The Far North

The Far North

Being stuck in London in mid-November with a bit of cash and little to do does strange things to one’s mental balance. Some get tickets to the theatre; others try to pick up women (or men) in the fleshpots of Soho. The more unbalanced go to Upton Park to watch West Ham play football. I booked a holiday to Tromso.

If you are among the majority population, you would be, right now, asking the question ‘where the hell is Tromso?’ If, on the other hand, you are among that group of people familiar with matters within the Arctic Circle, you would know that Tromso, a thriving city of about 50,000 deep in the Norwegian Arctic zone, is also known as the ‘Paris of the North’. Located at about 70 degrees latitude on Norway’s western coast, it consists of a series of islands and advertises great scenery, art, culture, a university, museums, explorations in the arctic wilderness, the works. Which, no doubt, still begs the question ‘why Tromso? Isn’t all this stuff available in pleasanter places, obviating the necessity of crossing the Arctic circle in November?’

Precisely the point! If you are looking to visit a place which you have not been to, which no one you know has ever been to, which no one you know is ever going to go to, and which still can bring out that gleam of envy at cocktail parties, Tromso is it. Imagine a conversation at the next page three do with a diamond engulfed low neckline, well, you know, Scandinavian cruises are nice enough, all these fjords and stuff, but the fun is up north where the air has bite, the night is long and the clubs are hard. Or with one of those outdoor studs, yeah, at 10,000 feet in the Swiss Alps is OK, I guess, but if you are looking for the real thing there is little to beat the tundra in winter. Social success, and maybe a little more, guaranteed.

Such were my thoughts while boarding an (very) early SAS flight from London to Oslo, from where I was supposed to change on to a flight to Tromso. Two and a half hours to Oslo, a 45 minute changeover at Oslo airport, another two hours to Tromso and voila, lunch on the other side of the Arctic circle. Just like flying Bangalore to Delhi to Calcutta. An afternoon of rest and recreation before hitting the nightspots beckoned. Wait a minute, only 45 minutes between landing in Oslo and taking off for Tromso – would that not be a bit tight? Only if you are on Indian Airlines, I told myself, these Scandinavians do things with minute precision, no need for plan B.

The flight to Oslo was late. The queue at the immigration counter was long. The immigration officer, when I finally got in front of one, almost spluttered his coffee all over himself upon being told that an Indian was on his way to Tromso because he wanted a weekend break. “Damn the Schengen Agreement that we have to let these crazies into the country just because they have work in Bonn or Brussels!” he seemed to be muttering to himself as he examined my passport before finally recovering his sense of humour, wishing me a good stay and hoping I had a warm jacket. I was then told that I had to clear customs at Oslo as Tromso was not an international airport, and so to claim my baggage and check it in again to Tromso. My baggage, of course, came out last (or so it seemed) and off I went scurrying to find the departure counter for Tromso. I reckoned without a customs officer who saw my male Asian features as the answer to his boredom and who checked my baggage thoroughly. He looked at his watch wryly upon being told of my need for a little hurry and told me the flight would have already left. He was right!

Changing my ticket to the next flight (leave at 1330, arrive at 1530, the evening is still ahead) and checking in did not prove to be difficult. It was while waiting that we were told, in Norwegian, that all SAS internal flights were cancelled and that those of us who insisted on going to Tromso would be put on one of the evening Braathens (one of Norway’s internal airlines) flights. The next few hours at Oslo airport had my admiration for Indian Airlines increase manifold. Large numbers of stranded people, many women traveling with small children, huge queues, no information available, no one from the airline handling the problem – SAS had no idea how to handle a screw up. Bihar Roadways – you have competition.

