I’m always going about how unique and special it is to go back to the same place multiple times. I usually try to take frequent local trips to the same area, route, spot within short periods of time or in different seasons or at different times of the day. I’m familiar with this pattern, and I love it. It’s how I like to grow familiar with places, if and when I get the option to.

But this one time I went back to a place I’d already been to years ago. I went back to Tromsø 11 years after my first ever visit there and, while I did recognise most of its landmarks, urban geography and mesmerising views, it did feel like a new, ‘unusual’ way of returning to a place. A lot had changed, and I had changed too. It felt a bit like looking at the city with fresh eyes, as if, more than the place itself, it was my way of looking at it that had changed, and the things and spots my eyes dwelt on were not all the same that had drawn my attention over a decade ago.

The thing I loved the most, though, was just being there. Maybe it was the season: the cold, the dim light, the late sunrises and the 2.30pm sunsets, polar night slowly approaching but not quite there yet. It was also the northern lights, the snow-capped mountains that made for a perfect background to the city views, the humpback whales and orcas swimming down the fjord, showing us all what true beauty really is, and how we should be more respectful of their own home (theirs, not ours) than we think we already are (we never are). It was definitely the Arctic air, the knowing that I was there, up North, and it felt right, and it felt familiar, and it warmed my heart.

Of all places I’d ever been to in Norway, the one I remembered most fondly had always been Bodø – Svalbard aside, that is. But the very few days I got to spend in Tromsø in November were truly special, and left me genuinely enchanted.