Even though we probably had the best weather Tromsø could give us, we started up grey like this. And it is definitely a lot more autumn there than down south.

This is Stina. She is my new friend from Uppsala.

Stina and Anders are both from Uppsala Univeristy. I hung out with them the whole week I was in Tromsø. Which means that we had breakfast, lunch and dinner together, in addition to being in lectures together the whole day, every day. It was good to have people around me. It gets a bit quiet at the museum sometimes.

Street art in Tromsø

And here, the third Swede, Elisabet. She is a PhD from Göteborg. This is Sunday, our only day off. We had walked to town to catch the bus to fjellheisen.

And here we are, the whole gang.

The view from the cable car itself. The weather wasn’t the best, but it wasn’t terrible either, so we were pleased.

The cable car was quite crowded, but we didn’t need to wait too long to get up there.

And here, the fungi. Elisabet works with fungi and the three of us learned a lot of fungi during the week. Here you can see her smelling it to find out which species it is.

 

Biologists enjoying the simple pleasures in life.

 

You have no idea how much entertainment there is in 300 meters of heath 😉

Tromsø city in the background.

This is a grass. And those long green things on the end of the grass, those are new shoots. They are clones of the mother plant and will drop off at the end of the season and start a new life. To be viviparous is quite common in plants (to make new shoots, without fertilization) and especially in alpine plants. If the summer is too short and cold, they usually end up doing like this, in stead of reproducing sexually.

🙂 I am very fond of lichens. I have to learn the names of them eventually. But I have a lichen book at home, to it might happen some day.

 

There is a lot of variation, you just have to stoop down low enough to see it.

This was the view from the breakfast room at the hotel and what you see is the mainland. Tromsø is on a small island, almost like Trondheim.

The sunset taken from the bus on our way home one night. Tromsø is truly beautiful with wonderful mountains and everywhere. I highly recommend it. And it is quite fascinating how they have alpine plants not only in a city, but all the way down to the beaches.