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A cabin along a fjord in Norway for holidays
Enjoy our next holidays in Northern Norway, with a cabin along a fjord at Ersfjordbotn Brygge. You will have a Crush for that cute tiny and warmfum village.
Maybe it is time for you to plan your next holidays right? Norway is a country at you have always think about visiting, but where starting South/ North? Everything has to be seen there. Let’s start by the North, with a cabin along a fjord!
Discovering the special light in Northern Norway
Starting by the North is an interesting choice because you have not only sceneries and wildlife, you have also 2 experiences to live: polar night or midnight sun. So it doesn’t matter at you plan to come by summer or by winter! For sure, it will be unique!
And when we talk about polar night, we think obviously about Northern Lights too. That’s why we offer tours with our second company Arctic Booking : everything is ready for you in the same place!
During that season, dark lights offer a special cosy mood where everyone wants to enjoy snow, northern lights, fireplace / plaid and coffee. Actually, there is a Swedish word to describe this mood, this one is popular all over the world: HYGGE. And in Norway, the translation is KOSE (pronunciation is “kousse”). We use a lot the expression “Kos deg” which means in a way: enjoy it…
Prefer a cabin along a fjord than an hotel in a city center: Norway is Nature not building!
Beside, and in order to discover Norway, it is comfy to stay in a cosy cabine like the ones of Ersfjordbotn Brygge. This place is really close to Tromsø but on an another island called Kvaløya. It is only 25min by car from Airport to the village.
Kvaløya means Island of Whale, and it is true, there is, depending years, whales and orcas coming here from November to January. Apart from the fact that you can see orcas and whales, Kvaløya has so much to offer and to visit. In winter or in summer, it is crazy how much spots you can enjoy, how much animals you can meet, and Ersfjordbotn is one of them. Really famous to be on one hand, the closest and most beautiful fjord from Tromsø. And, on the other hand, one of the best northern lights spot!
So come and enjoy a cabin along a fjord like the Ersfjorden!
Northern Lights Norway: experience a chase in Northern Norway
When you decide to travel to see the Northern Lights, you have to invest in a real chase. It is not only to have better chance to see them, but it is also to live a special experience in Northern Norway.
In Northern Norway, you are up to the Polar Circle, so you have better chance to see some Northern Lights than anywhere else in Norway. But where to go? How to know when to see them and how to catch them with a camera? For that, you just need to come with us, at Ersfjordbotn Brygge and experience a chase!
Northern Lights Chase in Norway
Why call we that a chase? This is just because it is tricky, but so awesome to see that it worths it!
Actually, a such experience consists to start early by night…well night here in Northern Norway can start early…2 PM! But we use to start our tour at 6:30 PM.
Just a reminder that up to the Polar Circle, you have the Polar Night and the Midnight Sun. One stays down to the horizon line during almost 2 months (from November to January) , the second stays up during the same time but in summer.
Joking aside, if you want to meet the Northern Lights, called also Aurora or the Green Lady, you need to have it above you in the sky basically. For checking that, here in Northern Norway, we use some apps on smartphone which notify us when it is coming.
To imagine the phenomenon, we can describe it like a cloud turning up to the globe, with more or less density and intensity and never the same shape. We have also apps to inform us how it looks like hour by hour. So imagine coming here without any of these tips, you can stay in the coldness from daytime to nighttime, and never see anything!
With our professional northern lights chaser, we decide where it is the less cloudy in order to have better chance to see it. But don’t worry you are at the best place in the world to see them! Once, we have an itinerary we can start to drive until the time that special magnetic colored cloud is above us and just cross fingers to see something. Like we use to say:
We have the skills but unfortunately any button to switch on it!
Northern Lights Norway: more than a chase, a real Norwegian experience
To across the area where we decide to chase, we are in a mini bus, with a local driver. So don’t worry, he knows perfectly how to drive on ice with spikes wheels of course!
Besides, our time of travelling is also really interesting because on the one hand, we have time to share with you some local stories, cultural and traditional ones…
On the other hand, you can see along the road our specials friends which come up when it is quiet and dark: polar animals like moose, fox, otter, reindeer, wolves, wolverine etc…!
When we will be outside, ok it could be really cold but we provide special suits, we make bonfire, we drink warm tea, coffee, soup… Like we are Norwegian, we know perfectly how to stay good outside for a long time. From Vikings, we are use to enjoy an outside living, so be part of it!
As you can now understand, chasing is not only meeting the Aurora, it is also discovering another part of our lifestyle, our story and our animals.
