Happy New Year!

I wish you all the very best for 2019!

We celebrated New Year in Tromsø this year. The weather was good, so we decided to walk up towards Fløya again to watch the mountain fireworks and the view over Tromsø. It is a great place to watch the official fireworks and we have done this several times in the last 15 years. This year, however, it was really discovered by the masses, which made the walk up and down less enjoyable than previous years, as it was basically a queue all the way up and down and not everyone is equally considerate. It was our own fault as well though: normally we take a different and less known route up, but this year we were running late and had to take the direct route to get there in time. But once up above the top station of the cablecar, there is a lot of space, people spread out and it was no problem to find a good location. As always, the fireworks were excellent and this was a great place to watch it. Below a small selection of the photos I took.

View over Tromsø while waiting for the fireworks to start

Christmas in the dark north

We decided to stay in the dark north for the Christmas and New Year break and rented a nice cabin in the Lyngen Alps for a few days before Christmas. It is very dark here this time of the year, with not more than about 4 hours of sort of daylight if the weather is good and hardy anything when it is overcast or snowing/raining. We had stayed in Silje's cabin before and knew that it was cosy and comfortable, with good possibilities for hikes directly from the cabin, so when I noticed it was available we decided to book it. It is about 2 hours drive + ferry from Tromsø. The best weather was on the first day, cold and clear, and we stopped along the way the enjoy the 'daylight' and walk up to the beautiful lake Blåisvatnet on the western side of Lyngen. It is a well known and popular short walk in summer when the lake is bright blue, but even in winter without sunlight the water appeared quite blue under the thick ice. 

It had been quite cold, so the surface is covered with large snow crystals.

Little snow and thick ice, perfect conditions to visit Blåisvatnet. I should have brought my skates!

There is a whole string of lakes further into the valley, Strupskardet, we will have to come back for a longer trip when there is more daylight.

Close-up of Lenangstindene.

The weather was more overcast the remaining 3 days. We did a couple of shorter hikes to frozen waterfalls and view points on the eastern side of Lyngen. Very nice to be out for a couple of hours everyday, but the light was a bit too dim for good photographs.

Snowshoeing to and around Rottenvikfossen

View into Kvalvikdalen from close to the viewpoint Oksen

View back towards our cabin and Kvalvikneset

Dalfossen in Kvalvikdalen