Tromsø trip – swimming in the arctic circle!

By Tali Hamshaw, University of Bergen, Norway

One of the biggest bucket list moments for a year abroad in Norway has to be seeing the Northern Lights. In our hopes to achieve this, my friends and I booked a trip up to Tromsø, in the north of Norway. Since Norway is such a large country, it was a two hour flight to get there, something which surprised me since that is longer than the length of my flight home to the UK. Before we even left for the trip I encountered a slight spanner in the works when I went to book my flight and found that it was sold out and my friends had already bought their tickets, meaning I would have to fly up the next morning, alone. This was a challenge for me since I have a fear of flying, however I faced this and ended up having a very pleasant flight, unlike the turbulence my friends experienced the evening before on their flight, so this makes me believe everything happens for a reason! After being picked up from the airport by my friends in the car that we hired, we headed straight out for our first day in Tromsø.

One thing we really wanted to experience in Tromsø was to see reindeer. We had researched prior to going and read that it was common to see reindeer on island called Sommaroy, about an hour’s drive from Tromsø, so we decided to head there and stop at some picturesque view points on the way. We managed to see reindeer very close up just on the side of the road, without needing to pay the high sum asked for by the companies offering reindeer tours, which was an amazing experience. We also visited a beach on the island and experienced a snowy beach which was a unique landscape to witness. That evening we had dinner back at our Airbnb and were listening to music and playing board games. At this point we had kind of given up on the idea of seeing the northern lights since a high cloud coverage was forecast. However, we decided to check outside at around 1am just in case, and we first saw a tiny glimpse of them, which as we watched turned into a spread across the sky. This was so lucky and such a magical experience, definitely one of the highlights of my year abroad.

We had decided we wanted to try and swim while we were in Tromsø and we didn’t want to just swim in the harbour in the city centre. We had found pictures of this scenic island called Senya, as well as a beach on the island. The island was 3 hours away so we decided to dedicate our next day to visiting there. Due to the heavy snow and stops to charge the car, it took us around 4 hours to get there, and by the time we reached the beach it was almost getting dark, not ideal conditions for swimming in the arctic! However, this was a once in a lifetime experience and I am so glad I braved the water, even if I couldn’t feel my feet for a while afterwards. The 4 hour drive home with three of us cramped in the back, slightly damp, cold and tired, was a low point of the trip for everyone. But in hindsight it was definitely worth it. On the last day we were all ready for a slower paced day so we visited a couple of museums in the city centre, had lunch (reindeer hotdogs for my non-vegetarian friends) and then headed for the airport to catch our flight back to Bergen. All in all, it was a unique place which has much more to offer than the northern lights and I will remember it forever.