When we were planning our trip, we thought how incredible it would be to plan for a white Christmas. But when we starting researching places to go; to guarantee snow at the end of December, we’d have to travel up to Scandinavia.
Rovaniemi in Finland sits right on the Arctic Circle and is a very popular Christmas destination. Known as the home of Santa, the town is fully decked out as Santa’s Village. However, our girls have never really been keen on the whole Santa aspect of Christmas, we’ve never done the shopping centre photos with Santa because the girls simply never wanted to. So a full on Santa’s village with people in costumes didn’t really feel like the best choice for us.
But once we read about what Tromso in Norway had to offer, we decided that was the better option.
Here’s a brief list of the activities and sights we saw in Tromso which I’ll do more detailed blog posts for:
A whale watching, specifically Orcas, through the Arctic Fjords.
Reindeer feedings and reindeer sledding with the Sami, the indigenous people of Scandinavia.
Having the possibility to view the Northern Lights (Aurora Borelis) from the town of Tromso.
These photos were taken on our first full day in Tromso, where we first got to experience the Polar Night. During the winter months, the sun doesn’t technically rise in Tromso, whihc sits well above the Arctic Circle. Between the hours of 11am to roughly 1:30pm, there is a enough daylight peeking over the horizon to turn the sky a beautiful shade of blue, but everything has a subtle bluish tinge. But 3pm it’s totally as dark as night. It’s really magical for those few hours on a clear day with fresh snow.
We have been getting use to the decreasing daylight hours, in Scotland the daylight was gone by 4:30pm and in Stockholm and Copenhagen it was dark by 3:30 - 4pm. But it was a real experience to have such little daylight Very exciting though. I love being in the snow, surrounded by mountain peaks and clear skies.
The girls were so thrilled to play in snow for the first time. Generally the snow was about shin deep, but in some parts of town were the snow had been pushed to the side of roads and footpaths, it was over 6ft tall. The snow was very fresh, fluffy and dry, perfect for rolling around in.
After our little adventure into the main part of town, where we organised bus passes and some of the activities for the coming days, we came home to our accommodation. The girls were so keen to play in the snow some more so we built a snowman out in the front. While the girls were playing, Braino and I were sitting on the porch, when Braino said ‘wouldn’t it be wild if we just saw the Northern Lights in the sky from here’. And sure enough, 5 minutes later, we saw a faint streak of green across the sky!
Braino had spoken to a neighbour early who said that the conditions have been perfect for seeing the Northern Lights from Tromso. It was so extraordinary to see them so soon during our stay and I love this photo of the girls.. but stay tuned for more Aurora Borealis action!