After Christmas, J and I flew to Tromso in the far north of Norway to get a taste of what winter is like above the Arctic circle. We had an absolutely marvellous time and I wanted to share some stories and pics from the experience. Unfortunately the quality of the pics suffers from the lack of light available but hopefully they still give you some sense of the place nonetheless.
Tromso as a city is actually situated on a small island in the middle of a fjord and surrounded by amazing, snow capped mountains. It is a very small city though so we tried to get out and do/see some other things in the surrounding areas while we were there. After the first night we went out to an island called Kvaloy (whale island) where we visited the Tromso wilderness centre and the biggest dog kennel in Norway - with over 220 Alaskan huskies! We had hoped to do some dog sledding there but unfortunately the unseasonal lack of snow on the lower grounds made that impossible, much to our disappointment! What we did do though was camp out the night on the property. This gave us the perfect opportunity to freeze our butts off, and more importantly, to scan the skies out of the city for the Northern Lights. After feeling ourselves going slightly mad trying to keep our eyes on all parts of the sky, around 11.30pm we were blessed with an amazing display of flourescent green bands of light dancing, disappearing and reappearing all over the sky. At one point, they emerged from behind a mountain and turned the whole mountain top green! It was totally amazing! Unfortunately I have no pics of this. I made one small attempt to take a photo, discovered you needed to know much more about camera settings etc than I do, and decided not to miss the display by trying to capture it through a lens. The mental photographs will stay with me forever though! Here is a picture of our camp for you instead!
Also, here is us killing time taking photos of ourselves while we waited for the lights! It was so funny, J commented at one point that it was not actually that cold, but then we counted the layers of clothing we had on, I think I had seven! The wilderness centre lent us snow suits and we were most grateful for them!
After our night in the tent, we were served a wonderful breakfast in a lavvo, sami style accommodation. It was really 'koselig' with the fire and the reindeer skins after the chilly night in the tent, just a shame that the pics do not accurately capture the warm orange light and campfire smell we got to dine with!
As we could not go dog sledding as planned, the centre let us help feed the dogs after our breakfast. We were put on puppy duty and got to feed all the young dogs their mix of whale and chicken meat....mmmm delicious! They are really serious about their sledding at this place, and the owners completed the alaskan iditarod race last year (over 1000 miles!), which was really amazing to hear all about! The amount of dogs at this place was totally amazing and the view almost even more so!
After feeding the hounds we took some of them for a walk in the mountains, made a fire and grilled some sausages on a stick, the Norwegian way. One of the dogs killed a lemming and even though it was dead, I was very excited to see my very first lemming! Apparently it was a good season for lemmings this year, which ironically means a bad season for lemmings, if you know what I mean?
After visiting the wilderness centre and their dogs, we headed back into Tromso for New Years. In line with Norway's highly exorbitant prices, we paid almost $100 for a bottle of red with our dinner but it was almost worth it when our waitress told us the northern lights wer eon display outside. Even though we were in the city, this second display we saw of the lights was even more amazing than the first, with huge intense dancing beams spanning from horizon to horizon. The earth was putting on its own display of fireworks! After dinner we hit one of the recommended pubs for our big night out. At first we thought we would be home in bed by 10pm - the whole city seemed completely dead! Most places were closed and what was open had no more than a couple of tourists in it. Quite unexpectedly, we hooked up with a couple of other Australians who had chosen the Blue Rock pub for their night out and got on so well with them that before we knew it it was time to run out and watch the fireworks! This was the last year Norway was allowing the public sale of fireworks so the people had gone completely crazy. Even though there was an official display going off on one of the mountains, we were totally surrounded by fireworks right in the city and even had to dodge the odd one or two! After the display we went back into the pub and discovered that the Norwegians had just been waiting to watch the fireworks before they went out. The place was packed and the rest of the night disappeared into a kind of blur! All I know is that it ended at 5am when J and I found ourselves on a Norwegian fishing trawler discussing the state of cod stocks. Crazy night! And we both got the hang overs to prove it! In fact, all the next day we hung in our hotel room watching crap television and ordering room service. The only time we left our room was to buy a kebab. Now that is hung over!
After New Years we decided to pursue our desire for dog sledding a little further afield, and we booked a trip to Tamokdalen about an hour and a half inland from Tromso, where there was snow on the ground and the promise of mushing! Here is a photo through the bus window on our way out there. I can understand why so many landscape artists go to Tromso.
Here we finally got to try dog sledding, and in fact, J got to drive our sled for 20kms through some very rough terrain. It was absolutely amazing! We travelled through a gorgeous valley, crossed frozen rivers, (that actually weren't always entirely frozen and I thought I was going in at one stage!), tripped through frosty forests and hammered up and down hills with our little furry companions. We followed a guide the whole way but it never really felt safe to be honest with you (in fact, the other english couple that did it with us stacked their sled twice). This only made it more exhilarating though and J might have actually missed his calling because he was an excellent musher!
We also saw some amazing things along the way like huge wolverine tracks in the snow with paws as big as a mans hand, a massive king eagle bigger than any wedge tail I have ever seen, and a little frosty otter skipping across an icy waterway! It was truly wild country out there and it totally took my breath away.
While we were up in Tromso I also gave a talk at a research institute for gene ecology but that experience paled in comparison to seeing the spectacular green of the Northern lights dance across the sky and speeding on a dog sled through a snow covered landscape shrouded in pink light! It was a truly unforgettable trip and we hope to venture back up there again in summer to experience the same landscape under the magnificence of the midnight sun. xxx
