon they’d have been cold.

Ersfjordbotn Fjord
Ersfjordbotn Fjord

During lunch, the rain got heavier and heavier. With concerns that the bridge back to Tromso could be closed, leaving us stranded, we headed back towards Tromo, stopping briefly off at a fishing village museum.  A lot of the buildings were original, having been relocated to the site from elsewhere

fishing huts
Red door with cross on lock to keep evil spirits out
Northern Lights

That evening we went on our first Northern Lights hunt. While the lights didn’t last long – we did see them!  We photographed the lights while the guides made tea, coffee, hot chocolate with soup, and toasted marshmallows. 

northern lights

It was around 2 am before we finally got dropped back at our hotel and fell into bed. 

Cable Cars and Snow

The next day was a ‘free’ day, so we wandered around town, visited the Arctic Cathedral, and went up the cable car. The cable car runs from Solliveien in Tromso up to the mountain ledge Storsteinen (421 m above sea level) in just four minutes.  It was bitterly cold and snowing up the mountain, but we had a ball getting snowed on and taking shots of the view over Tromso.

Interesting Manhole covers in Norway
The cable car path
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That night we were due to do a second Northern Lights hunt – but it was cancelled due to weather.  Unfortunately, as we were leaving the next day, we couldn’t reschedule it. And as is always the way when on holiday, the day we left to head to our next destination – the weather was perfect!

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We flew out of Tromso around 1 pm bound for London (next post).  Beautiful city to fly out of with all the fjords below us.

Flying out of Tromso
Flying out of Tromso
Footnote: 

The people of Tromso are lovely – friendly and smiling.  Most speak English.  There are many pedestrian crossings in the city and all drivers are super aware of them and so mindful and considerate of pedestrians.  Many times we would be standing at the kerb, facing the road, nowhere near a pedestrian crossing… just working out where we were going to go… and cars would stop and wait for us to cross! 

© Bevlea Ross