Polar Museum Tromsø

Fittingly for a town that was the launch pad for many pioneering expeditions to the North Pole, Tromsø's Polar Museum is an old-fashioned romp through life in the Arctic, taking in everything from the history of trapping to the ground-breaking expeditions of Nansen and Amundsen. There are some fascinating artefacts and black-and-white archive photos; though the stuffed remains of various formerly fuzzy, once-blubbery polar creatures are rather less fun...and there are lots of them. The museum is in a harbourside building that served as Tromsø's customs house from 1833 to 1970.