More informations about Northern Lights Tour are available in our website dedicated to activities you can do with Ersfjordbotn Brygge.
To finish, spend few minutes just to discover our cabin “Rorbu” to rent at our address to stay and enjoy the Fjord-lifestyle. Our village is one of the most famous and closest to Tromsø, well-known also to see beautiful northern lights.
Christmas holidays in an arctic place like Ersfjordbotn Brygge
After months locked in our country, it is time to plan the future. Specially this month, we think about Christmas Holidays coming… For sure, the following ones need to be extraordinary to skip 2020! Discover here why choosing Ersfjordbotn Brygge to enjoy it, up to the Polar Circle close to Tromsø.
Where to spend your next Christmas holidays? If you are looking for an extraordinary place where Christmas is magic, you HAVE TO experience an arctic place like Esrfjordbotn Brygge. Why? Discover it quickly below…
What Christmas holidays means?
Depend to who you ask, the answer is different, because everyone has a different way of enjoying Christmas holidays… but in the common perfect dream, we can see that kind of pictures:
So a wooden place to live surrounded by snow, a Christmas tree, a city lighted by thousand Christmas decorations, some cakes, and dear Santa Claus not so far from for all the family!
100% sure as you can enjoy some of those points in your home place BUT here we have everything! You can find special atmosphere that warms hearts too… Plus of course some magical moments that you can’t expect anywhere else in the world like:
Reindeer tour close to Tromsø
Northern Lights from Ersfjordbotn Brygge with our mini-bus tour
The Polar Night like it happens only up to the Polar Circle from November to January, where the sun does’nt rise up.
Orcas and whales enjoy a full concentration of herring here from November to January
No doubt all that points would make for you a perfect place for your next Christmas Holidays!
Outdoor Activities at Ersfjordbotn Brygge
We used to say:
Tromsø it’s a place that you need to experience once in a life.
Specially during winter time because all Christmas details takes place here, also because thousands outdoor activities are available.
With our second website Arctic Booking, you can discover several experiences waiting for you… Bus tour by “day” (from 10: to 15:, it is not completely dark!), fishing tour with or without a guide in our stunning fjord Ersfjorden, and a snowshoeing tour on our family-friendly mountain Nattmålsfjellet.
Meet the biggest sea-eagles!
After a long time without any possibility to travel: plan, come and breathe here the freshest, the healthiest air in the world. Our cabin called Rorbu in Norwegian are waiting for you to share a magical lifestyle that we are used to live here during Christmas.
Fishing Camp with Ersfjordbotn Brygge in Northern Norway
Are you passioned about fishing. If yes, come and experienced our fjord and deep sea fishing from one of the most beautiful place in northern Norway. Come in this post and discover what you are expected to catch: halibut, cod, salmon, redfish, saithe, wolffish, mackerel…
Ok let’s go for a Fishing Camp with Ersfjordbotn Brygge! Are you ready? Wait wait, maybe you need to be prepared on what you are about to catch before? Discover with us here, all informations about a fishing tour with Ersfjordbotn Brygge in Northern Norway, close to Tromsø.
First of all, have you seen the main page of that website and our services of rental boat and fishing tour?
Our customers are used to come and stay in a Rorbu during the week, and rent by themselves a boat, to go fishing at anytime. This is the easiest way to fish here following tidal, light and weather forecast…
But, you can also come and ask for a guided fishing tour with us! You will discover our secret places to catch the best and the biggest. We are not lying, Ersfjordbotn Brygge is an international well-known place to fish between fjord and deep sea.
It is also well-known because of its fishing room. Indeed, at Ersfjordbotn Brygge, you can bring your own fishing rob but we borrow winter inflatable suits, and a place to take care of your catches. This fishing room helps you to make the fillets and out them in vacuum bags before freezing them and send them to your own place.
From our fjord to your home!
So, enjoy not only the fishing tour, but also the time to prepare them, to measure them, to sort them.
What kind of fish can be caught in Northern Norway?
So, a comfortable way of fishing ok, nice, but what are you expecting to catch? Let’s discover with us some details about the most commun fish easy-to-fish.
Sebastes viviparus - Norway Redfish
Redfish
A redfish can be caught in the Ersfjorden. Usually, it lives on deeps between 80-1000 meters, in large shoals. It eats small fish and shrimps. Its weight can reach over 20 kg and a length up to 1 meter. But the most common here, is a 20 cm and 2 kg. Use your basic lures with 3-5 hooks.
