No.15 Midnight Sun Revenge: A Second Pilgrimage to Tromsø

Some journeys begin long before we set out.

This one started with disappointment—a disappointment so profound it planted a seed that would eventually pull me back to a small Arctic city at the edge of the world.

Tromsø. Even the name sounds like wind howling across frozen fjords.

The Sun Behind Clouds

July 2003. My first pilgrimage.

I came chasing the midnight sun I'd seen in documentaries—that mystical phenomenon where night transforms into endless twilight, where darkness surrenders to an ethereal glow that seems to exist outside the normal rules of time.

At the summit of Storsteinen, I stood among fellow seekers, all of us waiting for the miracle.

And it came. The sun hung stubbornly on the horizon, refusing to set.

But—veiled behind wisps of cloud.

Beautiful? Absolutely. But not transcendent. Not the soul-piercing light I'd traveled halfway around the world to witness.

"I'll be back," I whispered to the mountains.

This time, I meant it.

The Shrimp I Never Tasted

There was another reason to return—one that might sound trivial, but haunted me nonetheless.

On that first visit, I sat at a harbourside restaurant watching locals and tourists devour mountains of pink shrimp. They peeled them with practiced ease, dunked them in simple sauces, washed them down with cold beer, and grinned with pure, uncomplicated joy under the midnight sun.

I desperately wanted to order whatever that was.

But I had no idea what to call it.

My Norwegian was non-existent. The menu had no photos. I could have asked the waiter —my English would have been fine— but pride stopped me. Or maybe embarrassment. That peculiar academic stubbornness that makes us pretend we know things we don't.

So I ordered something safe and spent the entire meal watching others enjoy what I'd denied myself.

(Today, I could solve this mystery in three seconds with a smartphone. But this was 2003. We were still pre-Google Lens savages.)

Back home, I did my research. "Lyngen shrimp"—cold-water prawns from the deep Arctic seas, nurtured in frigid waters that give them a sweetness and delicacy impossible to find in warmer climates.

I would return. That much became clear.

Threading the Needle

Ten years later —July 2013— I found myself on a plane north once again.

The approach to Tromsø is an experience unto itself. Our small jet descended through valleys of air, weaving between fjord walls as mountains rose dizzyingly close on both sides. My stomach lifted. My heart raced. Every sense came alive.

Through the window, I watched the landscape transform: snow-dusted peaks melting into dark water, then clusters of bright houses clinging to hillsides like barnacles. This was a city that existed in the spaces between things—between sea and mountain, light and dark, wilderness and civilization.

After landing, I jumped on a bus downtown. The driver must have noticed the Asian guy pressed against the window, drinking in every detail, because he asked in English where I was headed. When I told him my hotel, he dropped me at the nearest stop with a smile.

Round two was about to begin.

Arctic Ocean on a Plate

This time, no hesitation.

I made a beeline for a harbourside restaurant and claimed a terrace table with a view. Before me: calm water. Beyond it: snow-capped mountains piercing the sky. I ordered a Mack beer —the local brew— and didn't even open the menu.

I already knew what I wanted.

"En shrimp bowl, takk. (A shrimp bowl, please.)"

The plate arrived in the endless glow of Arctic summer evening —though "evening" is a meaningless word when the sun never sets. A massive white platter overflowing with pink prawns. Boiled simply. Salted lightly. Accompanied by lemon wedges, fresh baguette, and small ramekins of sauce.

No Instagram-worthy garnishes. No architectural tower of seafood. Just the honest bounty of the Arctic Ocean.

I peeled one. The firm snap under my fingers sent a little thrill through me. The moment it hit my tongue—

Oh.....

Each bite released bursts of sweetness and a whisper of brine. Nothing like the mushy, farmed shrimp I'd grown accustomed to. This was what cold, pristine Arctic water could create when given time: concentrated umami, distilled ocean essence.

I remembered something a local chef once said: "Tromsø seafood is nature's gift, pure and simple." The endless summer daylight feeds the plankton. The plankton feeds the shrimp. An entire food web, compressed into each delicate morsel.

Outside, fishing boats bobbed in the harbor, bathed in light from a sun that refused to quit. I popped another prawn in my mouth, chased it with cold beer.

Ten years was a long time to wait for shrimp.

Worth every minute.

By the time I finished, my fingertips were stained pink with victory. I felt like the protagonist of "Solitary Gourmet," savoring my private conquest of crustaceans.

