Tromsø and beyond

The Troms County is a place of beauty. Perched at 69 degrees north, far above the Arctic Circle, its rugged coastline faces the Norwegian Sea.

In September, summer is already a fading rumor. The midnight sun has packed up and left town, and the darkness is creeping back in like an old, familiar ache.

There’s an eerie beauty to Tromsø’s contradictions. Half modern, half forgotten frontier post. Shiny office buildings coexist with creaky wooden houses that look like they haven’t changed since the days when polar explorers drank themselves blind in the local bars before vanishing into the white.

Driving across Håkøya.

Beyond the city, the real Norway begins. Fjords carved by ancient gods, jagged peaks straight out of Norse legend and roads that wind into the kind of loneliness you don’t find on postcards.

I steer the dented rental out of Tromsø across the island of Håkøya, in search of a special site. The dreaded German battleship Tirpitz was finally sunk at this location in November 1944 by Royal Air Force.

Today small lakes have been formed from the large craters made by “Tallboy” bombs that missed their targets. The demolition platform is still there in the water, as well as a Memorial Plack made with Tirpitz hull remains.

A Tallboy crater at Håkøya.

The view is beautiful anywhere I look, but the bay at Ersfjordbotn is something special. I look across Ersfjorden and it feels like a postcard from a tourist agency. The lunch picnic on the wooden pier gets a soundtrack by local band Bel Canto on phone speakers.

Hanging around at Ersfjordbotn.

The roads are getting smaller and I drive across a narrow bridge with only room for one car at a time, before arriving at Sommarøy. By sheer miracle there is a place that serves coffee.

“There was coffee. Life would go on.”
— William Gibson, Burning Chrome (1982)

Some kind of hot brew at Sommarøy.

Sometimes, the most memorable things happen between what you thought you were looking for, and what you actually find out there on the edge of the map.