Norway provides US $12 million for Olympiad bid

12 million USD in governmental support
to the Norwegian Chess Olympiad bid

Press release – Tromsø, 23.12.2009

The Minister of Sports and Culture in Norway, Mrs. Anniken Huitfeldt has announced that the Norwegian government will support The City of Tromsø’s bid for the Chess Olympiad in 2014. The Chairman of the Board of the Bidding Committee, Mr. Henrik Andenæs, states:

“The governmental support for the 2014 Olympiad of NOK 70 million (USD 12 million) represents a fundamental foundation to the further enhancement of winning the international bidding competition in Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia, October 2010. This grant from the Minister of Culture secures sufficient financial and political support. With the City of Tromsø as applicant city, we will deliver a high quality application in compliance with the FIDE (World Chess Federation) bidding conditions by the end of April 2010.”

Former Vice President in FIDE and now international advisor for the Norwegian Bidding Committee, Mr. Morten Sand says: "The governmental support is very important. We are not sure which other countries will bid for the 2014 Chess Olympiad. Regardless of this, we will increase our efforts during the months to come, to make sure that the decision makers and the world of chess knows what Norway and the City of Tromsø has to offer – being elected as host for the 41st Chess Olympiad in 2014."

For questions or comments to the bidding organization contact:

• Henrik Andenæs, Chairman of the Board , 004795143830, henrik.andenas@dht.no
• Børge Robertsen, General Manager, 004791647329, borge.robertsen@tromso2014.no
• Homepage

Tromsø – Arctic Chess

Pictorial report by Frederic Friedel

For those of you who missed our previous articles on the subject (see links at the end of this report), here's a geographical rundown of the place that is bidding for the 2014 Chess Olympiad. Those of you who have read the articles can skip the intro and proceed to the new part about the whales.

The Arctic Circle is one of the major circles of latitude, running 66.56° north of the Equator. It marks the southern extremity of the "polar day", which is when the sun is visible for 24 hours (usually referred to as the "midnight sun") at least once per year, and polar night, when the sun does not appear above the horizon for 24 hours. The midnight sun can be seen in summer for many days, weeks or months, depending on how far north of the arctic circle a place is located.

The places where people can see the midnight sun are Alaska, northern Canada, Greenland, Iceland, northern Norway, Sweden, Finland, and some extremities of Russia. At Finland's northernmost point, the sun does not set for 73 days during summer.

View Larger Map – zoom, pan, and choose map style.
The city of Tromsø lies in the northern-most region of Norway, 69° 40' 33" N, 18° 55' 10" E,
almost 400 km inside the Arctic Circle

The island city of Tromsø as seen in Google Earth

In Tromsø there are remains of settlement that go back to the end of the ice age. The first church was built in 1252, and in the 19th century it became a major centre for Arctic hunting. During World War II it served briefly as the seat of Norwegian government, and the German battleship Tirpitz was sunk off the Tromsø Island in 1944. Today there are over 100 nationalities in the town's population.

A note on the name: in Europe it is known as "Tromsö", but the Norwegians pronounce it "Troom-sa", the first vowel as in "rook" and the second consisting of a special Norwegian schwa which is not easy to transcribe, describe or even vocalise. But these Nordic people are generous and will accept various pronunciations.

A whale of a time in Tromsø

By Frederic Friedel

Last year we visited the northern island city, invited by the organiser of the Arctic Chess Challenge Jan Sigmund Berglund, and spent a week full of the most interesting experiences in recent years. On this we reported extensively, in this pictorial report of our arrival (including the delivery of Magnus Carlsen back to his family), and this second report, describing some of the excursions we undertook in Tromsø.

But there was a lot more, and the Tromsø archive is full of pictures that still await publication. We use the opportunity of the Christmas good tidings press release by our friend Børge Robertsen to revisit the island and show the participants of the 2014 Olympiad (hopefully) what is in store for them.

On the way to the harbour an encounter with a polar bear – well, just a realistic model,
but it gives you a feel for the size of the animal that is fast becoming an endangered species.

The harbour building is shaped like a ship of sorts

On the way out we encounter the obligatory reindeer

Our host, Børge Robertsen, who is looking after Tromsø's Olympiad bid

The whale watching ship wends its way through the Norwegian fjords

In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams' seminal work of literature, the Megrathean designer of planets, Slartibartfast, confesses that the favourite part of the job was creating coastlines, the most notable of which were the fjords found on the coast of Norway on planet Earth. In fact he won an award for them.

When Earth Mk. II was being made, Slartibartfast was assigned to the continent of Africa. He was unhappy about this, because he wanted to make more fjords (arguing that they give a continent a baroque feel), and fjords in Africa would be hard for him to explain without natural glacial movement.

Finally we leave the fjords and head out to the open sea with Robertson and Friedel, On the whale watching ship they supply you with sea-sickness pills, which are a boon to the inexperienced voyager.

Marine biologists man the highest point on the ship and look out for whales

One thing this trip teaches you: whales are gigantic creatures, but the ocean itself is many orders of magnitude bigger, and the idea that you will be able to spot an animal, however large, seems quite impossible. Whales, however, have an evolutionary defect that has almost caused their extinction: when they surface to breath, the air they exhale is decompressed, which cools it and produces a mist of condensed water that is visible for miles.

The whale watching ship cuts its engines and approaches a whale silently. The whale will do a few small dives and blows (sigh: "for the tourists"). Sometimes you can get up really close.

At some stage it takes a huge lunge out of the water and dives almost vertically into the waves. The last you see of it is the fluke or tail fins of the diving whale.

The fluke of the diving whale is a good-bye signal, and the captain of the whaling ship immediately restarts the engines to search for another whale. This one will be under of up to an hour.

Tromsø restaurants serve whale on their menu – and yes, we tried it (tastes a bit like liver)

We are not proud of having partaken in a dish of whale meat – actually it was done solely to find out why people in places like Japan are so eager to keep butchering these magnificent animals. We have come up with the following solution to the problem: some whales, like the Minke and Pilot whales, have healthy populations, and so we should allow a certain number – e.g. 500 of each per year – to be hunted and used for specialist gourmet restaurants. Similarly the population of whaling ships has reached healthy proportions, so we should allow a certain number – e.g. twelve per year – to be torpedoed and sunk. The culling of whaling ships could be left to third-world countries who would get an opportunity to practice naval warfare while fulfilling an important service to nature and conservation.

Previous ChessBase reports on Tromsø