You can cook it simply with a butter sauce: grilled, pan-fried, on the Half-shell with salt and pepper, but cumin, curry and chili sauce are welcomed!
Saithe - Coalfish - Pollachius virens
Saithe - Coalfish
The saithe is the one and only one enough strong to swim through the strongest tidal in the world, the Northern Norway one. During its migration, Coalfish eats herring, sprat, krill and other prey which makes it tasteful for us. Trust on us, Saithe is the easiest to catch from Ersfjordbotn Brygge. Indeed, each year, 300.000 tons are caught by the country everywhere around. Size: up to 120 cm and weight up to 30 kg.
You can cook it with grated potatoes, onion or in a soup.
Wolffish - Anarhichas lupus
Wolffish
For us, definitely the ugliest but the strongest and the most dangerous one: even a severed head can bite you! We called it also Catfish. A Wolffish feeding mostly on mussels, crabs and sea urchins. May and July are the best time to catch it in the Ersfjorden, between 20-50 meters deep. Use baits like blue mussels and coolish fillets. You can expect to get up to 140 cm and 25 kg…
The meat is delicate and often served as chops.
Halibut - Reinhardtius hippoglossoides
Halibut
Halibut is for us the best! Not only because of its weight and size up to 400 kg and 350 cm but because of its taste. It prefers the cold and deep waters (200-2000 meters). It is easy to recognize because this is the biggest flatfish and most stretched body shape than other flatfish.
It eats cod, herring and coolish, but it is able to feed on octopus and crabs. You can catch it on sand, gravel, stone from 5 to 2000 meters deep, in current water between high/low tide.
Cod - Gadus morhua
Cod
The Gold of Norway from decades!
Only in saltwater, primarily this is a sea bottom fish, you can find it over 600 m deep. Its size is up to 1,8 meter and 56 kg. There are two kinds of cod.
The first one which stays below the weed into the coastal areas, eating crabs and crustaceas. A really tasteful one! It is red, orange and brownish.
The second one, is coming from the Barents Sea. It accrosses the northern sea during its first years. Through that cold water, it will feed, grow, thick itself until arriving to Lofoten. We use to dry it in cold and clear weather during March/April. But we use also to cook it fresh; frozen fried and salted. It is only brownish.
Valentine’s Fish, the Skrei
To finish, you need to know the Valentine’s fish, the Skrei. It is a kind of Cod, but this one is the strongest and the first to come into the Norwegian coast. But also the hardest to catch by fishermen into dangerous seas during winter…and the romantic month, February.
Full of firm muscles, firm and delicate white meat, this is the highest quality of cod you can taste. It’s suitable for various preparations.
Mackerel - Scomber scombrus
Mackerel
The easiest fish to cook, the Mackerel.
Maximum 66 cm and 3,5 kg, it is a fast and muscular swimmer. It uses to live in large shoals in seawater from Morocco, to Norway where it is more in summer and autumn. You can find it at the surface eating krill, herring and sprat.
Salmon
Salmon
Last but not least, the Salmon. The second gold of Norway, known and eaten everywhere in the world.
Thanks to the Norwegian country restriction, restoration after the parasite gyrodactilys Salarius, this is now the WORLD MOST UNSPOILT TRAVEL DESTINATION. Salmon is used to be caught into rivers but we are used also to fish them in the Ersfjorden. The best time to fish Salmon is from June to end of August. Early in the season is the best to catch the biggest.
Now you are ready to go…in case of you don’t trust on our experience…Take a look at our gallery below and enjoy your next fish camp with us. See you soon!
Winter holidays in Tromsø: what is it about?
Plan your next winter holidays in northern Norway at Ersfjordbotn Brygge, close to Tromsø. You will experience the most beautiful fjord in the surroundings, during a special moment of the year: the polar night, with its blue light, its cosy mood. Many activities are possible during the daytime, and the nighttime, let’s plan them together!
Jingle Bells Jingle Bells…, well well…stop, stop it now please! This is winter time since months here in Tromsø…We can’t speak about this season by starting at Christmas. Here, we consider the winter season when the snow and the polar night are coming. Discover our awesome landscapes, culture and wildlife, without any other color than the white of the snow and the blue of the sky. For that, you will definitely love our holidays’ place, Ersfjordbotn Brygge!
November Sunset from the Cable Car of Tromsø
Polar Night: such an experience of holidays
Most of the time, we start to prepare ourself to winter in October. We clean the garden, sort the garage, and put the spikes weals… Snow is coming! So, after autumn holidays, no potatoe in the vegetable garden, we are ready to ski with headlight! So join us since November, if you want to discover the polar night which start November 27th, 2020.
