Celebrating….Tromso style…..

…. New Year’s Eve arrived and we were invited to take part in our neighbourhood’s traditional children’s parade. Families met at a special place at 4pm and each child held aloft a flaming (literally!) torch and off we paraded around the streets of our neighbourhood, as did families in other parts of the city. Another tradition to deal to the environment?? This was apparent all the time we were there, the windows of the houses were lit with ornamental lights creating an atmosphere of cheeriness and warmth in opposition to the bitter cold and dark. We peeled off from the parade at our place and Hannah and Sunnova then proceeded to smash the little gingerbread house that had been made before Christmas. This symbolizes new beginnings, very cool…. AND you get to eat a ginger bread house!!! Later on we went to our extending family’s home for more incredible hospitality, the food in Norway is amazing! At about 10 oclock we went outside and the Northern Lights were just starting. We had been hoping we would be lucky enough to see them, but unless the weather conditions are just so, in conjunction with a Solar Storm it doesn’t happen. But there they were, nobody else at the party was much bothered but us three Kiwis howled and yelled and got right into it until we were so cold we just had to go inside to warm up. (howling and yelling makes them stronger….it worked!!).
Now leading up to New Year’s Eve there were fireworks going off all around the place sporadically, a little like NZ experiences around Nov 5. We were told that New Years Eve was when everyone let off fireworks and that there was a public fireworks display that went off one of the surrounding mountains at midnight, but we didn’t even get to notice that. From 11.30pm until midnight the whole city went “OFF”, everyone in their own yard sending up the most amazing star shells and the like, emergency flares, you name it, anything that could be fired into the air was, we were gob struck…a whole city, around a fiord in complete harmony. We were told that the year of the tsunami, instead of buying fireworks the people of Tromso sent the money to Indonesia….what can you say????? Note to self……don’t go out in a boat and get into trouble on New Years Eve in Tromso….your flare would go completely unnoticed!!!!