I don’t do well with heat. I can get sunburned in 10 minutes outside on a cloudy day. I think 20ºC is hot enough, thanks very much. I am spectacularly not designed for climate change-era British summers.
It was on something like the seventh successive day of 30ºC London heat that my sanity finally broke. Days of poor sleep meant I was getting no work done and could barely think. Instead, I was just Googling with increasing desperation where I might be able to find somewhere less hot – or even, in what felt like an impossible dream, somewhere cold.
In desperation, I checked my diary, and I had nothing in the next week I couldn’t cancel or do remotely. What had been idle escapism became a real plan: I would escape the heatwave, on my own, and find somewhere to work remotely for the next week. It just had to be cold: at the very warmest, it should be the kind of weather that merits wearing a light jacket.
Sadly, I kept coming up blank. Most of Europe was at least as hot as London. Northern England was slightly cooler than London, but it was still well into the 20ºC plus range. The Scottish Highlands or islands looked a bit cooler, but even a solo trip there in July would easily cost me £1,000 or more. Why was it proving so difficult to find somewhere cold in July?
In desperation, I tried ChatGPT, which patiently explained that July is summer in the Northern Hemisphere, and so if I wanted actually cold weather, I’d have to fly an awfully long way south. Unless, it suggested almost as an afterthought, I wanted to try Tromsø, a Norwegian city so far north that it’s inside the Arctic Circle.
Some quick research revealed three things: Tromsø would be a cheaper trip than Scotland. In July, it has midnight sun – it is so far north that in summer it never gets dark, and the sun never sets. The dealmaker, though, is the temperature, which in July averages around 15ºC, and which rarely spends long above 21ºC. Yes please.
Less than 48 hours later, I was in the Arctic Circle. The flights weren’t cheap – I had paid nearly £500 return and the journey took around six hours, with a change in Oslo – but the accommodation was. A week in a decent city-centre hotel has set me back just over £300. I am lucky in that I am travelling alone, and that I had enough money in a savings pot made from automatically rounding up my purchases on my bank card to fund the trip.
Tromsø, it turns out, is a hive of activity in the summer. It’s a small city, with a population well below 100,000, but as I arrived it was hosting northern Norway’s biggest country music festival, meaning the streets are full of people in cowboy hats and tasselled jackets.
On the second full day of my trip, England were playing against Norway in the World Cup quarter-final. There were two huge screens set up in the town square for the occasion, which kicked off at 11pm local time – still in full daylight, thanks to the midnight sun. The square was packed out hours before the game began.
When England knocked Norway out of the tournament, I worried I’d have to fake an American accent for the rest of the trip, but more than one local assured me they’d be cheering for England, at least against Argentina, if not for the final.
Tromsø has all of the Arctic paraphernalia you might expect: it has museums showing the history of seal hunting and clubbing, old ships you can tour, restaurants selling whale meat and reindeer steak, and shops selling thick jumpers made of Norwegian wool. It also has modern art galleries, a “Queering Polar History” exhibition, and the world’s northernmost McDonald’s.
Crucially, though, the weather is everything I had dreamed it would be. You need to wear a jacket to go outside. In fact, in my heat-delirium haze, I didn’t pack warm enough clothes: I have had to buy one of the cosy Norwegian wool jumpers I saw. In winter, Tromsø goes almost three months without seeing the sun, has hundreds of inches of snow, and rarely goes above 0ºC.
But in summer, it’s bliss. I got more work done in my first two days here than the previous two weeks in London. I am sleeping at night. I am already dreading returning to London. My boyfriend is growing increasingly alarmed that I will try to persuade him to move to the Arctic permanently, given we’re not rich enough to buy a summer house here.
This isn’t a real solution. I know that. I am guiltily all too aware that my flight here has contributed to the climate change that’s making London unliveable, just as I’m aware I’m lucky I could afford the trip. But right now, I’m also finding it hard to care. I have several days left in the Arctic Circle, and so far as I’m concerned, it’s paradise. Skål!
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