Tromsø is now well into mørketid and only gets about four hours of twilight each day, but the city is looking good in the dark. Last week a lot of christmas lights and a huge christmas tree were put up in the centre. The christmas tree was delivered by helicopter and quite a few people squinted down the fjord in wonder as a black dot on the horizon slowly took the form of a flying tree and thundered overhead towards the big square. I think the tree is about six times as tall as Hanneke.

I’m not usually very keen on getting up early in the morning, but it doesn’t feel good to get up late and realise that the daylight has already faded. For the second sunday in a row I managed to summon sufficient enthusiasm to throw my skies in the car and leave the house before sunrise – that might be a personal record. Unfortunately, getting up hideously early is pretty much required in order to do any significant skiing at the moment. Even with an early start I only had about 4 hours of daylight so I chose to ski up and down any easy hill that I know well called Rødtinden. It was rather cold and the snow was really icy until half way up, but the specular sunrise/sunset made up for that.

I was pursued up the mountain by a small and friendly dog which followed me so persistently that I began to ignore it. I was listening to loud music and I wasn’t really aware of its exact position, but it eventually dawned on me the the cheeky monster was standing on the back of skis and had been hitching a ride!!! Alas I couldn’t believe it!

I took this last picture looking westward from the beach near the Kvaløysletta ski centre on my way home. These mountains are all on the mainland and take a while to get to. A tunnel is currently under construction that will make them much more accessible though :-). I’m hoping that this year is going to be a good one for skiing, I recently acquired a brilliant book called Toppturer i Troms (Løp og kjøp!) which describes loads of great skiing routes around Tromsø and I’m itching to try some of them. Most will have to wait for longer days though…