Tromsø 2024/2025

December 29th, 2024

As pre­vi­ous­ly planned, we met at around 8:30 am and enjoyed a very tasty break­fast. You don’t have to hur­ry in Trom­sø in the morn­ing at this time of year, it only gets a lit­tle lighter for about 3-4 hours around 10:00 a.m., which means it’s at best as dusky here as it is at home in win­ter short­ly after sun­set. Com­pared to our sev­er­al trips to Africa , where the night always end­ed by 5:30 am in the morn­ing, this was very pleasant.

After break­fast, we had planned a first explorato­ry tour by car. First of all, we want­ed to take the Fjell­heisen cable car up Storsteinen to explore the loca­tion and poten­tial pho­to loca­tions by light for our New Year’s Eve vis­it. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the weath­er was­n’t good, the sky was com­plete­ly over­cast and snow­fall was forecast.

We then drove to the base sta­tion of the Fjell­heisen cable car. When we arrived at the park­ing lot, how­ev­er, we were told that the cable car had just been closed due to strong winds. So we drove to the near­by Ice Sea Cathe­dral. We were unable to go inside. A cer­e­mo­ny was being pre­pared there and many women in tra­di­tion­al cos­tume passed us by.

Inci­den­tal­ly, the spikes we took with us proved their worth for the first time on the icy foot­path to the Arc­tic Ocean Cathedral:

We then drove fur­ther around and want­ed to get down to the fjord. Park­ing spaces were rare. There were high walls of snow piled up on the sides of the road by the con­stant­ly mov­ing snow ploughs. Even­tu­al­ly we drove onto an indus­tri­al estate. There was no one there on Sun­day. We had a beau­ti­ful view of the bridge Trom­søbrua, which con­nects the island of Trom­søya with the mainland.

We then drove north along the coast. There, right by the sea, we found what appeared to be a rel­a­tive­ly new hous­ing estate with some cool mul­ti-storey hous­es built on stilts in the sea.

This is cer­tain­ly a pop­u­lar and very cool res­i­den­tial loca­tion with a great view of Trom­sø and Trom­søbrua. It was quite windy and freez­ing cold. My tri­pod wob­bled a lot in the wind, so I had to weigh it down with my pho­to backpack.

We then want­ed to explore the oth­er side of the island. To do this, we first drove back to the main island through the Trom­søy­sund­tun­ne­len tun­nel fur­ther north.

The Trom­søy­sund Tun­nel is an under­sea road tun­nel on Euro­pean route 8. The tun­nel runs under Trom­søy­sund and con­nects the dis­tricts of Tomasjor­da on the main­land and Breivi­ka on the island of Trom­søya. The tun­nel has two par­al­lel tubes, of which the T1 tube is 3386 meters long and the T2 tube is 3500 meters long. At its deep­est point, the tun­nel is 102 meters below sea lev­el. The steep­est gra­di­ent is 8.2%. The tun­nel was opened in 1994 to reduce traf­fic con­ges­tion over the Trom­søy­sund Bridge.

But the impres­sive­ly long and deep Trom­søy­sund­tun­ne­len is not the only tun­nel in Tromsø:

There is also an exten­sive tun­nel sys­tem below the main island of Trom­søya. Under­ground road­ways were the obvi­ous solu­tion to divert the increas­ing traf­fic away from the city cen­ter. Trom­sø was quite con­sis­tent in this respect and cre­at­ed an entire tube system.

The two tun­nels in the city cen­ter and the one in the direc­tion of the air­port add up to a total of 5.9 under­ground kilo­me­ters. The tun­nels also have the advan­tage of always being ice-free. And there are even two under­ground round­abouts here!

We quick­ly crossed the island and then drove over the sec­ond large bridge, Sand­nes­sund­brua, to the sub­urb of Kvaløyslet­ta. There we had a nice view of the sec­ond bridge:

The pho­to spot was very nice, but then it start­ed to snow there. We drove on any­way, but the weath­er got worse and worse and it was get­ting dark again. So we drove back to the hotel to warm up a bit and relax. Some­how it felt like it was almost time for din­ner, but it was only 2 pm.

After a short break at the hotel, we strolled through Trom­sø, which was beau­ti­ful­ly dec­o­rat­ed and illu­mi­nat­ed in win­ter. We then went to the har­bor to see where we would find our boat tomor­row for the whale safari we had already booked.

A Hur­tigruten mail ship was docked in the har­bor. As it was start­ing to snow again, we quick­ly walked to the “small boat har­bor” near­by, where we quick­ly found the sign for Arc­tic Whale Tours. After­wards we had din­ner at the near­by pizze­ria Yonas Piz­za. Here are some impres­sions from that evening:

In many restau­rants in Trom­sø, it is com­mon prac­tice to place your order at the counter and pay direct­ly. You can then take your drinks with you and the food is brought to your table lat­er. By the way, you can pay every­where with cred­it cards with­out any prob­lems, we did­n’t even had any cash with us. Nor­way is much more advanced than Ger­many in this respect.

For the beer drinkers among our read­ers: In Trom­sø you can get Mack beer every­where, Arc­tic beer with Ger­man roots:

Mack beer is a leg­end from the far north - it has been brewed in the world’s north­ern­most brew­ery in Trom­sø since 1877 and we real­ly enjoyed it.

Tomor­row we want to have break­fast at 7:00 a.m., at 8:15 a.m. we have to be at the boat for the planned whale safari. Whether this takes place, how­ev­er, depends very much on the weather.