Blinded by the nights

Nocturnal tourism is taking off in Tromso, finds Graham Hiscott

- NIGEL THOMPSON

Some countries just “do” winter better than others. In Britain, things generally grind to a halt with the first flurry of snow.

Norway, on the other hand, positively celebrates the white stuff.

No crippled train and bus services, closed schools and snow turning mushy in the blink of an eye.

But if you thought the UK in winter was cold and dark, it's not a patch on Norway where, because of being that bit further north, temperatures plunge and there is even less daylight.

Yet it even makes a virtue of the darkness. Noctourism - night-time travel experiences - has been named by Booking.com among its travel trends for 2025.

More than half of Brits are said to be considering visiting darker sky destinations, with star-bathing experiences, once-in-a lifetime cosmic events and constellation tracking top of the adventure list.

One city capitalising on the trend is Tromso, more than 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle, where my 17-year-old daughter, Isla, and I travelled to.

Amid a vast expanse of snow-covered mountains, remote Tromso is magical in so many ways. Even the snow positively sparkled.

In recent years, Tromso's popularity as a tourist destination has steadily grown in large part due to the Northern Lights, or Aurora Borealis, to give them their proper name.

Last year sky-watchers were treated to rare glimpses of this natural phenomenon across large parts of the UK due to the biggest geomagnetic storm since 2003.

But heading deep into the Arctic Circle vastly increases your chances, and seeing the lights was top of the list for our visit. We took an early flight from Heathrow leaving in pitch darkness - heading first to Oslo, then an internal flight to Tromso.