Destination of the week: Tromso
LBC’s Rick Kelsey went to Tromso to experience the city first hand. Listen to his guide below.
Tromsø has been called, rather preposterously, the "Paris of the North", and though even the tourist office doesn't make any pretence to such grandiose titles today, the city is without question the effective capital of northern Norway.
Easily the region's most populous town, Tromsø received its municipal charter in 1794, when it was primarily a fishing port and trading station, and flourished in the middle of the nineteenth century when its seamen ventured north to Svalbard to reap rich rewards hunting arctic foxes, polar bears and, most profitable of all, seals. Subsequently, Tromsø became famous as the jumping-off point for a string of arctic expeditions, its celebrity status assured when the explorer Roald Amundsen flew from here to his death somewhere on the Arctic ice cap in 1928.
Since those heady days, Tromsø has grown into an urbane and likeable small city, with a population of 60,000 employed in a wide range of industries and at the university. Give or take the odd museum, Tromsø is short on specific sights, but its amiable atmosphere and fine mountain and fjord setting more than compensate. It also possesses a clutch of good restaurants, lively bars and several enjoyable hotels.
Completed in 1861, the Domkirke, bang in the centre on Kirkegata, bears witness to the prosperity of Tromsø's nineteenth-century merchants, who became rich on the back of the barter trade with Russia. They part-funded the cathedral's construction, resulting in the large and handsome structure of today, whose imposing spire pokes high into the sky.
From there, it's a gentle five-minute stroll north past the shops of Storgata to the main square, Stortorget, site of a daily open-air flower and knick-knack market. The square nudges down to the waterfront, where fresh fish and prawns are sold direct from inshore fishing boats throughout the summer. Follow the harbour round to the north and you're in the heart of old Tromsø: the raised ground close to the water's edge was the centre of the medieval settlement, and it was here that the locals built the first fortifications. Nothing now remains of the medieval town, but you can discern the shape of a later, eighteenth-century fort in the modest knoll, Skansen, at the end of Skansegata.
Close by, in an old wooden waterfront warehouse, is the city's most enjoyable museum, the Polarmuseet. The collection begins with a rather unappetizing series of displays on trapping in the Arctic, but beyond is an outstanding section on Svalbard, including archeological finds recently retrieved from an eighteenth-century Russian trapping station – most come from graves in which they were preserved by permafrost.