Arctic FC
One of the last places you’d expect to find a professional football club is 200 miles inside the Arctic Circle, where the snow is enduring and the winter nights interminable. Yet if you journey to the far northern reaches of Norway, to the vast and sparsely inhabited county of Troms and Finnmark, you will find one of the last bulwarks of civilisation against which the harsh and unremitting wilderness encroaches.
On the island of Tromsoya is the settlement of Tromso, a small town of 70,000 people, home to the world’s northernmost professional football club: Tromso Idrettslag or TIL, for short.
Since their inception in September 1920, they are a club that have long been accustomed to doing things differently. In a country marked by the stark divide between its southern and northern reaches, Tromso have stitched something of a unique identity amidst the patchwork fabric of Norwegian football – and, increasingly, beyond.
“We are unique, and yet still the same,” says club CEO Oyvind Alapnes
