Tromsø

Tromsø sits on Tromsøya, an island in the sound between Kvaløya and the mainland. Drive in over the high Tromsø Bridge from 1960 and you see the whole town at once: wooden houses and hotels along the harbour, the Hurtigruten quay at Prostneset, and behind you the white triangle of the Arctic Cathedral under the mountain Fløya. About 43.835 people live on the island and close to 80.000 in the whole municipality, the biggest in Northern Norway.

Health care and education give more jobs here than anything else. The University Hospital of North Norway in Breivika had more than 6.000 employees in 2022, and next to it is UiT The Arctic University of Norway, founded in 1968. The sun stays up from about 19 May to 25 July, and from 28 November to 14 January it doesn't get above the horizon at all.

Local knowledge: in North Sámi the town is Romsa, in Kven Tromssa. The Norwegian name comes from Old Norse Trums, first the name of the island, probably linked to straumr, a current. Tromsø became a trading town in 1794 and still had fewer than 100 people in 1807. What made it was the Arctic Ocean. From around 1820 local skippers sailed north for seal, walrus and polar bear, and by 1850 Tromsø had taken over from Hammerfest as the centre of Arctic hunting. Explorers came here for boats and crews. Roald Amundsen bought his ship Gjøa in Tromsø in 1901, and on 18 June 1928 he took off from here in a French flying boat to search for Umberto Nobile's lost airship. The plane never came back. The Polar Museum opened 50 years later to the day.

Born here: philosopher Peter Wessel Zapffe (1899–1990), a pharmacist's son, was also a mountain climber and an early conservationist. Singer Lene Marlin (born 1980) grew up in Tromsdalen and went to number one in Norway with her first single, Unforgivable Sinner, in 1998.

Visiting: the pin points to Visit Tromsø's tourist information at Storgata 83, open Monday to Saturday all year, with free maps and help with tours. A short walk away is Tromsø Cathedral from 1861, the only Church of Norway cathedral built of wood. On a rainy day, go to the Polar Museum on Søndre Tollbodgate, in the old customs warehouses by the harbour, with trapping, overwintering and a big Amundsen exhibition. Across the bridge, the Arctic Cathedral has Europe's largest glass mosaic, and Fjellheisen lifts you to Storsteinen, 421 metres above the sea, for the view over the island. Our own station, Arctic Campers Tromsø, is at Kvaløysletta, just over the Sandnessund Bridge, and Tromsø Lodge & Camping is in Tromsdalen. More places nearby are on our Tromsø and Troms page.

Fact sheet

• Other official names: Romsa (North Sámi), Tromssa (Kven)
• People: 43.835 in Tromsø, 79.943 in Tromsø municipality
• County: Troms
• Town since: 1794 (as a trading town)
• Typical industries: health care (University Hospital of North Norway), education and research (UiT The Arctic University of Norway)
• Midnight sun: 19 May – 25 July
• Polar night: 28 November – 14 January

Population on 1 January 2026, from Statistics Norway. Typical industries are the ones with a much bigger share of the jobs here than in Norway as a whole (Statistics Norway, 2025).