The Northern Most City

Yesterday we docked in Tromso, which is the city that is the farthest north in the world. The core city is on an island and it is connected by bridges to the mainland where the suburbs are. We were docked right at the city center which was convenient. In the morning we went on an excursion that took us first to a cable car up to the Storsteinen mountain ledge. It had amazing views of the city below. We were able to hike up a bit as we had an hour up there.

In Norway, there are many legends about trolls. You need to protect yourself from them. You do this by building stacks of stones. The bigger the stack, the better the protection.

I decided I'd better be safe.

We hiked up a bit more and we found an even bigger stack.

We then went down the cable car and on headed to see a couple of museums. The first was the Tromso museum. Our tour guide took us through a section to learn about the Sami people. They are the Indigenous people of Norway. It was very interesting and their story has many similarities to the stories of the Indigenous peoples of Canada. Norway seems to be further down the road to reconciliation than we are. We then had time to explore the section about the geological history of Norway which was facinating.

Then we went to the Polar museum where we learned about how people hunted for food here as well as learning about Roald Amundsen and all his explorations.

After some lunch, we went on a walking tour of Tromso.

Well, I guess my little stone stack was not enough to keep the trolls awyay!

The weather was very warm in the morning, 25 degrees! It did start to turn in the afternoon and we think it will be cold from here on out. Then it was back on board to continue sailing north!