Why go
The city’s role in polar exploration was practical: expeditions drew on local Arctic knowledge and recruited crews here. The wartime story is more complex than an untouched town: Tromsø was a temporary government seat, and the battleship Tirpitz was sunk off Tromsøya in 1944. The Polar Museum is a useful place to begin.
The full story
By the end of the 19th century, Tromsø had become a base for journeys farther into the Arctic. Roald Amundsen, Umberto Nobile and Fridtjof Nansen made use of experience gathered in the city and recruited crew members here. This is why an old harbour building such as the Polar Museum can tell a much wider story than local trade alone. A northern-lights observatory was founded in 1927, adding research to the city’s polar role. In 1940, after Germany invaded Norway, Tromsø briefly served as the seat of the Norwegian government. General Carl Gustav Fleischer reached the city in April and issued orders for mobilisation in the north. The war also came close to its shores: British aircraft sank the German battleship Tirpitz off Tromsøya in November 1944, with heavy loss of life. At the end of the war, Tromsø received refugees from Finnmark and northern Troms after German forces devastated their home areas. These events link the city to both Arctic exploration and the much broader history of northern Norway in wartime.