January 2025
What an incredible place!
I’ve just returned from the most amazing four days in Tromso. We flew from Luton with Wizz air direct to Tromso, a short hop really of just three hours with a tail wind.
For some reason I have always had a romantic draw to the Artic, whether I see myself as an intrepid explorer along the lines of Roald Amundsen (not!) or even a female version of Ben Fogle (also, not!), but there is something really pulling towards this wintery, dark archipelago. We had really crammed it all in, determined not to waste a moment, but in hindsight, I would have really enjoyed to stay longer and do some winter hiking too.
The scenery is so incredible that the old adage, ‘the pictures don’t do it justice’ are true. Wading through over 1000 pictures you quickly realise that the only way to really appreciate the images is to see them yourself…so go!
We had booked to go whale watching, husky sledding and hopefully the northern lights on a chase and a camp. Sadly the whale watching was cancelled before we’d even taken off from the UK due to the inclement weather and the sea being rough. I was pretty bummed at this, first thing down and we hadn’t even left. I did have a funk on my husband and dismissed us not seeing the lights either before there was a chance.
Luckily by the next morning, I’d pulled up those Pollyanna socks again and we were on a Hurtigruten catamaran heading out into the fjord and a snow storm. We spent five hours out in some of the most spectacular scenery I’d ever seen with a foreboding aura caused by the weather.
Whilst some of the mountains were hidden from view due to the whiteness of the sky, the dramatic contrast between the fjord water and rocky crags of the nearer mountains were spectacular. I mean…
We were also lucky enough to see a pair of sea eagles (not lucky enough to catch them on camera as anything more than ‘black blobs’ on the horizon, which became a bit of a catchphrase for the time we were there, covering moose sightings on the shoreline and seals in the water!
That evening was the highlight of the trip (or so I thought, but apparently highlights are not singular when you go to the Artic and have a bucket list!). We went out Northern Lights chasing with a company called Frilufsenter. It was an incredible set up, only a small minibus and there are now over 85 companies doing similar but many of the smaller companies talk to each other throughout the night to update on sightings so they can help each other out. The lights were phenomenal.
That last pic looks superimposed, but I can promise you that bar some cropping, these are unedited!
The following day we did dog sledding. I was a little apprehensive that this would be some kind of tacky, rather ethically uncomfortable set up, but the organisation we went with were far from this. I will try to get the name and link. The dogs were really well cared for and love doing what they do. The introductory talk was rather scary, however, so I was feeling rather nervous and opted for the ‘flatter’ part of the run, leaving Rich to do the ups and downs. However, I think he was also pretty nervous (he’s not a natural dog person) so in his tactful way without actually admitting he was nervous, asked me if I’d be disappointed just doing the flat…so ups and downs I went. What an incredible experience. I mean, I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you that if I drove my car the way the sled went around some of the bends and down the hills I’d be writing this from a cell most likely. I have to say a huge thanks to Rich for not screaming, telling me to slow down or soiling his pants! He was the perfect passenger! After a while I really got the hang of changing my weight, jumping from brake to brake and back on the skis. I think I could get used to being a professional ‘musher‘!
That evening we did another Northern Lights trip, but this time was a static one at a camp. It was lovely, but not as good as the chase, this was partly down to the static nature of the trip as you are much more at the mercy of the lights turning up for you there rather than ‘chasing’ them, but it was also not quite as well organised, too many people, too much light pollution at the place we were ‘camped’ and not enough help with the photography.
And as if the Northern Lights and the Dog Sledding weren’t enough to tick off that bucket list, I got to tick off one more thing. The last day we had a long time before our evening flight, so I’d booked a session at the floating sauna, I mean, come on, who doesn’t sauna when in Scandinavia. Pust is a floating sauna in the harbour with a roped off area for cold swimming in the bay. An hour in the sauna with two cold swims, and I have never felt so alive! I could also do this for a living. So the ‘swimming in the Arctic’ bucket list ticked, it was time to seek out some reindeer for lunch (sorry guys but when in Tromso!), visit the polar museum and learn about the Amundsen and Nansen and how to ‘winter’ in the Arctic.
So top tips:
- Norway is expensive but equally a 3* hotel or the backpackers hostel are not like what you’d get in the UK, so stay somewhere 3*, if you do the trips, you’ll hardly be in your bed…my daughter just said to me this morning, you look shattered, which is fair after three 1.30am bedtimes!
- Do book the sauna in advance
- You will need to go twice: Summer and Winter are entirely different, like no other place I’ve experienced and people even have summer and winter jobs.
- Do a Northern Lights chase over a camp, you are more likely to see better lights as they go where the lights are rather than waiting for them to come to the base camp.
- If you whale watch (lucky you!) opt for the environmentally and ethically friendly silent boats that don’t disturb the whales. Hurtigruten offer these, but there are others in town.
- Reindeer doesn’t taste like chicken, more like a game-y beef.
- Food is very expensive, but coffee and Kanelboller are huge, we lunched on a bun between us! There are also sun buns, equally massive! Breakfast in our hotel was INCREDIBLE, so we filled up, then the evenings we had soup on the camp and on the fjord trip included. We also put in a few cereal bars from home for desperation.
- It is slippery! My best advice for footwear and trousers are: wear GOOD hiking boots and purchase some ice grips that fit over from the UK (they are quite expensive in Norway) then use rain over trousers to ensure snow stays out of your boots. Obviously if you want to buy fancy snow boots or have them then that’s great too, but we felt for four days it was an unnecessary expense. You can find more info on what I was packing on this post here and it was all used and pretty spot on.
I’ll aim to update the blog later with the actual company names that we used. We booked the whole thing through Baltic Adventures, however and they were really good.
