Tromso, Norway

Ticking off the Arctic Circle was a byproduct of chasing the Northern Lights - something we become  obsessed with after failing to spot them during a trip to Iceland. With every social media post by friends of the Aurora Borealis across various Nordic cities, we were increasingly envious and motivated to tick this natural phenomenon off our travel to-do list. So after some research, we booked flights in March to the student city of Tromso. Known also for its high concentration of bars per inhabitant, at least there was something to do if we weren't successful. But we were and this is a recap of our trip.


Aurora Borealis
The Northern Lights are a natural display caused by solar activity that is predominately visible in the high latitudes on clear, dark skies. There are plenty of tourist and scientific websites with applications that will 'predict' the likelihood of seeing the Northern Lights at a given location. However, as it is up to Mother Nature, spotting them is never 100% guaranteed, although a high proportion of our friends had experienced success in Tromso.

Traveling to Tromso

A direct flight from London to Tromso operates weekly with Norwegian airline. Other routes are possible routing through other Scandinavian cities, as Tromso has a large university. Packing warm clothes, we were pleasantly surprised that the weather in March was only a slightly chilly -2 degrees. Arriving in March also had the advantage of sunlight as the city recently emerged from two months of complete darkness (polar winter).

Sunset on the flight into Tromso

View of Mount Storsteinen from our hotel room

Amalie Hotel

We arrived late on a Friday night and missed a day of heavy snowfall that had whitewashed the town. From the airport, we caught the shuttle bus to our hotel: Amalie Hotel, located near the Radisson Blu and the Tourist Information Centre. This was a convenient location, as the majority of the package tours operating in the city designate their meeting place as the nearby roundabout.

Tromso Tourist Office

Tromso City
The city of Tromso is located on the island of Tromsoya, with a long bridge connecting it to the mainland. The central business district is quite small, with a few shops, quite a number of hotels (testimony to the reliance on the tourism industry), a large harbour with fishing boats and lots of places to drink - including the former brewing site of Mack beer, at one point the world's northernmost brewery.

Tromso Harbour and fishing boat

Bridge linking Tromso to the mainland

Dinner - First night

For dinner on the first night, we visited the local Eurospar supermarket and bought a pre-made lobster salad, beetroot salad and smoked salmon. The front of the supermarket has a hot food section where we bought lasagna, fish cakes and curry with rice. When the supermarket was closed, the 7-Eleven next door provided some affordable snacks like hotdogs and pizza slices.

Eurospar supermarket - great variety of pre-made food

Food to eat in the hotel room

Booking a Northern Lights Tour

During peak season, it is advisable to pre-book your Northern Lights tours as some providers only have limited seats on the bus and your visit may coincide with a large cruise ship or ferry and demand may skyrocket. We had booked several days in Tromso to allow for possible days of bad weather, pre-booking one tour with Northern Shots (recommended by friends) for the Sunday. However, closer to that date the forecast looked disappointing (we used the Norway Lights app for guidance). As contingency, we did a last minute booking for Saturday night using the brochures at the hotel's reception for guidance with tours.

Cruise ship port - popular with tourists sailing up from Bergen

Northern Lights Hunting with Lyngsfjord Adventure and Polaria Experience

After a couple of hours of research and comparison, we chose the combination tour of hunting the Northern Lights with a professional photographer and entry to the Polaria Arctic Experience - whereby if the tour was not successful in spotting the Northern Lights, a private screening of the film 'Northern Lights in Arctic Norway' would be arranged.

To make the booking, the tourist office was crammed with visitors - a ferry had arrived in port and the forecast was positive so everyone was hopeful of seeing the Northern Lights that evening. In order to not miss out on a place, we headed to the other side of town to book directly at Polaria reception. We secured a place and were told that we were extremely fortunate, as all the providers in town were fully booked up as scientists had predicted a great night for aurora activity.

Sculpture outside the Polaria Museum

Tromso Cathedral and City Centre
As the tour didn't start until 8:30pm that night, we had a lot of free-time to explore the city centre. Putting our snow boots into use, we walked around Tromso Cathedral, the main street and along the harbour.

Snow to put our snow boots into use

Tromso has many pretty old wooden houses

Old warehouses next to the harbour

The harbour

Dinner - Sushi Point

On our trips to the Baltic and Scandinavia, we have eaten some amazing dishes of salmon sashimi. So in Tromso, we were excited to try the local sushi restaurant to assess if it met our expectations. It did well, and we were so impressed by the service and food that we ate there two nights later.

Sushi Point restaurant

Our dinner

Northern Lights Hunt

The hunt began with a meet-up at the main roundabout at 7:45pm and the tour consisted of a small group, minibus with a driver and professional photographer. The photographer acted as the tour guide, using software that tracks aurora activity and sightings from a network of tour operators to find the 'perfect' location. 

The minibus used in the hunt

Location One

Travel time to our first location was close to an hour and we arrived on top of a small hill, passing larger coaches full of fellow Northern Lights hunters. Standing on an mound of snow, the guide pointed out a hazy white light near the horizon against a background of millions of stars. The haze was actually the Northern Lights and looked like light cloud cover that moved direction rapidly. It was a perfectly clear night, so we had great expectations that this would not be our only sighting.

