Our trip to Tromsø — Day 6

We had not originally planned to have as many days in Tromsø as we ended up having, so we didn’t have any pre-planned activities on the last two days of our trip, so we decided to explore some of the museums.

The Arctic University Museum of Norway (formerly known as the Tromsø Museum)

When trying to find information about the Tromsø Museum, we were a bit confused, since the museum is referred to as the Tromsø Museum in some places, “Norges arktiske universitetsmuseum” (“The Arctic University Museum of Norway” in English) in other places, and in yet other places it seemed that the Tromsø Museum was a part of a larger collection of museums called “Norges arktiske universitetsmuseum”.

It turned out that what used to be called the Tromsø Museum changed name to “Norges arktiske universitetsmuseum” in 2019 (“The Arctic University Museum of Norway” in English), according to the Wikipedia page written in Norwegian Bokmål at https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norges_arktiske_universitetsmuseum (checked on September 20th 2024). It seems “Norges arktiske universitetsmuseum” is the umbrella term for exhibitions in four different locations(Polarmuseet, MS Polstjerna, and Botanisk hage and the one that used to be called Tromsø Museum, but now goes under the same name as the umbrella term, “Norges arktiske universitetsmuseum”).

According to the Plan your trip webpage for Norges arktiske universitetsmuseum, the museum is open from 10–16:30 from Monday to Friday. Since the webpage did not say anything about different opening hours on holidays, we assumed it would open at 10 and took a bus to arrive a bit past 10. However, when we got there, there was a piece of paper on the door saying they opened at 11 due to Easter. This was of course quite annoying, but we decided to stay there and wait till they opened.

Once inside, we started with the geology section, which describes the history of Earth, and how some geological processes are visible in the mountains around Tromsø. We spent a lot of time in this section. There were also sections focusing on Sami culture and history, animals in the area, and Northern Lights.

The exhibition on Northern Lights was the reason we wanted to visit the museum, and this did indeed turn out to be an interesting exhibition. The Northern Lights section included different perspectives, such as the physics of the phenomenon, illustrated with a small experimental setup, Sami myths and how Northern Lights are viewed in Sami culture, and how Northern Lights can also affect civilization on Earth.

The audio and descriptions were available in Norwegian, Sami, and English.

Lunch at Burger King

By the time we were back in town after visiting Norges arktiske universitetsmuseum, we were really hungry, and went to Burger King to get a quick lunch. It wasn’t crowded, so the wait was short. The restaurant was clean, so all in all this was a nice, standard, what-you-would-expect, Burger King experience.

Polarmuseum

Before heading back to our hotel, we stopped at the Polarmuseum (one of the four locations with exhibitions under Norges arktiske universitetsmuseum). This was an impressively large museum with different focus areas, all revolving around arctic exploration, and the role of Tromsø in this. From the seal fur industry, to the story of the race for the North Pole, models of ships used to sail the arctic waters, and a final room focusing on lives of non-cis people in Tromsø, the exhibitions provided a very well rounded selection of perspectives on life in the arctic.

All descriptions were given both in Norwegian and English.

Dinner at Elefant Indisk Restaurant

We went to Elefant Indisk Restaurant for dinner. The food was delicious, and the service quick. They have an option of pre-ordering food via their website. We considered doing this to avoid waiting since we were all tired after our two museum visits during the day. In the end, we decided against pre-ordering as we didn’t want to risk the food not being hot when we got there.

Summary

We visited Norges Arktiske Universitetsmuseum and the Polarmuseum, both of which had interesting descriptions and objects on display. It turned out that the opening hours for Norges Arktiske Universitetsmuseum on their webpage were not accurate, probably because it was a holiday. Subsequently, we speculated that holiday opening hours might be the same as Sunday opening hours, but this was not stated on the webpage. It might be an idea to call ahead to check if you plan on visit during a holiday.

You might also be interested in going to the post giving an overview of our trip to Tromsø, which also includes links to more details of each day we were there.