the next day we crossed the arctic circle. despite being in the far north, there still weren’t too many signs of winter, except a bit of snow higher up. nonetheless, with beautiful weather, it was really beautiful.

during the afternoon we visited bodø, the capital of nordland:

we also visited bodø’s railway station, being the end of the line: to get further north, one has to take the bus (or boat or plane).

finally, another shot of our boat:

this day, i also had the chance to photograph the sun diving into the ocean:

later the evening, we visited svolvær, the capital of the lofoten islands. there, we visited the magic ice ice exhibition:

the third night in a row there was an announcement of northern lights being visible. this time, there actually was something to see. still not as bright as i’ve seen it before, but beautiful nonetheless:

on the second weekend of april, we returned to oslo for a long weekend. unfortunately, the weather was not as great as in february (and also last february), but at least on saturday afternoon, the weather finally got presentable. thus, all my photos are from that afternoon.

we first visited the holmenkollen ski jump. while it was still quite cloudy, there were at least some holes in the clouds somewhere in the distance. also on that day, there was a zip-line event happening, where you could whizz down the ski jump on a zip-line. (it was already sold out, so we didn’t had any chance to do this, even in case we would have liked to.)

later on we continued to the restaurant frognerseteren, where we wanted to eat something. we found out that the chef is swiss and had a nice chat with him. later on, the clouds finally ripped open above us, and the sun came through:

afterwards, we continued to the vigeland sculpture park, which we enjoyed together with a great sunset:

on the next day, i continued by train to bergen on one of the world’s most beautiful train tracks. unfortunately, the weather was not very appealing, whence i spent most of the time working and reading.

while being in tromsø, we did two longer excursions by car. driving on icy and snowy roads is not exactly our favorite thing, but since it is quite common in scandinavia (and also canada), we thought it might be not too bad. and in fact, it was quite ok, probably thanks a lot to the great winter tires our rental car had. most of the time we had no problems at all, only noticing that braking could take a little longer than usual. only in two situations we experienced trouble: one time, in a roundabout, the car started steering somewhat different than i intended it to go. well, i managed to take control of the situation, but it was not exactly good anymore :) the second situation was when turning the car, it ended up in a situation where we couldn’t drive forward anymore due to wheelspin. well, driving back a bit more and then steering differently solved that as well. alltogether, i would say driving in this conditions is not too bad, and after driving for some days, i felt quite safe.

kvaløya.

our first longer excursion led us to the island kvaløya, an island adjacent to tromsøya, the little island tromsø is located on. we started a bit late, when sunset already had begun (i.e. somewhen around 1 am). we basically circled the southern part of the island.

eastwards.

our second excursion led us east of tromsø. we began driving over to tromsø’s mainland and continuing to breivikeidet, from where we crossed the ullsfjorden via ferry to svensby in lyngen, and then continued to the east side. there, we followed the lyngen fjord southwards until we finally reached the southmost point of our voyage, nordkjosbotn. from there, we drove up north again, this time along the balsfjord, and finally continued back to tromsø.
this time, we started much earlier, and so also got some sunny views. unfortunately, most of the time, we were covered by clouds…

last week, we visited tromsø in arctic norway for a couple of days. it is one of the largest cities north of the arctic circle, featuring a university (which, among many other subjects, also has a mathematics department – to my knowledge, the only one north of the arctic circle).

tromsø during daylight.

here are some impressions from tromsø during daylight. at this time of the year, there’s not too much daylight – the sun rises around 10 am, and is gone by 4 pm. the photos feature the tromsø gallery of contemporary art, the polaria aquarium whose form represents ice floes, the rica ishavshotel with its interesting form, the polstjerna (a seal hunting ship) museum, and some views on tromsø’s harbor, in part from the tromsø bridge:

tromsø at night.

most of the time, we saw tromsø during night. this is how it looks. the first picture shows the public library.

the last four pictures depict one of the hurtigruten ships, the trollfjord which was stopping by in tromsø one night. we used the chance to explore the ship a bit and have a nice midnight snack on-board.

northern lights over tromsø.

unfortunately, we only saw an aurora once during our stay. but it was a beautiful one! we were standing close to the public library, and later to the city hall:

polaria.

we also visited the polaria, the northernmost aquarium featuring bearded seals. here are some impressions from their feeding and training session:

tromsø airport.

finally, on our last day in tromsø, the weather was fantastic. that is, there was a lot of sun and not many clouds around noon. we were already at the airport at that time, but still managed to take some nice pictures:

less clouds. less zoom. still red. still beautiful.