First location, not much luck

Location Two

As the haze was drifting away from us, the guide suggested that we get back onto the bus and as there was such as small group, we could head closer into the valley for a better look. At the second location, the guide recommended camera settings to use in order to photograph the 'iconic' green colour of the lights. 

One of our first photos of the Northern Lights

The right camera settings are required to photograph the lights

Photo taken by our guide

Location Three

As we had now spotted the lights and taken a photo as evidence, we were quite content. Our next stop was in a carpark in the valley where the lights appeared as a white rainbow that arched directly above us. In this location, we couldn't see the colours with our eyes (it was still white) but the green and purple was picked up by the camera (mostly with the assistance of our guide). We stayed at this location for about 30 minutes, watching the lights dance and change shape. 

Location Four

Close to 11:30pm, we arrived on the side of a mountain for our last stop and snack of hot chocolate with brown cheese on bread. The driver started a fire and the guide built a snow bear. The Northern Lights activity had died down according to the local reports so we spent the time just looking at the stars and Olie playing with his camera settings.

Fire by the roadside to keep us warm

Snow bear created by our guide

However Mother Nature had a surprise ready and just as Olie's camera battery was exhausted from the night's activity, the Northern Lights activity intensified as multiple white bands appeared at different points on the horizon. Then the bands turned green and very activity, swirling with high velocity at an apex above us. We left the guide to take photos (the ones below) and we just star-fished in the snow and watched the light show. One of the most magical things we have ever seen.

Polaria Museum

The next morning, we slept in as the bus back from the Northern Lights hunt did not return to Tromso until close to 2am where the city was in full party mode - presumably because all the tour providers had been successful at showing visitor's the lights, that everyone was celebrating with a drink at the pub.

We arrived at the Polaria Museum just past midday and toured the exhibits that included Arctic sea-life, short films on threats to the Arctic such as polar warming and melting of sea-ice, information about the early explorers to the North Pole and watched the Northern Lights film which brought back happy memories of the previous night's adventure. 

The highlight of the museum was timing our visit with the seal feeding time. There were four seals - two bearded and two harbour species. 

Rolling over and doing tricks

Huge seals

Learning to kiss

Northern Shots Tour

That night we had the pre-booked Northern Shots Northern Lights tour and despite the poor weather forecast, we decided to not cancel. We met up outside the shop and boarded large coach where the guide advised that the chances of seeing the lights was quite slim.

Northern Shots tour office

The cloud cover near Tromso was making it difficult to find a location to spot the lights. We ended up driving all the way to the border with Finland but by the time the sky cleared, the activity levels had disappeared. It ended up being a very long night (close to 5 hours) of sitting on a bus, standing in the snow, staring at the sky - only to be disappointed. If we hadn't had the success of the previous night, we may have left Tromso with a need to book a further trip to chase the lights.

Crossing the border into Finland

Day 4 - More Tromso Exploration

After a morning of just watching TV in the hotel room, we took advantage of the nice weather to cross the bridge to view the Arctic Cathedral with its gingerbread house sloped roof.

Crossing the bridge - got halfway, turned around and took the bus

Arctic Cathedral

Aunegarden Pub

A bus trip back into town and we stopped by Aunegarden Pub for a bowl of delicious  fish soup and a pint of Mack pilsner for lunch.

Fish soup - so tasty

Mack beer

To exercise our legs, we walked past the Polar Museum near the harbour that focuses on the early explorers and trade industries of Arctic Norway including hunting, fishing and oil. 

Polar Museum

Olie with a harpoon

Seals and other wildlife were hunted in Tromso and traded
to other countries as fur, blubber and skins

Whaling boat

Roald Amundsen - polar explorer and first person
to reach both North and South Pole

We also walked down to the Tromso Botanic Gardens which unsurprisingly due to the season was a blanket of snow and bare trees. 

Sushi Point (again)

That night we had the choice of going to chase the Northern Lights again or spending the money on a nice dinner. The weather again wasn't great and activity levels were low. So we decided to skip the trip and enjoy another sushi dinner.

Dog Sledding

The next morning we had a pre-booked dog sledding tour with Arctic Adventures that included a hotel pick up. The campsite was about a 40 minute drive from the city center and whilst the sleds were getting ready, we had time to play with the dogs.

Mei outside the kennels

After a short lesson in how to use the equipment, we were on our way as a convoy of about a dozen sleds being led by the guide and his two hunting dogs. The huskies (five per sled) knew the route and the only steering we had to worry about was the odd tree stump.

A lesson on using the equipment

All eager to go

And we are moving

The huskies loved to run and turned back and glared when we applied the brakes or didn't assist with pushing the sleds up the hills.

The tour was just over two hours and we were treated to scenic views over the fjord near Tromso. When we reached back to the campsite, we gave the dogs some appreciation as they cooled themselves down in the snow.

We then headed into the tent to warm up by the fire, drink coffee and eat some delicious homemade chocolate cake.

The traditional tent

Nice warm fire

St Patrick's Day - O'Learys Pub

For our last night in Tromso, as it was St Patrick's Day we had dinner at O'Learys Pub - eating buffalo chicken wings and grilled salmon.

Goodbye Tromso

The next morning, it was time to say goodbye to Tromso, catching the airport bus in the mid-morning for a short flight to Oslo and three hour layover before we arrived back in London.

Tromso from the air

Next blog post:

Koblenz and the Rhine, Germany

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