Principais conclusões
- The Norwegian pilot book for this coast states plainly that the ice forms in Ramfjorden in October and lies until well into May.
- A phenological record kept for northern Norway notes that in 1911 there was still sledge-going in the streets of Tromso on 5 May, partly wheeled and partly sledge.
- The same record notes that in 1891 there was fodder famine around Tromso through late April and May, and that on 9 June it snowed the whole day.
- In 1892 Ramfjorden was still frozen on 8 May right up to Loksletten, and the ice could be driven on.
The question behind every booking
Will there be snow. It is the only thing anyone really wants to know before booking a sled tour, and every operator answers it the same way, with a season and a shrug.
There is a better answer, and it has been sitting in the National Library for a century. Norwegian naturalists, sailing masters and local papers wrote down what winter did here, with dates, decade after decade, because their living depended on it. Read together they say something a season table cannot: winter in this district is not long, it is stubborn.
What the pilot book says
The Norwegian sailing directions for the coast between Bodo and Tromso are as unromantic a document as exists, and it is worth starting there. The ice forms in Ramfjorden in October, it states, and lies until well into May. [1]
Seven months. Not of snow on the ground, which is a softer thing, but of a fjord frozen hard enough to be written into a navigational warning.
The older county description, from 1874, adds the geography of it: the fjords here are ice-free, it says, except for the innermost part of Sorfjord and Kjosen, which as a rule freeze every winter. [11] The open water stays open. The inner arms, the shallow ends, the places where the tide has least work to do, are the ones that go.
The years somebody wrote down
The richest source is a phenological survey of Tromso county, which recorded, year by year, when things froze and when they woke up. In 1892 Ramfjorden was still frozen on 8 May, right up to Loksletten, and the ice could be driven on. [2] That is not a thin skin. That is a road.
A parallel set of northern Norwegian observations gives the town rather than the fjord, and it is bleaker. In 1911 there was still sledge-going in the streets of Tromso on 5 May, partly wheeled and partly sledge. [3] In 1891 there was fodder famine around Tromso through the end of April and into May, and on 9 June it snowed the whole day. [3] In 1877 the trees at Tromso did not begin to break bud until the first days of June, and even on 6 June the buds in the forest were still shut. [3]
And then the other side of the same record, which is what makes it honest rather than alarming: in 1910 the park around the church in Tromso began to green on 4 May. [3] One year the town is greening in the first week of May; another year it is sledging in the same week; another it is snowing in June. That is the real climate of this coast, and no month-by-month table conveys it.
The ice forms in Ramfjorden in October and lies until well into May, says the pilot book. In 1892 it was still carrying traffic on 8 May; in 1891 it snowed all day on 9 June.
People used the ice, and the ice used people
Ice that lasts seven months stops being weather and becomes infrastructure. In February 1856 Tromso-Tidende noted, entirely in passing, that people from Ramfjorden in Balsfjorden must almost every year drive their boats across the ice. [4] Not sail them. Drive them, over the top, because the water underneath was solid.
The 1899 county description explains what that cost. The south side of Ramfjorden is not farmed, it records, because the fjord freezes over in winter and that spoils the way to the sea fishery. [7] A frozen fjord is not scenery to a fisherman. It is the road to work, closed.
Fishing simply moved onto it. In January 1871 Tromso Stiftstidende reported herring being fished in Ramfjorden again, both up on the ice and outside it. [8] In November 1903 Trondhjems Folkeblad reported fishing under the ice there, at times quite good. [9] And in November 1913 the paper Spegjelen reported something purely for pleasure: fine skating ice in Ramfjorden, lying smooth for half a mile out. [10]
In October 1899 Tromso Stiftstidende recorded Sandnessundet frozen over from Kalfjordeidet north to Selneslandet and south to Marisletten, and across to Hakoya. [5] Sandnessundet is the strait between Tromso and Kvaloya. In October.
The thing the record is honest about
There is one entry that has to be in here, because a page about ice that leaves it out is selling something.
In May 1899 the paper Tromso reported that a boy of about thirteen, the son of Martin Mortensen, had gone through the ice on 17 May. [6] The seventeenth of May is Norway's national day. The ice that had carried traffic all winter was, by then, no longer carrying anybody.
This is the exact reason a modern operator runs a marked trail on land with a guide on the sled behind you, and why nothing on a commercial tour crosses sea ice. The archive is unanimous about which parts of a northern winter kill people, and it is never the cold.
How far north you actually are
Two smaller notes give the scale better than a latitude does. A 1911 Norwegian forestry textbook records that the tree can be planted as far north as Tromso and Alta, but that there it grows only in bush form. [14] Not that it dies. That it stops being a tree.
And in a 1910 memoir, a visitor's account of his first Sunday at Tromso opens with new ice having laid itself on Lomvannet, up on the island. [12] A lake on Tromsoya, icing over, as the first thing worth writing home about.
Warmth is not the variable here. Tromso is milder than its latitude has any business being, because the Atlantic drift comes past the door. What the coast has instead is length: a winter that starts before you expect and gives ground slowly, and a spring that in some years never really arrives before June.
Dated winters, as they were recorded
1856: boats driven over
People from Ramfjorden must almost every year drive their boats across the ice. [4]
1871: herring on the ice
Herring fished in Ramfjorden both up on the ice and outside it. [8]
1874: which fjords freeze
The fjords are ice-free except the innermost Sorfjord and Kjosen, which freeze every winter. [11]
1877: buds still shut on 6 June
The trees at Tromso do not start until the first days of June. [3]
1891: snow all day on 9 June
Fodder famine through late April and May, and a full day of snow in June. [3]
1892: a road on 8 May
Ramfjorden still frozen to Loksletten, and the ice could be driven on. [2]
17 May 1899: the ice lets go
A boy of about thirteen goes through the ice on the national day. [6]
October 1899: the town strait freezes
Sandnessundet frozen from Kalfjordeidet to Selneslandet and across to Hakoya. [5]
1903: fishing under the ice
Some fishing done under the ice in Ramfjorden, at times quite well. [9]
1910: green on 4 May
The park around the church in Tromso begins to green in the first week of May. [3]
1911: sledging on 5 May
Still sledge-going in the streets of Tromso, partly wheeled and partly sledge. [3]
1913: skating half a mile out
Fine skating ice in Ramfjorden, lying smooth. [10]
1924: the pilot book settles it
Ice forms in October and lies until well into May. [1]