It was during these hours that I came to the conclusion that these Norwegians are mad, and that I would never, never be able to live in this country. Not one word of protest, not one lost temper, they braved the queues, the chaos and the shitty treatment from the airline without a murmur. One lot took out guitars and took over the airport bar. Others just hung around. “Come on, folks, lets do something about this nonsense,” I exhorted my fellow passengers for Tromso, but they said something about this not being the Norwegian way, that they expect the system to take care of them. To hell with that, do in Oslo as you would in Haryana, I said to myself and went for the nearest uniformed official and told him that I had left London early morning, I hadn’t had anything to eat for a long time and I didn’t want to hang around in any queues. He promptly handed me a food voucher, did something on the computer and said not to worry, I was already booked on the flight and when it was announced I just had to get on. I promptly pulled my fellow passengers out of the queue and, after we all got our food vouchers, a group of us settled at the airport Pizza Express and waited for our flight in peace. A small victory for the non-Norwegian way!

Well, I finally did get to Tromso that night on a delayed, packed and chaotic (but quite enjoyable) Braathens flight. We landed in the midst of a violent storm, with snow pelting down and the plane heaving from side to side. When I finally stepped out of the shelter of the airport, with the cold and the snow hitting me from all sides, I surveyed my surroundings and said ‘Ah! The Arctic!’ The tiredness of a long and irritating journey had disappeared.

There are two things that distinguish Norway from the rest of Europe. The first is the toilet style. Actually, this distinguishes every country from every other country in Europe. Why a continent that has managed to synchronize its currencies cannot standardize the location of the flush in the toilet is a matter of bewilderment to the traveler. The second is the ‘Comfort With Hotel’ in Tromso, where I stayed. Situated on the waterfront, it was within walking distance from the town center and had included in the tariff breakfasts and dinners, Norwegian style meals with plenty of cold cuts and fish, and a lounge wherein the beer was free and unlimited. There was a dispenser in the dining hall that served a variety of coffees and hot chocolates around the clock, a pleasure when coming in from the outside cold. In a country where everything is unbelievably expensive, this was quite a boon. And in addition, the receptionist was lovely – bombshell looks, a great smile and genuine charm. I greatly enjoyed the little time I spent in the hotel.

I managed to figure out the geography of Tromso gradually over the weekend. The main island is essentially a series of steep hills with a coast around them. On this coast is the airport in the west, the town center and hotspots in the east, the university in the north and some museums in the south. People stay in houses along the hillsides. The hilltops are well forested and less populated, with plenty of walking areas available and a well preserved war cemetery reminding one of the days during world war two when the town was under German occupation. The town center had two parallel main roads where all the shopping was located. The coast had a road along it, and there were roads over and along the hills and under them through an intricate tunnel system. The roads at that time were all, with the exception of the tunnels, under piles of snow and heavy-duty snow clearing machines were in operation right through my visit. Buses were the only form of public transport, with an extensive system reaching all corners of the island. The only time I used one, an oldish lady who seemed to have Mad Max as a role model was driving and she zoomed around through the town, negotiating the combination of snow, ice, curves and inclines quite expertly. Taxis were also ubiquitous. Apart from cars and their own feet, locals were moving around on their skis, skates and sledge scooters.

Tromso is not your typical city. Sunlight, that most basic of God’s gifts, is seasonal here – abundant in summer and scarce in winter – there were about 4 hours of sunlight a day when I was there and I was told that the sun was going to set in end-November and would rise again only in February. The opposite occurs in summer, when your breakfast, lunch, dinner and nocturnal raid on the refrigerator are all conducted in broad daylight. The weather itself, cold and snowy at this time, is mild for Tromso’s latitude due to the effects of warm water currents along the Norwegian Sea. The climate a little inland, say in Kautokieno in the neighbouring county of Finnmark or at similar latitudes in Canada, Alaska and Russia, is much more severe. The people are quite distinct from the Norway that most people, including Norwegians, know (and they make sure to tell you that), with a ‘northern culture’ that is probably a result of the weather and the variable daylight. Tromso is also surprisingly cosmopolitan, with locals being a mix of northerners, migrants from the southern parts of Norway, the indigenous Saami people and a small Finn minority. There is a distinct attitude among the residents that those who have traveled to the far corners of India would recognize as the ‘Dilli door hai’ syndrome - they don’t care for too much direction from Oslo. Tourists are few at this time of the year, and most of the outsiders are young Norwegian conscripts taking a break during their military service. Interestingly, the beginnings of a Russian influence are also visible, with several of the Arctic tugs in the harbour having Russian markings and shops in the town Russian insignia. Actually this is not so surprising – Tromso is the main city of the Barents Euro Arctic Region (also called BEAR) in which four countries, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia, converge, and it was a center of flourishing international trade before 1917 that is in the process of being revived.