Don’t be afraid to live it, or sad for us to be forced every year to jump into the darkness: it is the coziest moment of the year. And please, don’t say it is dark 24h a day: IT IS NOT! You will see fantastic colors and lights. Plus, you will have time to see the Northern Lights easier, longer, and oftenly!
So plan your winter holidays in Tromsø before January 14th, 2021, to experience a life without sun rays…but green lights!
The Blue Light
So, now you know there is no dark day. There is some hours with brightness lighting up the white mountains and the flat and quiet fjords around. It is the most peaceful place in the world!
Ok we are not really objectives though! But for sure, what is stunning here, is the contrast between the summer and autumn colors and the winter and spring one, which is only the white! And then, you will see our unique BLUE LIGHT. This is a mix between the brightness, the blue sky and the white summits. This unique set has to be seen once in a lifetime.
Tromsø by day, with the moon and the blue light
With Ersfjordbotn Brygge, we are not only offering Northern Lights’ Chase, but also some activities by day to enjoy that Blue light. And since the brightness is between 10:00 and 15:00, we are scheduling our tour during that time.
Please take a look at them, different holidays’ experience are waiting for you like snowshoes, top tour ski, fjord cruise, fishing tour, fjord visit by minibus…
Kose = Cosy
As we said before, it is the coziest moment of the year! Imagine, norwegian people (in the north by the way) have spent 6 months outside: hiking, bicycling, gardening, sailing…So it is ok to calm down a bit, to spend more time with kids, family and friends in a warmful way. So, our Scandinavian winter lifestyle is “Koselig”. It means to put you in a cosy mood. For that, you need a plaid, a book, candles, a coffee (tea is ok also…!) and just relax.
Your winter holidays in Northern Norway can be also for you, the most relaxing time of the year. Discover for that our Rorbu to rent, in the most beautiful fjord close to Tromsø.
Outside activities by night with headlight
Our last trick is to ask a special tour outside by night with headlight. It is really common for us to continue to do sports even if it is dark outside.
A hiking trip with snowshoes for instance is bewitching when you just can heard every single step you do, deeper and deeper in the snow, lighted up by the moon and the city lights
Winter holidays in Tromsø is the northernmost vacation experience that you can live… Try it now with us!
Why call we a cabin, a rorbu in Northern Norway?
Come and learn more about those cabins close to the fjord, with a special nordic architecture…!
Maybe you are looking for a place to sleep in Northern Norway for your next holidays, maybe you come back from there, with still some questions. Here is an answer about our norwegian architecture: what is a rorbu? What does it mean? Why do we call that a cabin?
First of all, if you have heard about Norway, you have seen them for sure! You know, those cabins close to the fjord in a special nordic architecture…
Modern and comfortable vacation homes is named Rorbu at Ersfjordbotn Brygge
At Ersfjordbotn Brygge, we rent vacation homes for 1 to 5 people that we called RORBU. But a Rorbu is really not like our comfortable and modern place.
Actually, we really advise you to read all the little lines of rental cabin called like that, because sometimes it could be an authentic one without any details of our contemporary furnishing!
Hva er en RORBU på norsk?
What is a Rorbu in norwegian?
A rorbu means a fisherman but if you divide the word, å ror is to row, and en bu means a little house.
Firstly, outside, that picturesque stilt house is generally built on a rock plus a use of poles, and made by wood. That architectural design is well-known and very used from 1100, up to the polar circle. The red color comes from the cheapest materials easy to buy at that time: the fish oil plus ocher pigments.
Then inside, typically, a rorbu consists of two rooms: a storage room for the cod and the food, and a living room with a bed.
King Øystein decided, in 1120, that rorbuer (cabins in plural) has to be built for fishermen. It is true that a long winter season of fishing requires a place to dock, and to deliver the fish. It is also right that the cod is still now the Gold of Norway. They had to take care of their fishermen!
However a fisherman cabin is not built to live but just to rest between two fishing times. That’s why it is, at the beginning, not so cosy and comfy. Still now, you can find cabin without water and electricity. Some scandinavian people are used to go in that authentic style, for holidays, to find again a simple and minimalistic life. It is also very good for kids to experience an another lifestyle without technology and so on…
Nevertheless, today, most of the rental rorbu you can find, are modern. They used to keep the wooden inside style, and the architectural shape for outside.
Come and experience the new lifestyle of a rorbu with us at Ersfjordbotn Brygge!