TROMSO, Norway — Following in an unmarked car, the police began to look closely at a dark gray minivan with a foreign license plate. The stop and go movement drew attention. The frantic messages on the driver’s cell phone, too.
When he finally arrived at the snow- and slush-covered entrance to Tromso airport in Norway, he boarded two passengers.
“As soon as they started walking, we turned on the blue siren,” recalled superintendent Lars Holtedahl, speaking of the operation carried out in February. “They were completely taken by surprise.”
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The crime? Working as an unlicensed northern lights tour guide.
The infraction may seem small to outsiders, but for the residents of Tromso, a small Norwegian city above the Arctic Circle, these guides have practically become Public Enemy No. 1.
Unregulated operators have caused chaos in Tromso, which is in a perfect position, between fjords and snow-capped mountains, to observe the Northern Lights, the colorful light show over the North Pole.
For much of the year, Tromso is a quiet university city of around 80,000 inhabitants. In recent years, however, the number of visitors has exploded, largely because of social media. In high season, from September to April, tourists can outnumber locals by 3 to 1.
In February alone, more than 137,000 visitors passed through Tromso Airport’s newly expanded international terminal, according to the state-owned company Avinor, which manages Norwegian airports.
This unregulated industry, local officials say, has sown chaos on the streets and harms both licensed operators and the city’s tax revenue.
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Most illegal operators come from China. The same goes for the growing number of tourists, some of whom end up being scammed. Many of the unauthorized guides arrive from outside Norway, work without proper documentation and take the profits away.
“We don’t see an increase in revenue in the municipality, we only see expenses,” said Helga Bardsdatter Kristiansen, the city’s first responsible for sustainability, pointing to the pressure on streets and public services. Almost half of the tour operators in Tromso are irregular, he added.
This season, police seized about 10 vehicles a month and arrested more than a dozen people for illegally transporting tourists, deporting guides who were not Norwegian.
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The driver arrested in February in the operation described by Holtedahl was a Chinese citizen in his 40s who was expelled from the country. When he was stopped, he lied and said he was taking relatives, according to police. Messages on his phone showed he had sold a five-day package for 31,000 yuan (more than $4,500).
“It’s a big industry,” Holtedahl said. “There are a lot of people making money, honestly and dishonestly.”
A typical tour starts at about $115 per person and can be full of stops, with drivers checking aurora tracking apps and driving to the Finnish border, 100 miles away, in search of the lights.
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The barrier to entry is low.
“You need to know where to go and you need the car,” said Kurt Kolvereid Jacobsen, one of those responsible for a special team called the A-Crime unit, created last year to focus on the northern lights industry.
In Tromso, the local A-Crime unit takes to the streets at dusk, when buses fill the roads waiting for passengers. Dressed in fluorescent jumpsuits, agents search vehicles for illegal guides.
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Irregular operators are often one step ahead.
Authorities working with A-Crime said they discovered a group of messages in which illegal guides exchanged tips to escape inspections. Pretending customers were family was a common tactic.
On Red Note, a Chinese social media app, there are hundreds of posts complaining about scams. One user, a resident of Chengdu, in southern China, reported that the only thing she saw during the tour was the inside of a police station — after the illegal guide who picked her up was arrested.
“The driver became extremely agitated and demanded that I lie to the police: ‘Just say we are friends, otherwise this is an illegal operation and I will be punished!’” she wrote, saying she was questioned for four hours.
Another tourist, Tingting Wang, paid US$1,400 so she and her elderly parents could see the Northern Lights. On the first night, the sky was completely overcast. On Monday, the guide didn’t show up.
She returned to Shanghai and lied to her parents, saying she had gotten a refund.
Tromso, she told us, “is very beautiful and looks like a fairy tale”, but “tourism is very chaotic”.
On the main road, tourists line up to eat fries at what bills itself as the world’s northernmost McDonald’s or take selfies next to troll statues made famous by Disney’s “Frozen” franchise. There is almost always a line in front of the reindeer hot dog stand.
The crowds bother many locals, but especially aurora hunting veterans like Gunnar Hildonen.
Unregistered drivers accept a fraction of the $250 he charges for a seat in his 16-seater minibus, he said.
“This season should be a celebration because it’s my 20th sunrise,” he said, after clearing a path through the snow for guests. “But everything went downhill.”
This article was originally published on The New York Times.
