Travel – Norway: Northern light

In the constant light of summer, Tromsø is an extraordinarily civilised place from which to visit the wilderness, discovers Harry Mount

 ‘Why do the British look so ill?’ I was asked by a 23-year-old woman at a dinner party in the Arctic Norwegian city of Tromsø. ‘Is it because they have chips for breakfast?’ She seemed to have steered clear of the chips herself; her skin looked like it had been put on fresh that morning. ‘Why do Norwegians look so good,’ I asked back, ‘when they drink even more than we do?’ The answer lay on the plates in front of us: reindeer sashimi followed by grilled whale, then seal, moose, cod and herring — all straight from the fjords and the frozen tundra.
 
It sounds like the height of dining political incorrectness: all you needed was a pint of virgin’s blood and you had just about the right ingredients for Jeremy Clarkson’s last meal.