Key takeaways
- Sommaroy sits at the end of the island chain running west from the city, reached by road across bridges and causeways.
- Ground shell and pale rock rather than dark volcanic material, with clear shallow water above it turning turquoise in sun.
- Around three hundred people live here and the harbour still works, so this is a village rather than a resort built for visitors.
- The 2019 campaign to abolish clocks made headlines worldwide and turned out to be a tourism promotion rather than a referendum.
Where it is and how you get there
Sommaroy lies at the western end of the island chain that runs out from Tromso toward the open sea, roughly an hour by road. The route crosses to Kvaloya first, the large island immediately west of the city, and then works along its outer coast to the smaller islands beyond it.
The final approach is over a bridge that has become one of the more photographed pieces of infrastructure in northern Norway, a slim curve of concrete across shallow turquoise water. The fact that you can drive here at all is a small marvel of Norwegian road building, and it is why a day trip from the city is possible.
Why the beaches look like that
The colour is the thing nobody quite believes. Sommaroy's beaches are pale, almost white, and the water over the shallows runs from clear to a vivid turquoise on a bright day. Photographs get accused of being taken in the tropics with mountains added afterwards.
There is no trick. The sand is made of ground-down shell and light-coloured rock rather than the dark material that darkens most northern beaches, and the water is exceptionally clear because no rivers here carry silt into the sea. Shallow clear water over pale sand produces turquoise at any latitude. The snow-covered mountains behind are what make it look impossible.
It is a real village
Around three hundred people live on Sommaroy, and the island has a working harbour, fishing boats, a school and the ordinary infrastructure of a small Norwegian community. It is not a resort assembled around a beach.
That matters to how you behave when you visit. The painted timber cabins along the shore are somebody's house or somebody's boathouse, and this operator specifically asks that they are viewed from the coach rather than wandered among, out of respect for residents. It is a fair request and it is the reason the village still feels like one.
White sand and turquoise water at Sommaroy
The story about abolishing time
In 2019 Sommaroy made news around the world with a campaign to declare itself a time-free zone, on the reasoning that a place with two months of midnight sun and two months of polar night has an odd relationship with the clock. Islanders were photographed tying watches to the bridge.
It was, as later reporting established, a tourism campaign rather than a genuine local movement, and the clocks were never actually abolished. It remains a good story and it points at something true: at this latitude the daily rhythm really is dictated by light that behaves nothing like it does further south.
What there is to do
Walk on the beaches, mostly, and look at the water. The island is small and low, mostly bare rock and grass rather than forest, so views run a long way in every direction and the light does most of the work. In summer the flowers are surprising and in winter the whole thing is white to the shoreline.
Beyond that there is the harbour to look at, the bridge to photograph, and a great deal of open coast. This is not a place with attractions in the ticketed sense. It is a place you go to be in, which is precisely why an expedition that brings you here with a picnic and time to stand about is the right format for it. Bring a camera you are happy to use in a breeze, and shoes that cope with sand, wet rock and grass in the same hour.
The light, month by month
From late May to late July the sun does not set, which means an afternoon expedition happens in exactly the same light as a midnight one. That is genuinely disorienting the first time and it is why the island's time story caught on.
From late November to mid January the sun does not rise at all, and the island sits under hours of blue twilight in the middle of the day with snow reflecting it back. Both extremes are worth seeing, and they produce such different photographs of the same beach that people struggle to believe they are the same place.
When to come
Summer is when the beaches look their most improbable, the water is at its most swimmable and the island is green and flowering. If the turquoise photographs are what brought you here, come between June and August and you will get what you came for.
Winter is a completely different island and arguably the more atmospheric one: white sand under actual snow, blue twilight, and the possibility of aurora overhead on the drive back. The beaches are still there and still pale. The swim is a considerably braver proposition.
Whichever season you pick, dress for more weather than the photographs suggest. Sommaroy is an exposed island on the edge of the open sea, and the wind here has come a long way without meeting anything. A calm turquoise afternoon and a horizontal grey one can be the same week, and the island is worth seeing in either.
