Norway 2015 winter

In the midst of February 2015 I took a weekly trip to northern Norway, flying to Tromsø and then driving to Lofoten Islands. The goal was to see some lovely landscapes in the winter scenery and see northern lights (which we did almost every day).

Day 1

We flew from Berlin to Tromsø with midlanding in Oslo. We arrived at the Tromsø camping site late in the evening, unpacked a bit and went for a walk to the city. We were lucky enough to see aurora our first night, just around midnight, even though there was a lot of light pollution from the city.

Day 2

On our second day we took another walk around Tromsø, trying local warm fish sort of small pies (they tasted weird for me). We had a taste of winter storm while walking back to the camping site. In the evening we took a paid bus trip to "catch" aurora. There was a lot of activity in the sky, but there was also a lot of clouds, and some of the few shots where aurora visibility was decent enough I have out of focus unfortunately. But the tour guide was a young girl from Poland and we had a quick chat on one of the stops, which was nice. :)

Day 3

On the 3rd day we visited Polar Exploration museum in Tromsø, which was very neat except for one little thing, there were few descriptions in English of the objects inside the museum. In the afternoon we visited the northernmost brewery in the world, Macks Ølbryggeri, founded in 1877. The microbrewery in the city is available for touring, there is also a shop and a pub, which we sat in to try few different beers. It was pretty expensive but tasty. :)

Day 4

Our fourth day was solely about getting to Lofoten Islands, so we spent most of our day driving South. Not that many lovely views along the way in a crappy weather. But we did rode near the place of battles of Narvik in 1940 (9 April - 8 June), it was naval and land battle between German forces and combined Alliance forces (Norwegian, French, British and Polish troops and British Royal Navy). German forces did loose the battle but in the end they managed to stay in the area due to Alliance force withdrawal from Norway in June 1940.

Day 5

We started early, as soon as the sun went up, we packed into the car and started driving around the Lofoten Islands.

I absolutely loved the views! Lofoten Islands are stunning both in winter and in summer. And I also loved that it was not that terribly cold, due to Gulf Stream warming up the area, keeping the temperature around 0*C. We were also quite lucky with the weather. I can definitely say that I am in love with the place. :) We did spend most of the day driving around, stopping here and there to take some shots. You can even see that some photos were made from the car, as not every area had a place to park the car. A friend, who was driving would slow down, or stop for a second, I would take a photo and we would resume. The traffic was very low in most places, that's why we were able to do it like this.

Day 6

Our last day on Lofoten Islands and our last full day of sightseeing. At one place we did see a lot of cods, drying in the winter air. They are left there for around 3 months. There were plenty of those instalations around Lofoten, but not many had fishes on them. Interesting fact is that cod heads are sold to Africa, mainly Nigeria, where they are used in traditional dishes, as a main ingredient. We also had a chance to taste such dried fish (not the head), given to us by a local man. I'm just gonna say that it was reaally dry. ;) It required a lot of chewing.

We also visited a local fish market and bought ourselves a fresh fish for dinner. We tried to prepare it more like locals do, we boiled it in the water, then ate it with butter and salt. It was very tasty. We also bought some sweet potatoes to eat with the fish. After dinner we went for last norther light hunt.

Day 7

Final day was dedicated to driving back to Tromsø airport, where we actually spent the night, because we had departure very early in the morning. Sleeping on the airport benches in not my ideal way of resting. ;) To sum up the entire trip I must say we were extremely lucky to be able to see northern lights almost every night, and the weather was in general good. From technical POV I am not satisfied with my aurora photos, but there's that huge motivation to go back there another winter.