Our penultimate day in Tromsø was another wet one, with cloudy skies overhead and a promise of near-consistent rain. Down the road, there was a cable car, Fjellheisen, that promised panoramic views of Tromsø on a clear day. Given our somewhat early departure tomorrow, we decided that despite the rain, we’d head up.

Normally down for a hike, I surprised myself by opting to take the cable car up with Dan while Kelly and Michael took on the sherpa steps. It was cold in the cable car station as Dan and I waited for 12:30, when the next car would ascend. We shuffled in with a handful of others and then we were briskly conveyed up. Even in the cloudy afternoon, it was beautiful. The snow line was clear beneath us, where the misty autumn trees started to gather a dusting of snow. At the top, we got off and found warmth in the cafe overlooking the fjord and some surrounding mountains.

It was a different world at the top, one covered in snow. Someone had built a little snowman by the back door to the restaurant.

Kelly and Michael joined us after their climb, thankfully not too cold or wet. They decided to try one of Norway’s famous delicacies, a heart-shaped waffle spread with raspberry jam, nutella, and Norway’s brown cheese, which looked like it might taste smokey but instead seemed to dissolve into a caramel-cream texture once you placed it on your tongue. Delicious!

From there, we had planned to visit the Arctic Cathedral, so Dan and I got back on the cable car while Kelly and Michael began their slippery trek back down the steps. It had begun to snow gently while we were in the restaurant, but as soon as the cable car left the station, we were surrounded in a blustery whirlwind of snow. Part of the way down, Dan got a voicemail from Kelly: maybe we skip the cathedral for today and go straight into town.

A Google search revealed a cool-looking bar that also offered pub grub. Robura was located near the Polar Expedition museum, and its interior played hard into the maritime motif. Wooden ship wheels were mounted on the wall and the entire place smelled like old wax. The lights hung down from the ceiling in metal pails whose interiors were painted red. (A loose maritime theme – perhaps they were once used by sailors swabbing the deck! Arg!)

Dan and I found a seat in the completely empty upstairs and claimed a back corner of bar. Outside, rain fell. When Kelly and Michael arrived, they were a little cold but no worse for wear. They’d conquered the sherpa steps and enjoyed the snowy-autumnal hybrid hike.

There is something especially hygge about gathering with good friends in a warm bar on a rainy day. Add in cold, frothy local beers and a rainy view of the harbor outside and you’re next-level hygge. There was no rush to be anywhere or do anything. We ordered another round.

Michael and Dan had both interacted with the bartender, and Michael returned with beers and a story. The bartender, a Norwegian man named Ruben, had given him some good beer recommendations, but only after commenting on a cultural quirk he just didn’t understand.

“Both you and your friend came down here and you said, ‘How’s it going?’ I never understood why people ask that. You want me to tell you how it’s going? It’s shit. Why would I want to say that every time?”

This tracked with a weird YouTube documentary on Norway we’d found the night before. Clearly an AI production, the robotic voiceover explained that Norwegians were very direct. Additionally, they are not all tall and blonde, they don’t like sitting close to each other on buses, and they do experience cold temperatures like the rest of us.

Ruben did recommend a dinner place for us, so we headed out into the now clearing world to a bar called Skarven. It looked like Skarven normally served food, but they were hosting a beer festival now and serving up Oktoberfest dishes. Not entirely sold on the menu, we were interested in the beer festival, especially since the host informed us that there was a representative from Svalbard brewery.

You might be wondering why this tidbit was particularly interesting to us. I’ll tell you. As we moved from Oslo to Bergen to Tromsø, the rows of beer cans in the grocery store refrigerators changed from Amundsen to Aass and, here inside the Arctic Circle, Mack. In addition to brewing a delicious and wide-ranging selection of beers, Mack claims the title of “Northernmost Brewery in the World.” In fact, if you type “Mack brewery Tromsø” into your Google search bar, their website will come up and the link to the website will not be “Mack Brewery” but “the northernmost brewery in the world”, next to a photo of what looks like a man with a shaved head sniffing beer hops.

Mack has proudly touted this title since it began brewing beer in 1877. You can take a 1-hour tour of Mack brewery, or you can visit Ølhallen, the attached bar, which is what we did. We sampled many a can of Mack in our stay in the Arctic, and we were never disappointed.

But we also sampled a beer on tap at Ølhallen coming from Svalbard Brewery, and this gave us pause. Tromsø sits at 69 degrees North. A quick glance at a map shows Svalbard sitting pretty at 77 degrees North.

If latitudinal lines isn’t enough, it’s worth it to note that a flight from Oslo to Tromsø, nearly due North, takes about 2 hours. To get from Tromsø to Svalbard is another hour and a half or so. On an airplane. We’re talking North-North, like Svalbard is rubbing elbows with the North Pole.

