Ølhallen, Henry Rudi and the Stories That Came Back From the Ice

There are places in Tromsø where history feels very far away.

And then there are places where you can almost imagine someone opening the door, brushing snow from his coat and sitting down to tell you what happened in the Arctic.

Ølhallen is one of those places.

It is one of Tromsø’s old beer halls, and for generations it has been a room for stories. Some of them true. Some of them probably improved after the second beer.

One of the men most closely connected with that world was Henry Rudi, known as the Polar Bear King.

The way I like to tell the story is this:

When Rudi went north into the ice, his chair at Ølhallen stayed empty.

Four months. Seven months. Maybe longer.

Nobody took it.

And when he finally returned to Tromsø, he sat back down in his place and started talking.

Because what else do you do after spending months in the Arctic with only a handful of other men?

You tell stories.

And the useful thing about travelling with only three or four other people is that there are not many witnesses around to correct you when the story gets better every time you tell it.

That, to me, is very North Norwegian.

A room built for stories

You can still walk into Ølhallen today and find traces of that old Arctic world.

The trappers, hunters, sailors and characters who came back from the north did not return with PowerPoint presentations.

They returned with stories.

Stories about storms. Animals. Cold. Luck. Bad decisions. Near misses. And probably a few things that became more impressive with every retelling.

That is part of why I love places like Ølhallen.

History is not sitting politely behind glass.

It is sitting at the table next to you, interrupting, exaggerating and ordering another beer.

And then the women wanted in

Of course, there was one small problem with this wonderful room full of beer and stories.

For a long time, women were not allowed inside.

Which, understandably, did not make the women of Tromsø particularly happy.

The way the story is told is that when it finally became time to let women into Ølhallen, the owners ran into a practical problem.

The women would need a toilet.

But if they built a brand-new toilet only for the women, the men would complain that the women had the better facilities.

And you cannot have that.

So the solution was beautifully Tromsø:

Build a new toilet for the men.

Give the old men’s toilet to the women.

Problem solved.

And from then on, men and women could sit under the same roof, drink beer and tell stories that were more or less true.

“History is not sitting politely behind glass.”

The real tradition was never just hunting

People sometimes imagine Arctic history as a collection of dates, expeditions and famous names.

That is the boring version.

The interesting version is what happened when people came home.

Who had the best story? Who had the worst winter? Who almost died? Who definitely did not almost die, but told the story as if they had?

That oral tradition matters in Tromsø.

It is one of the reasons I tell guests on my walks that I have one personal rule:

I never let the truth come in between me and a good story.

Not because history does not matter.

Because if all I do is give you dates and names, you might as well read Wikipedia in your hotel room.

A good story should make you picture the room.

The empty chair.

The door opening after months in the Arctic.

A man sitting down.

And everyone around him leaning in.