Choosing my landscape for the Weekly Photo Challenge wasn’t a piece of cake for me. I’ve spent most of this afternoon going through my photos, unable to decide which landscape to pick. Too many beautiful places with memorable moments, plus the season at hand in Finland is still very dull and colourless, so going out with my camera wasn’t really worth it. Finally, Facebook came to my rescue, pushing their suggested memories onto my feed. I didn’t remember that it was exactly a year ago that I made a wonderful trip to the northernmost location I’ve ever been to so far. It was a women’s Easter excursion – three of us travelling from southern Finland all the way up to Tromsø in northern Norway, to visit an old university friend, who had moved there over 20 years ago, after marrying a Norwegian guy. What fun!

For two whole days, our friend drove us around the quiet, narrow, meandering roads around the local fjords, surrounded by snowy fells and mountains. The scenery was nothing I could have imagined. Simply breathtaking! At times the trees dotted on the snowy hillsides made the landscape look like an unreal charcoal drawing. The weather was mostly cloudy, which resulted in a rather monotone colour scheme, but didn’t diminish the beauty one bit. The landscape I chose for this challenge was a rare moment of the sun coming through, and colouring some blue patches in the sky, which reflected dimly on the icy water of the fjord. Most of the time, the water, with a thin layer of ice still on top of it, looked almost like grey metal. Apart from the unbelievably impressive scenery, I was also amazed by the stillness of it all, hardly a sound to be heard anywhere. All in all, a very typically Scandinavian experience, wilderness and vast uninhabited stretches of land and water.

Driving along, our friend told us stories about their life up there in the north. Not being a fan of winter at all, I don’t think I would be up to that lifestyle. The Polar Night lasts from November to January, during which time the sun doesn’t rise at all. People live in constant twilight for three months!  To compensate for this long dark and cold period, people can then enjoy the midnight sun and nightless night from May to July. Quite extreme, and leads to a lot of cases of severe SAD (seasonal affective disorder). It’s the same all across the Arctic region called Lapland, which extends from Norway across Sweden and Finland all the way to northern Russia. Another hardship Tromsø area inhabitants have to deal with yearly, are winter storms with avalanches and landslides, often closing the only road home. People can get stuck for days unless special convoys behind a snow ploughing truck can be arranged. Sometimes detours are possible, but they can be very long, adding hours or even days to your journey. Our friend told us about one winter, when one of the roads totally collapsed in a storm, and the detour through Finland was 700 km! I’m in awe at the resilience and patience of people living in these parts!

I would recommend anyone to explore the Arctic regions. They are somehow magically mysterious. There is a cruise liner, Hurtigruten, which sails up and down the western coast of Norway. You basically stay in a cabin on the ship, and then have stop-overs in interesting places along the route. Exciting adventures, such as husky rides or admiring the aurora borealis, can be participated in, too. Tromsø is one of the stop-overs along this cruise, and a town well worth visiting. A cruise on Hurtigruten is definitely on my bucket list – I just need to decide whether to go on it in summer, or in winter. Oh, and another little problem – I need to save enough money as it’s quite pricy, understandably.

The Hurtigruten ship leaving Tromsø in the evening, to continue its journey. This photo was taken as we were waiting for the sunset on the Fjellheiser Storsteinen mountain viewpoint above the city.

Finally, to finish with, can’t resist posting yet another photo of Tromsø. This time from the other side of the fjord, actually from our friend’s balcony. Blue skies on one of the mornings, lighting the snow-covered mountains.