Tromso, Norway
“A journey is a person in itself, no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policies and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.”
With this wonderful string of words written by John Steinbeck we find ourselves embarking on a trip within a trip. The last week aboard the National Geographic Explorer we have zigzagged our way north through coastal Norway to find ourselves at the gateway to the high Arctic, Tromso, Norway. Tonight we head into the Barents Sea and leave behind the charming villages of the mainland for the wilds of the Arctic.
We are not the only ones to use Norway’s eighth largest municipality as a jumping off point for adventure. In 1893 a Norwegian doctor named Fridtjof Nansen and his small crew boarded a uniquely constructed ship destined for the North Pole. Buoyed by the support of the nation and the ingenious design of the now legendary FRAM (a round hulled ship built to lift itself from the pressure of heavy pack ice), they steamed out of Tromso harbour in 1893 with the hopes of drifting south to north and south again, across the North Pole with the help of what is now referred to as the Fram current.
We had a chance today to take in a bit of this exploratory history by visiting two museums and strolling through Tromso’s scenic harbour. The natural history museum was our first stop offering excellent explanations of Arctic phenomena such as Aurora’s and, wait, wait…
…a call from the bridge. Whales!! I will return with an update…
It’s 10:15pm Oslo time as I write this and we just spotted our first whales of the trip. A great first sighting too as we have come across a bait ball - or a mass of sardine-like fish - that has attracted not only Humpback and Fin whales but dozens of White Beaked Dolphins and hundreds of Northern Fulmars and Black-Legged Kittiwakes. It is also obvious that we are on a northerly heading as there is a distinct bite to the wind that has been conspicuously absent until now- a bite that was no doubt felt by the early explorers who were the focus of our second museum stop.
In addition to Dr. Nansen, another Norwegian explorer named Roald Amundsen has left a deep imprint on the reputation of Norwegian exploration having been the first to reach the South Pole, the first to fly over the North Pole, the first to transit the Northwest Passage and, after all of this, lost at sea during an avian rescue mission that took off from Tromso in 1928.
While strolling through this time capsule of a museum it was hard not to get excited about the second half of the trip we have before us. In the wake of the great explorers it seemed appropriate to spend time in a town that still recognizes and honors the feats of fellow travelers.
