Tromso, Norway
We were in Tromso Saturday evening and experienced our first night of darkness! It was wonderful to see a handful of stars peaking through the clouds.
In the morning we could choose between a city tour or a natural history excursion. The city tour first visited the excellent polar museum, which is housed in one of Tromso’s oldest buildings. We saw several interesting exhibits. One was about the long history of hunting and trapping in the Arctic, and there were also a lot of artifacts from the various Arctic expeditions, including Norway’s most famous explorer, Roald Amundsen. It was a nice summary of many of the things we saw during our time in Svalbard.
We then went to the Arctic Cathedral, a Lutheran church built out of beautiful white stone and overlooking Tromso Harbor. Inside the church, the chandeliers were created to look like ice crystals and the organ was meant to represent a ship. One of the most stunning features of this special church was the huge mosaic covering an entire wall.
The last stop of the city tour was to visit the University’s excellent regional museum where we learned about Norway’s aboriginal people, the Sami. We hope to spend some time in the lands of the Sami, so it was a wonderful introduction to their culture.
The natural history excursion was out to Kvaloya, a large island next to Tromso. It was a lovely chance to walk across the tundra in a stunningly scenic valley. The reward for the good hike to the top of the ridge was a chance to sample the local favorite, the cloudberry and to have fingertips stained blue by all the yummy wild blueberries!
There was the whole afternoon to wander the streets of Tromso and discover the colorful buildings and wonderful small gardens scattered about the city. In the early evening we celebrated sailing away from Tromso with the Scandinavian special warm drink, Glögg. It was a wonderful way to end our time in Norway’s northernmost city.
