Godt Nytt År from Norway

After almost eighteen months in Italy, Greg and I decided to spread our wings and fly off to other parts of Europe for a while. Our first stop was Hammerfest in Norway’s remote far north in time for New Year’s Eve.

It’s cold up here and, at this time of year, dark too – 24 hours a day. In this place of the polar night, the sun doesn’t rise above the horizon from about the end of November to the end of January. To us it seems strange to be walking around in the dark in the middle of the day, but for the locals it’s just a fact of life. People go about their work, children play on snowy swings, a conversation under a street light ends with a cheery ‘have a good day’. It’s a very different world.

Christmas in Italy, New Year in Norway. Let the adventure continue!

We flew out of Stockholm at 9:20am - an hour later and the sun is already slipping below the horizon

Flying to the far north of Norway is generally a two-step experience; the hub is the small city of Tromsø, 400km north of the Arctic Circle

Unsurprisingly Tromsø is known as the 'Gateway to the Arctic'

Flying into this town, you know you're already in polar territory

View of Tromsø from the airport

Here's how it looked when we arrived (on a Boeing 737)

And when we left (on a much smaller turbo-prop Dash-8)

And then we were in Hammerfest; it's a small town at the centre of a large municipality (about 850 sq kms); it's not entirely pitch black here - there's a bit of twilight between about 11am and 1pm 🙂

So how did we come to choose Hammerfest as a place to see in the New Year? Really it was as simple as a map and the proverbial pin

Hammerfest fun facts: the town was the first urban settlement in Northern Europe to get electric street lights (1891); two local merchants had seen the electric demonstrated at a fair in Paris and decided their home town should have it

Hammerfest's two main industries are LNG processing and tourism (though apparently not so much tourism in the dead of winter)

Not so fun facts: in 1890 half of Hammerfest was destroyed by a fire which started in the bakery; and the town was occupied by the Germans in WWII and suffered significant damage in Soviet Air Forces bombing raids

There's not a lot to 'do' here - Hammerfest is all about the experience, and that is certainly something special

There's one landmark in town - the Hammerfest Church (tick)

And then you can walk around the harbour (very beautiful, though not the best weather for waterside picnics)

In the distance (far left) you can see the LNG plant on Melkøya island; the project has led to an economic boom in the region (in contrast to other areas of the north), but there have been concerns about potential pollution risks too

So what happens in Hammerfest on New Year's Eve? As it turns out, a lot

We were fortunate enough to share the night (the actual night) with some lovely new friends from England, Jo and Adam

On the stroke of midnight, the skies around the harbour lit up with an impressive show of fireworks

It wasn't on the scale of Sydney or London

But for us it might as well have been

NYE in Hammerfest - brilliant! And then to top it off, the kebab stand was open on the way home. Really, could it have been any better? For us, definitely not