Traveling in Scandinavia is quite distinctive from the rest of western Europe – everyone, and everyone, speaks English, and food and drink are prohibitively expensive. The ability to speak English well is seen as a sign of education, and access into nightclubs and bars in Tromso are smoothened with a bit of highbrow English in an upper class Indian accent exercised upon bouncers and maitre deis. Food-wise, the specialties here are fish and reindeer meat. The best restaurant for Norwegian cooking, should you wish to try it, is Fiske Kompani (Norwegian for Fish Company, I suppose) and it offers a bewildering array of the former. It is quite difficult to make out what is what from the descriptions on the menu, as also to pronounce the long and complicated names in the singsong way that is typical of spoken Norwegian, so I advise pointing at something and saying ‘I want that!’ If you want to impress your date, eschew the wine and swallow the food down with aquavit, a macho Scandinavian drink that is had neat. And if you want to impress the waiter as well, tell him to skip the Danish stuff and get you the real thing – a Norwegian aquavit from a bottle that has crossed the equator. A meal for two, with wine and aquavit, came for about Rs. 3,000. And yes, I did impress my date.

Which brings me to a question that a section of the readership would, no doubt, be asking - where in Tromso do you meet single women? I did expend time and effort to find out, but a long weekend is probably too short a time for research of this nature. I did find a nightclub along the waterfront, with heavy metal music, lots of people in black leather and very vicious looking bouncers. The clientele were a combination of locals, army-wallahs on a free-weekend and sailors. I wasn’t there long enough to check out the action, but I am sure that there was plenty of it. I also succeeded in gate crashing an official party for foreign students at the local university, where I had gone to the university to meet a professor in my subject area and seen the notice up for the party the next evening. A mid-career fellowship at LSE, which I was undergoing at that time, did not exactly qualify me as a student but it did arm me with an LSE identity card and I suspected (correctly) that in Arctic Norway they are unlikely to know the difference. The party had about 35 people, of whom 25 were women, the liquor was subsidized, the music was good and the lingua franca was English. Just my scene! Most of the participants were Finn, mainly students of medicine and Norwegian (the language), mostly in their middle to late twenties and, as per the law of averages, some of the women were very nice looking. I was made very welcome indeed, though I did, to some extent, have to play down the fact that I was at one of the top institutions in the world whereas they were stuck in some corner.

In the daytime, possibilities for activity in mid-November Tromso include walking and checking out the museums. Walking offers two options – along the waterfront, and up in the hills. Both are quite beautiful and can be done for long stretches. The water, a mix of the Norwegian Sea, the Barents Sea and the north Atlantic Ocean, is blue and ice-free. The hills are well forested, and some parts are quite devoid of any obvious human inhabitation. Good walking boots, with ankle support and deep grip, are advisable as the snow in some parts is slippery and the inclines steep. Of the various museums, the university museum (for some reason located in the opposite side of the island to the university) was the one that offered interesting insights into the traditional lifestyle of the nomadic reindeer herding Sami community who are indigenous to this region, and into what the region looked like in the late nineteenth century. Quite different to now, I assure you. Production of a student identity card entitles one to a discount here. The polar museum, situated along the waterfront, offers insights into various polar expeditions, many of which set off from Tromso.

It was with great sadness that I set off to the airport on Sunday evening for an uneventful, though delayed, journey back to London via Oslo. There was only one item on my agenda that remained unfinished, and that was to see the northern lights. The Gods, unfortunately, did not oblige. Goodbye, the Arctic! Inshallah we meet again.