In many ways, I think I’ve had a better experience abroad than most. I’ve been rewarded with complete, untethered independence for five months, a kind of independence that makes me realize that college back home is a show of spoon-feeding: they cook for us, clean for us, fix up our rooms when things break. They throw the parties and provide the alcohol, hold us on a leash–granted, a slack one–on the experiential learning Europe trips they organize with pre-planned meals and strict itineraries.
There was none of that here, and while this freedom was accompanied by anxieties, they were exhilarating. Spending my first two weeks with virtually no money (a cock-up on part of an overzealous Universitetet i Tromsø employee) led to a late-night dumpster dive and from there, a new mindset about money, food, wealth, the Earth. The list continues. There was no reliance on my Gettysburg friends to see me through the winter when I needed a face to fall back on; I had to make new ones and sustain them, had to fill them with all the same excitement and comfort and conflict and courage that I craved and harbored in the darker months. I had to be different, not for them but for myself. I had to go on last-minute hikes when all I wanted was to settle down for dinner in the solitary comfort of my own silence because I would be left so far behind, and I feared that. I had to wiggle myself into group chats and drag myself to parties. I can pretend that I hated it, but it was the smartest thing I could have done.
It was better because it was intensely un-American. This is not to say that I’m not patriotic (although, to be fair, I’m not) but rather that I needed a cleanse, a culture that loved itself and its values more than it feared indifference toward the shining, dysfunctional city on a hill. While they are sufficiently westernized, presenting me with the most minimal of culture shocks, they pay us no nonsense debts. They put all kinds of weird things on pizza and eat tacos on Fridays. They have free STD testing and emergency contraception. I was never surrounded by other Americans but rather relied on a weird circle of Italians, Spaniards, Danes, Germans, and the Dutch; the Alaskans referred to themselves as Alaskan, not American.
But it was lonely, of course, and most days I wouldn’t force myself on hikes or cabin trips and would make dinner alone, instead. It wasn’t as if I wanted to be alone, and it wasn’t as if I was unwelcome among the neighbors. I could try to blame the cold, but to that I adjusted quickly, and I could try to blame the darkness, but in that tiny pause at the bottom of an exhale the nighttime disappeared entirely. It was a loneliness that pulled me to my bed because there were aches and migraines, fears that stem from having a vast, mountainous wonder of nature beyond your door and not knowing what to do with it. I backed out of things under the false protection of solitary comfort, but when the neighbors snapped on their snowshoes and shuffled out in a line of selfie sticks and pom-pom hats, I did not feel better.
So, in that way, it changed me. I learned to accept comfort in the presence of other people, in the midst of other environments; I learned to accept happiness in sacrificing that which had trapped me in a dishonest idea of freedom. I learned to maneuver myself into my own ideals at my own rhythms rather than wait for a random chance at satisfaction.
Overthe past six months I’ve fed reindeer, tried skiing for the first time, had a barbeque in the snow, toured the world’s northernmost brewery, climbed mountains, wandered around fjords in freezing weather for hours in an (unsuccessful) attempt to find whales, had a Bulgarian egg fight, crossed a frozen lake on the first of May, seen the northern lights more times than I can count, played beer pong with students from across the world, listened to a traditional Sami yoik, and watched a reindeer race. I attended yoga and other fitness classes taught entirely in Norwegian, and I volunteered at a local cat shelter. I visited my grandmother in Denmark, who speaks no English, and managed to get by on my rudimentary Danish. I planned my own travel, exploring foreign cities on my lonesome.
My semester in Tromsø didn’t feel like a study abroad program as much as a life on my own, driven partly by boredom, partly by curiosity, and in a way, I think I came here to see if I could handle it: the climate, the long semester, the language barrier, the crummy food. I could. And I’m looking ahead to the next destination.
Photos by author