So we were somewhat bewildered. Was it because Svalbard was a new brewery, and Mack was old money and Svalbard the nouveau riche? Do you get copyright to a title like “World’s Northernmost Brewery” and get to keep it, even if someone opens a brewery further north?

I held down a small table in the warmth of the indoor bar area while the others went out into a tented area to find the answer to this question and some fresh beer.

“I asked the bartender out there,” said Kelly, upon returning. “He explained the reason. It’s something like…they don’t brew the beer there, so it doesn’t count as a brewery? But I thought they did brew the beer there.”

Interestingly, as I Google it now, Svalbard brewery’s website introduces it as the “World’s Northernmost Craft Brewery”, which I guess is their way of distinguishing themselves from Mack without stealing their thunder. What I found fascinating was that the brewery idea was conceived of in 2007 and its first cans hit shelves in 2015 – and I was there in December of 2015. Why didn’t I visit this brewery? On second thought, maybe I did, and I don’t remember. More on that later.

The website also describes their brewing process and the limitations one faces when brewing on a tiny island in the Arctic Circle. Beer supplies can be shipped in at certain times of the year, but not all times. So there’s key points in the year when they can brew and export.

In the end, though, the beer was all delicious. It was one of the many things we agreed on about Norway: its craft beer scene is far superior to Switzerland’s.

We decided to search for food at a nearby bar called Blå Rock. A Lonely Planet pick, but also a cool vibe smelling of grillsmoke when we’d walked past the night before, Blå Rock was super quirky and grunge. We walked through the door and found ourselves at the bottom of what looked like a maze of floors with multiple staircases leading up or over or backwards or upside down. Or at least that’s what it felt like. The walls were papered with posters of bands and records and paraphernalia, but where a Hard Rock Cafe offers this with polish and the meticulousness of a chain restaurant, Blå Rock felt like stepping into the basement bedroom of an angsty teen living the best music of the 70s or 80s or 90s.

We climbed the stairs up several floors until we couldn’t go any further and claimed a table in the back corner. This was clearly the Iggy Pop section. Posters and album covers featuring Iggy plastered the walls up here, and his face grinned up at us from our table. There was also a little photo montage of David Bowie tucked away on a small wall.

Michael and Dan ordered us beers and food downstairs.

“We told him we’re at the Iggy Pop section,” Michael said, “and he seemed to get it.”

All of the burgers on the menu were named for bands we knew – The Dead Kennedys, Red Hot Chili Peppers – and the beer was cold and crisp. Life was good. The place had a cool vibe and probably some cool bands performing. But it was relatively early and we had visions of a chill night at our AirBnB, so we paid and headed to the bus stop.

Our bus back to the AirBnB arrived in front of a Peppe’s Pizza (a Norwegian pizza chain) and an unassuming but chic cocktail bar called Aunegaarden. Dan announced that our bus would arrive in 26 minutes, and Kelly and I felt that was ample time to dip in and order a cocktail. Michael and Dan were a little skeptical about the timing of this and opted for beers, but our mixologist bartender assured us she could whip up a cocktail pretty quickly and recommended two of her favorite. Kelly ordered one and I ordered a raspberry cocktail called “Lost in the Woods” that tasted like raspberry sorbet and went down a real treat.

We caught our bus with time to spare and arrived back at the AirBnB sometime after 8pm. The only thing to do at that point was make a fire in the indoor firepit and watch Frozen. As we set it up, we stepped outside onto the balcony to look up at the sky. My Northern Lights apps were not encouraging about our odds of catching a show, but the sky was the clearest it had been our entire time in Tromsø, and at the very least, the stars were spectacular. Even with Tromsø’s lights glittering along the horizon to our right, the stargazing was pretty vibrant and clear. As luck would have it, it was also a new moon phase, and it took me a while to realize how weird it was that I hadn’t seen the moon at all on our entire trip. It must have been very new that week.

We curled up on couches and in Eames chairs and on the floor and watched Frozen, and then took turns standing on the balcony looking up at the sky. This time, it was Dan who stepped out and, after a moment, called inside, “You need to come out. I think they’re out.”

And out they were! If last night’s smudge had turned into a nice little show, tonight’s was like a full-fledged opera. It was just past 11pm and they were there, faint trails of green across the sky, and then suddenly the trails grew brighter and brighter until they flared out like silk ribbons of every shade of green and blue and danced and twisted and disappeared – but then you’d look behind the apartment, where the mountaintop was, and there would be two or three more trails climbing up out of the mountain, and then they’d braid together right over our heads. We even got to see the cool ones where it looks like the lights are raining down in vertical streaks from someplace we couldn’t see.

We couldn’t figure out how to turn off the balcony lights in the AirBnB, and while Dan had hung his backpack cover on them the night before, Michael took matters into his own hands and just removed the bulbs. This darkened things considerably, and we enjoyed watching the show, even if our necks were craned to look up.

