Land of the hidden sun

Mark Jenkins goes in search of dog mushers and dancing green skies at the top of the world.

I'd been re-acquainting myself with Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein when I got the call. "Norway, the Arctic Circle, tomorrow, have fun."

Shelley's story begins with the tortured doctor's dog-sled pursuit of his creature across the frozen wastes of an unnamed polar landscape. I'll take the book with me, I thought, it might come in handy.

We reach the top of the world not by sled, however, but on an SAS A340 to Copenhagen, then on to the capital of the north, Tromso, 350 kilometres above the Arctic Circle.

The flight into Tromso is a true spectacle. Variously known as the Gateway to the Arctic and the Paris of the North, this enchanting city nestles at the heart of a collection of fjord-ridden islands, joined to the mainland by a huge arc-like bridge, but isolated from the world by snow-covered Lyngen Alps to the East. For a city so remote, Tromso is very cosmopolitan.

Around 10,000 of its 65,000 inhabitants are university students and the Tromso International Film Festival has in recent years become an established event on the world cinema circuit.

Tromso makes much of its northerness, claiming the world's most northerly cinema, university, brewery, bishop and burger king; in fact the most northernmost things anywhere in the world.

The city is the world's primary destination for spotting the Northern Lights, the eerie greenish aurorae that dance across the polar skies on most winter evenings.

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