Ascending Into Twilight

The Fjellheisen cable car climbs from sea level to 421 meters in four minutes flat. But those four minutes feel like a passage between dimensions.

Around 11 PM—a time that should be pitch black but instead glowed with perpetual dusk—I boarded the gondola, hunting for my redemption: the midnight sun, unobscured.

As we rose, Tromsø transformed into a constellation below. Across the sound, the island city sparkled with lights that seemed almost redundant in the Arctic glow. Beyond the city, snow-crowned mountains formed a ring, and the fjord stretched like a ribbon of lapis lazuli toward infinity.

At the summit, a scattered handful of midnight sun pilgrims waited. Fewer than I'd expected. In the hushed twilight, we were a small congregation of the faithful.

Midnight approached.

The sun clung to the ridge line, defiant, refusing to sink behind the peaks. It painted the sky in colors that don't exist in normal latitudes—salmon-pink and molten gold, lavender and rose, impossible shades that felt both dreamlike and hyper-real. Mountain silhouettes cut black shapes from that luminous canvas.

And then I saw them.

The clouds.

Thin? Yes. Wispy? Absolutely. But there—a gossamer veil between me and perfection. Just enough to soften the sun's edges, to keep it perpetually out of focus.

"Come on," I whispered. "Just for a second. Show yourself."

The clouds stayed put.

But standing there—wrapped in that strange non-darkness, surrounded by strangers who'd traveled as far as I had for this exact moment—something shifted inside me.

Maybe perfection was never the point.

Maybe the clouds were the lesson. Nature gives what it gives. We don't get to write the weather forecast. We can only choose how we receive what we're given.

The midnight sun, even filtered, was still the midnight sun.

I closed my eyes and let that divine, diluted light wash over me. For one crystalline moment, I felt less like an observer and more like a participant—like I'd merged with the landscape itself, become part of something vast and ancient and utterly indifferent to my need for perfect Instagram shots.

The midnight sun burned itself into my memory that night.

Not the sun I'd imagined, but the sun I needed.

Floating Through Glass

The most otherworldly experience? The midnight fjord cruise.

We sailed through liquid twilight, the boat's white hull cutting through water that looked like molten silver. By the time I boarded, passengers had already claimed their spots along the rails, faces turned skyward in anticipation.

The boat moved in near-silence. The engine barely whispered, as if even mechanical sounds would be sacrilege here. The water was absurdly smooth—mirror-perfect—reflecting the sky so flawlessly that the horizon line dissolved. I couldn't tell where reality ended and reflection began.

Mountains rose on both flanks, their surfaces lit by that impossible, sourceless glow. Snow-capped peaks blushed golden-pink in an eternal sunset that would never quite finish. We'd pass the occasional village—a huddle of houses, a weathered dock, fish-drying racks standing like sentinels against the luminous sky.

On deck, we were a silent congregation.

Couples took photos, mountains looming behind them like borrowed backdrops. Kids ran circles, their voices the only sharp sounds in the soft world. An elderly couple stood hand-in-hand, not speaking, not needing to.

I pulled a crew-provided blanket around my shoulders and just... existed. No thoughts. No plans. Just breathing in sync with the boat's gentle rocking.

It was magic in the truest sense—not illusion, but reality so strange it felt impossible.

The world had pressed pause. Time became negotiable. And for however long that cruise lasted, we floated through a realm where normal rules didn't apply.

That's when I finally understood why people speak about the midnight sun with that particular reverence—the hushed, almost religious tone. It's not just a weather phenomenon. It's proof that Earth still contains genuine mystery. That there are experiences so far outside our daily lives they feel like brushes with the divine.

The Visit That Might Never Happen

Now, retired, I turn the question over in my mind: Do I return for round three?

The midnight sun still calls to me. This time, it promises. This time the clouds will part. This time you'll get the unobstructed view, the Instagram moment, the perfection you traveled so far to find.

Maybe a third visit should require courage. Maybe that's the point.

What mattered was the journey.

The trying. The returning. The refusal to let clouds—literal or metaphorical—have the final word.

In the end, we don't chase perfection. We chase the courage to keep chasing.

From the journals of a retired professor who learned to chase light

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"The difficult is what takes a little time; the impossible is what takes a little longer."

— Fridtjof Nansen, Norwegian Arctic Explorer