Here is what we all agreed: you can pay money for someone to take you and several strangers in a van out into the middle of nowhere. Your adventure will include some coffee or tea or hot soup, and there will be a cute little firepit your guide will make for you. You’ll be out in this quiet wilderness in the dark for several hours, so if you’re tired around 2am but you paid until 3am, tough luck. Catch a nap in the van. Very possibly, you will see an aurora show that is unmatched by anything you can glimpse near a city. Your guide will have cameras ready on tripods and will capture photos of you in large, puffy suits with the aurora streaking down the sky behind you like a massive celestial zipper. And if you’re reading this and you’re thinking, hey, I did that. Don’t knock it, I don’t judge. I think that’s great. It just isn’t for me.

We paid a little extra for this dazzling AirBnB, to be fair, and you can’t guarantee a Northern Lights show in the price. But man, standing there on that wide balcony watching them directly overhead, we felt fabulously lucky. The fire that Michael had made using the wood provided and our old egg carton was blazing inside, so any time we felt too cold or needed a break, we’d step into the living room and we were immediately toasty.

I realize how obnoxious it sounds to write something like, My neck hurt from looking up at the Northern Lights for so long and I needed to go inside and warm myself by the indoor fire and maybe have a sip of beer. So forgive me. All of this is to say how incredibly grateful we were to have had this experience, because it’s not something you can plan, and most of the other times I’ve seen the lights have been so cold (see Svalbard, 2015) or so uncomfortable (pressing my face to an airplane window to catch them over the tail flying out of Finland). It seems very rare to enjoy them from a place where you can be warm and cozy and go to bed when you’re ready.

Even though it was a late night – we went to bed after 1am – Kelly and I wanted to take advantage of our last morning in Tromsø and enjoyed a run the following morning. It was the first blue-sky morning we’d had in Tromsø, providing beautiful views of the fjord and the mountains beyond. The roads were a little icy, leading to some slippery downhills and questionable slides, but it was a beautiful run and a nice way to bid farewell to the little Arctic home we’d cozied up to the past few days.

It hurt my heart to leave the AirBnB. We packed our bags onto our bus and took it down the road to the Arctic Cathedral, a beautiful church that attracts tourists – at 80 Kronor a person, it’s a small fee and hopefully supports the congregation and the building – for being so triangular. The structure is interspersed with glass, which lets in sunlight, which also pours in through the stained glass panels at the front of the church.

Michael and Kelly both commented on how different the Norwegian churches’ depictions of Christ and the crucifixion were from Italy’s.

“Italy’s is more graphic,” Kelly told me when we left the church in Bergen. “Here it’s like one drop of blood.”

I’ve been in lots of churches and cathedrals, but this one felt a lot like the church I attended regularly as a child, in that it was welcoming and warm and I felt very calm and peaceful in there. The pews, so often wooden and uncomfortable even in my own home church, had cushions! What’s more welcoming than that?

There was a table with several small bowls filled with smooth stones and a large bowl at the center. A sign encouraged visitors to place stones from the small bowls into the large one. The small bowls were each labeled something different: a prayer for love, a prayer for peace and justice, a prayer for marine life. I moved a few stones into the larger bowl, even though I felt hypocritical praying for marine life while also eating it. It is something I keep coming back to.

We caught a bus directly to the airport, which took over 45 minutes and conveyed us over quiet hills all over the island. The afternoon sun streaming through the windows and the easy speed of the journey nearly lulled me to sleep. We passed an easy time at the airport, with me eating a veggie burger at O’Leary’s but also diving into Kelly’s snack pack.

Kelly and Michael are absolute champions of waste not, want not. Kelly wrapped up every single item of food we didn’t finish and brought it along. In Bergen, I packed up my rice cakes and peanut butter and finished off the rice cakes in Tromsø. Without Kelly, I would have just left them at the AirBnB and told the host. But Kelly packed up our cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, and, most valuably, our Snøfrisk.

We discovered Snøfrisk back in Bergen during our hectic shopping trip. Kelly, who wanted to eat lox with cream cheese in the morning, had debated between the classic Philadelphia cream cheese or this Norwegian brand unknown to us, packaged in a perfect little white package of equilateral triangle.

We fell in love with Snøfrisk. Sitting in the airport in Tromsø, waiting on my veggie burger, I dipped cucumber after cucumber into the Snøfrisk with dill. It was delightfully light and creamy, and we wondered if we could find it in Basel. I asked a former student of mine, who hails from Denmark but is an expert on Scandinavia, and she said most likely not. It was pretty niche, she said, and made from the milk of Norwegian mountain goats. We savored it while we could.

While it was sad to depart Tromsø, the view out the window was a spectacular picture of arctic paradise: pink clouds painting cool shadows over snowy mountains, dark mountain lakes, small villages dotting the coastlines along remote fjords. It was two hours back to Oslo and we still had a few days left, but I knew I would miss Tromsø.