Arctic Adventures

One of our family trips this summer of 2025 was planned as a nature trip to Tromsø Norway, at almost 70° North latitude, it is well in the arctic circle. After the Provence trip, Jen decided to skip this one, thinking that it would be a lot of hiking and bugs (spoiler – she was right). So it was me (Bryant), H, and L that went. Much of the trip was about hiking in the nature of Norway, and Norway has an amazing resource for trail information at UT.no (out-dot-norway) where you can export GPX files of all the hikes and import them to something like Gaia for an offline GPS. Super helpful! Overall, we had amazing weather – sunny and warm the whole time save the last day with a bit of rain. I understand that Tromsø gets 5 nice days a year, and we were there for 3 of them!

Arrival

Day 0 started with a short-ish 2,5 hr afternoon flight from CPH to TOS, which is a cute little 5-gate airport right next to the city. Same flight time from CPH to Nice – and about the same distance, just in the opposite direction! We grabbed a taxi to the apartment and settled in. It was a quite nice little apartment close to the centre and had all the things we needed. It was a bit anxiety-inducing with a bunch of weird alarms (like a moisture alarm that went off in the middle of the night every night, or a crazy sprint to a fire alarm panel 2 floors away if the fire alarm goes off), but overall it was cosy and had good room for us and gear. We spent the evening grabbing (a typically Norwegian over-priced) burger and shopping for basics. And, of course, just gaping at the stunning surroundings! Especially from the air, Norway looks like a fantasy land.

Day 1

Day 1 started with some breakfast in the apartment and then a hike that was accessible from a bus stop. It was quite close to the town, but still quite stunning once you got past the local school and houses. UT.no link here. There were some sections that were QUITE steep and were even trickier on the way down. One slope that we could see in front of us was deemed “dastardly” by H!

We were quite worn out after this as we hiked 8,5km and 375m of elevation! We caught the return bus quite easily, and then just decided to pick up frozen pizza and Mac and cheese for dinner from the grocery store! In the last picture, you can see the high bridge from one island to another!

Day 2

For this day, we rented a car so that we could get a bit farther out from the town. This hike was the same distance but higher to the summit of Synnøvjord peak (8,2 km and 760m of elevation), and had an amazing summit and views of the mountains and islands all around! UT.no link here. The final push to the summit was a bit much for H, so she napped (!) while L and I went the rest of the way. While the summit itself was a huge reward (L’s first summit, and amazing views), there were some bonus moments, like the ptarmigan that let us get quite close to photo and the break to dip our feet in the creek on the way down. Given that we were in midnight sun times, there was no worry about getting off the mountain late!

Again, pretty tired so we revisited Burgr for dinner and really enjoyed it!

Day 3

After 2 big days of hiking, we decided to do some relaxing. In the morning, we did a swim-and-sauna outing at Pust’s Lavvo location in Tromsø. We did 4 cycles of jumping in the 11°C water and then in the 95°C sauna. We felt a LOT better after that and went for a reindeer hotdog at the little kiosk in the centre!

In the afternoon, we took the cable car up to a nearby mountain, and had a nice hot cocoa along with some amazing views! In the picture below, the yellow arrow is the cable car route.

Finally, as we were not so tired, we had our Summit Celebration dinner, overall a great day in town.

Day 4

Our final day had a later flight out, so we spent the day checking out the museums:

• Polar Museum – all about exploration and the whale, seal, and polar bear hunting. Lots of creepy taxidermy and slaughter. Kind of depressing. BUT there was a fun exhibit about the “public” records and then all the gay and queer “private” relationships and context behind the records.
• Troll Museum – very fun with some augmented reality. Lots of Norwegian folklore.
• Polaria – a small aquarium with some cool bearded seals, and a very cool immersive film about Svalbard.

In summary, it was a great trip with the kids in a very fun setting, and I got to experience midnight sun for the first time! Norway never fails to win with its outdoor experiences!