Tromso sits roughly 350 kilometres north of the Arctic Circle, far enough north that the city experiences the midnight sun continuously from mid-May to late July, and conversely a polar night each winter during which the sun never rises above the horizon at all. Despite this extreme latitude, Tromso’s climate is considerably milder than its position would suggest, warmed by the same Gulf Stream currents that moderate much of Norway’s coastline, allowing the city to remain a genuine, year-round population centre rather than a purely seasonal outpost.
Tromso has been nicknamed the Paris of the North since the 19th century, a title earned through the city’s surprisingly cosmopolitan character for its remote location, the result of centuries as a trading and expedition hub connecting northern Norway to the wider world.
A Launch Point for Polar Exploration
Tromso served as the departure point for numerous Arctic expeditions during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including voyages led by Roald Amundsen, the Norwegian explorer who became the first person to reach the South Pole in 1911 and who disembarked from Tromso on his final, fatal expedition in 1928 while searching for a missing airship crew. The city’s Polar Museum, housed in a former customs warehouse on the harbour, documents this history in detail, alongside the region’s long tradition of Arctic hunting and trapping.
The Arctic Cathedral, Tromso’s distinctive triangular-panelled church completed in 1965, has become one of the city’s most photographed landmarks, its striking modern design deliberately evoking the shape of pack ice and Arctic mountain peaks.
Painting a City Beneath Endless Arctic Light
Tromso’s colourful harbourfront buildings beneath the pale glow of the midnight sun give a watercolourist unusual, luminous light to work with. We’ve captured that character in our own Tromso Watercolor Print, painted first by hand and printed to order on archival paper, a small piece of Norway for a wall at home.
Warmed by a current from far to the south and lit for months at a time by a sun that refuses to set, Tromso remains an Arctic city whose ordinary life has always run against what its latitude would predict.