Three days in Tromso: the harbour every polar expedition sailed from, and some never came back to

Two nights far above the Arctic Circle: a wooden cathedral, a concrete one across the water, a cable car up the mountain behind it, and a bar count nobody can explain.

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Length
3 days, 2 nights
Where you stay
Tromsø
Places
8 across 3 days
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Tromsø sits on an island three hundred and fifty kilometres north of the Arctic Circle, with mountains on both sides of it and open water leading north to Svalbard and the pack ice. For roughly a century that geography made it the last port before nothing: the sealing and whaling fleets worked out of here, Nansen and Amundsen provisioned here, and when Amundsen took off from this harbour in June 1928 to look for a crashed airship, neither he nor the aircraft was seen again.

What surprises people is that it is not a frontier outpost. It is a university town of seventy eight thousand with an art museum, a serious concert scene, a great deal of good food and, for its size, an implausible number of bars, which is a habit that goes back to a fishing port that spent two months of the year in darkness and needed somewhere to be. Victorians called it the Paris of the North, mostly out of astonishment that anybody up here owned an evening coat.

Three days is enough for the town, one mountain and one museum day, and the honest thing to say is that when you come matters more than how long. Between late May and late July the sun does not set at all. For roughly seven weeks around midwinter it does not rise. In between you get either endless daylight or, with luck and a clear sky, the aurora.

Highlights

  • The warehouse museum where the polar expeditions were fitted out, with the gear that came back and the men who did not
  • A wooden cathedral seating eight hundred, the northernmost Protestant one in the world
  • A church of white concrete triangles across the water, glazed at the east end from floor to roof
  • A four minute ride to a summit terrace, best taken at midnight in June
  • The northernmost botanic garden on earth, unfenced, free and open at any hour

Where to stay

Tromso, two nights

Stay in the centre, on the island, within the few streets between the harbour and the cathedral. Almost everything here is inside fifteen minutes of that, hotel stock is limited, and prices in the aurora season are the highest in Norway outside Christmas.

Two nights is the minimum that gives you two chances at a clear sky in winter, which is the argument for not making this a stopover.

Day by day

Day 1 in Tromsø

The polar harbour, and a wooden cathedral in the middle of town

The Polar Museum is in a wooden warehouse on the quay from 1830, and it is the reason to come here rather than to any other Arctic town. Downstairs is the trapping and sealing trade: the traps, the guns, the reconstructed hut on Svalbard where men overwintered alone for eight months at a time, and the accounts of what that did to them. Upstairs is the expedition history, Nansen's drift in the Fram, Amundsen's South Pole party, and the flight of June 1928 when Amundsen left this harbour in a French flying boat to search for Nobile's crashed airship and disappeared. A wing float and a fuel tank washed up months later. Nothing else ever did.

The labelling is patchy in English, which is the museum's one flaw and worth a translation app.

Then two minutes into town for the cathedral, which is a white wooden building from 1861 with eight hundred seats, the northernmost Protestant cathedral in the world and one of the largest timber churches in Norway. It is plain, bright and unexpectedly moving inside, and it is used constantly. Finish at the free museum in the main street opposite, which puts on exhibitions about the north, and is the sort of small municipal effort that turns out to be better than the big one.

  1. 14:30

    Polar Museum

    Culture

    Sealing, trapping and the polar expeditions in an 1830 quayside warehouse. An hour and a half, and bring something that translates Norwegian labels.

  2. 16:30

    The Lutheran Cathedral

    Religious

    A big white timber church in the middle of the main street, and the northernmost Protestant cathedral anywhere. Free to look in outside services, and often has music on.

  3. 17:30

    Perspektivet Museum

    Culture

    Free, in an 1838 building on the main street, with changing exhibitions on northern life and photography. Half an hour, and a good bolt hole in bad weather.

  4. 19:00

    Dinner in the centre

    Eat

    Arctic char, king crab, stockfish and reindeer are the local repertoire and the town does them well. Book, because the good places are small and there are not many of them.

With more time: Mack, in the centre, was founded in 1877, is still owned by the same family and runs brewery tours in the early afternoon on weekdays. Its bar, Ølhallen, is the oldest pub in town and opens earlier than seems wise. The sealing vessel Polstjerna is preserved under cover down at the southern end of the harbour.

Day 2 in Tromsø

Across the bridge, and up the mountain

Start with the art museum in the centre, which holds northern Norwegian painting from about 1800 onwards and gives you Arctic landscape as the people who live in it have painted it, which is a useful correction to the tourist version. An hour.

Then walk the bridge. It is a kilometre long, climbs to nearly forty metres in the middle so ships can pass beneath, and has a footway on one side. What you are walking towards is the Arctic Cathedral, which is a parish church rather than a cathedral and does not care what anybody calls it. Built in 1965, it is eleven concrete triangles of decreasing height set against the mountain, glazed at the west end with a lattice of small panes, and filled at the east end by a stained glass window running the entire height of the building. Go in. The scale of that window against a plain white interior is what people remember.

The cable car station is fifteen minutes' walk further along the shore. It lifts you to Storsteinen at four hundred and twenty one metres in four minutes, and from the terrace the whole island, the bridges, the fjord and the mountains beyond are laid out below. In June, go at midnight: the sun sits just above the horizon to the north, the town is orange, and there is a queue of people at the top at one in the morning behaving as if this were normal. In winter it is one of the better places to stand and wait for the aurora, though the town lights work against you.

If you would rather earn it, the path up beside the cable car takes under an hour and is steep the whole way.

  1. 10:30

    The Northern Norwegian Art Museum

    Visit

    Northern Norwegian art from 1800 on, plus changing shows. Central, an hour, and a good start before you go outside for the rest of the day.

