Science students at the Tromsø University have a very unique proximity to the things they are studying. The Institute of Arctic Biology is like a miniature zoo on campus. The students and researchers can study , reindeer, snow grouse, fish, and even seals. The seals have their own indoor pool with fresh Arctic sea water [...]
Have you ever wondered why some mountains are spiky and others are flat? I haven’t, not until I came to Norway. I used to think flat mountains were dull and boring. They slowly rose in the distance making a boring outline and most often I would think they were a hill, not a mountain. However, [...]
It takes about six hours to drive to Alta, more if you stop and eat, miss the car-barge or take pics. On a straight highway it would only take about two hours to drive from Tromsø to Alta, but because Norway is built by fjords and mountains, the road winds in and out, up and [...]
We were meeting friends in the city but were unusually early. So to pass some time we thought to drive to the south tip of the island to watch the 2:30pm sunset. It was beautiful. Throughout Autumn the sunsets move from the West to the South, to the East and eventually disappear. The more the [...]
My Little Norway – Flower Show Series
Arctic Botanical Garden Selection – Tromsø
Moose grew up with ducks. On the farm in Alta, Farfar and Farmor have a duck pond and every year a family of ducks spend the Summer with us. It’s wonderful to see each new generation return and have their own ducklings. Quite often there are so many new ducklings swimming in the pond that [...]
My Little Norway – Flower Show Series
Arctic Botanical Garden Selection – Tromsø
How Norway became a country is shrouded in mystery and folklore. The most well known tale is of Harald Hårfagre who gathered the small kingdoms of the north into a unified nation in 872AD – and of course, this story is about love.
In Norway, there are still Lefse recipes around from the 1630s! This is supposedly the traditional and original Hardanger recipe used:
Many Norwegians know what they are doing when they pick wild mushrooms. This knowledge is passed down the family during mushroom hunting trips. The hard-core mushroom hunters go into the mountain wilderness for days to get the best finds.
The further ‘out of the way’ you go the more common it is to see folk cottages standing by the side of roads, along fjords or in a thicket of trees, minding their own business.
Even though the males are called bulls and the females cows, the muskoxen are more closely related to sheep than cattle. Make no mistake, though – this is not your average cuddly ba-ba-blacksheep! A grown animal can be 2,5 m long and weigh up to 400 kgs, and their long curved horns mean business.
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