Day Twelve: Celebrating a Milestone Birthday in Tromso, Norway

Today we are in Tromso (pronounced Trumsa), Norway, which is still considered Northern Norway.  It certainly isn’t as isolated as where we were the last couple of days, but it would still be a major undertaking to get here from London say, or from most places really.   There are trees on this island because they don’t have the gales the other islands have, so the landscape is largely shades of green rather than shades of gray.  So now we know there really are Norwegian woods!  And, as another major announcement, we actually saw the sun for several hours today.  It has been light out 24/7, but no direct sunlight until today.  

Our tour guide this afternoon was half Norwegian (her father) and half Italian (her mother), so she spoke Norwegian, Italian and the most perfect English possible.   And she was only 22 years old.  We heard a lot more about cod fishing, what a wonderful place Norway is to live, how all Norwegians are concerned with the environment, how they treat their indigenous population, the Samis, with the utmost respect and so on and so forth.  A typical 22 year old viewpoint in many ways, but also quite cheerful, optimistic and just happy to be alive.  I have taught American college kids and they are, for the most part, much more cynial and pessimistic.  It’s refreshing to see such optimism.  

We drove through the most amazing tunnel today.  We went through three roundabouts, in a tunnel, no less!  Tromso has tunnels under the entire city, so it’s idyllic and relatively traffic free on the streets.  

Back to the Samis:  They are the indigenous people here in Northern Norway and have their own language and culture.  And they own all of the reindeer in Norway.  They originally herded them from the south to north and back, but now they do it with GPS tracking.   Modern herding.  

I did learn the name of Gloria Swanson tonight:  Nancy.  I took a clandestine picture.  Lord forgive me.  I am beginning to love her style.  And here she is!