  2. 13:00

    Ishavskatedralen

    Religious

    Eleven concrete triangles below the mountain, with a stained glass wall filling the east end. Twenty minutes over the bridge on foot, and closed during services.

  3. 19:00

    The Cable Car

    Other

    Four minutes to the summit terrace at Storsteinen, with a café at the top. Go at midnight in June, or check the aurora forecast and go late in winter.

With more time: In winter the standard evening here is an aurora chase: a minibus that drives inland or towards Finland for however long it takes to find a hole in the cloud, often three or four hours each way. It is worth doing once and it is not a guarantee of anything. In summer the equivalent is a boat: whale watching from November to January, sea kayaking and midnight sun sailings the rest of the year.

Day 3 in Tromsø

The Sami collections, and a garden that should not exist

The university museum at the southern end of the island is the one that explains the place: Sami culture and history in depth, the archaeology of northern Norway, the natural history of the Arctic, and a room on the aurora that covers what is actually happening in the upper atmosphere rather than photographs of it. The Sami material is the important part and it is presented as a living culture rather than a display case, which was not always the case here.

Ten minutes away is the Arctic Alpine Botanic Garden, the northernmost in the world, run by the university on a slope above the water. It has no fence, no gate and no admission charge, and it is open at every hour of the day and every month of the year, which given that it is under snow for half of them is a slightly comic arrangement. What grows here are the mountain and Arctic plants of the world, Himalayan poppies, Patagonian shrubs, saxifrages from every continent, and the season is compressed into a few weeks around midsummer when everything flowers at once.

The airport is at this end of the island, about ten minutes away, which makes this a convenient last morning.

  1. 10:00

    Tromsø Museum

    Nature

    Sami history and culture, Arctic archaeology and a proper explanation of the northern lights. Bus from the centre, and allow two hours.

  2. 12:30

    The Arctic Alpine Botanic Garden

    Nature

    The world's most northerly botanic garden, free and never closed. Best from late June to early August, when everything flowers at the same time.

With more time: The Church of Elverhøy, on the high ground in the middle of the island, dates from 1803 and is the oldest building in Tromsø, moved out of the town centre when the new cathedral was built. It is a five minute detour and almost nobody goes.

Before you go

Getting in

Flying is how almost everybody arrives. Tromsø airport is on the same island, ten minutes by bus or taxi from the centre, with several flights a day from Oslo and direct services in season from Copenhagen, Stockholm, London and a few others. There is no railway anywhere near.

The Hurtigruten coastal ship calls twice a day, northbound and southbound, and arriving from Bodø or Trondheim by sea is a slow, expensive and genuinely memorable alternative. It leaves again within a couple of hours, so treat it as transport rather than a cruise.

By road it is about twenty hours from Oslo, and the long distance buses from Narvik take four and a half hours, which is worth knowing if you are combining this with the Lofoten islands.

Getting around

The centre is small and flat and everything on the island below is within a half hour walk or a short bus ride. Buses are run by Troms fylkestrafikk and you pay by app or card.

The bridge to the mainland is a kilometre long, has a pedestrian lane, and rises high enough in the middle to make the crossing an event in a wind. Walk it once to the Arctic Cathedral and take the bus back if the weather has an opinion.

In winter, wear boots with a grip and take them seriously. The pavements ice over, the town is on a slope, and studded overshoes are sold in every other shop for a reason.

When to go

For the northern lights, late September to late March, with the dark months in the middle giving the longest window. They are a weather lottery and no tour can promise them; three clear nights give you a decent chance and one does not.

For the midnight sun, late May to late July. It is a strange and very pleasant thing: shops stay open, people are out walking at two in the morning, and nobody sleeps properly. This is also when the hiking and the sea kayaking work.

The polar night runs from late November to mid January, when the sun stays below the horizon and the middle of the day is a long blue twilight rather than actual darkness. Whale watching peaks in November and December, when orcas and humpbacks follow the herring into the fjords.

What makes Tromsø worth the fare is not any one building. It is the combination: a small, ordinary, well fed town, going about its business, with the Arctic Ocean at the end of the street and two months a year when the sun does not bother setting.

Give it three nights rather than two if you are chasing the lights, and go up the mountain late.

Make it your trip

Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.

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Common questions

Will I definitely see the northern lights?
No, and anybody who tells you otherwise is selling something. You need darkness, solar activity and a clear sky, and the third is the one that fails. The season runs from late September to late March. Give yourself three nights, take a chase tour on at least one of them because they will drive to wherever the cloud is not, and treat a sighting as luck rather than an itinerary item.
How cold does it actually get?
Less than the latitude suggests. The Gulf Stream keeps January averages around minus four, which is milder than Oslo, and the harbour never freezes. What it does have is wind, dark and ice underfoot. Windproof outer layers, wool underneath and boots with a grip matter far more than sheer thickness.
Is Tromso expensive?
It is the most expensive part of an expensive country, and accommodation in aurora season is the worst of it. Book rooms months ahead for December to February. Lunch specials, the supermarket, and drinking in the hotel before you go out are all standard local behaviour rather than embarrassing economies.
Should I do a Sami experience?
There are reindeer sledding and lavvu visits run by Sami families outside town, and the good ones are run by the people whose culture it is rather than about them. Ask who owns the operation. The university museum in this itinerary is the better place to understand the history, and it makes the visits mean more.
What about the Lofoten islands or Svalbard?
Lofoten is four and a half hours by bus to Narvik and onward, or a short flight, and needs three days of its own. Svalbard is a two hour flight further north, is genuinely Arctic in a way Tromsø is not, and is a separate and expensive trip rather than an add on.