The Norway Adventure

Our adventure in Norway began in February 2013. We took the road less traveled and made the decision to leave our comfortable and wonderful life in Missoula surrounded by friends and loved ones to experience life abroad as a family. Joel was awarded a post doctoral research position at the Norsk Polarinstitut to research the Antarctic Ice Sheet. That is right…we moved to the Arctic so that he could study the Antarctic. Crazy but true.
Joel spent his first field season in Antartica with a multi national research team based at the Norwegian Station in the Western part of Antarctica. He left the US in December, returned in February to quickly turn around and make the move to Tromsø, Norway. Odin (age 5)and Adelheyd (age 3) agreeably left their good friends from Missoula to enter a new school in Norway, the Strandkanten Barnehage. They have been great travelers and seem to share in their parents sense of adventure. We love watching them grow, learn, and explore this new land.

Situated almost 350km north of the Arctic Circle, Tromsø is a city of almost 60,000, most of which is on an island in the fjordlands of Norway. It is primarily a fishing town, but also hosts a major regional hospital, the Northernmost University in the world, the northern most Brewery in the world, and the Polarinstitut where Joel works. Borrowing from a local advertisement, Tromsø is the capital of the Arctic, a lively, humorous, and beautiful city packed with culture and history, surrounded by mountains, fjords, and islands. Pretty cool.

So, the adventure begins. New city. New language. New friends. New mountains. New trails to explore. The ocean at our doorstep. We will try to share our adventures with you through this blog as best we can. A you all know, pictures rarely do a place justice, but hopefully they will help you see what we are up to in this far Northern place in the sea.

We invite you to come over for a visit and experience this unique and beautiful land first hand. If you don’t make it to Norway, we hope you will take another road less travelled and find an adventure all your own!