Based on an innocuous comment by a friend on Facebook, I looked up where “Tromsø” is using Google Maps. Then I noticed that Streetview was active all over the place, and I “drove around” a bit before I took this picture. Guess where we are just from looking at this photograph!

I wondered what Google was doing, driving around under a raised highway on a dirt road amongst trash dumps and weeds at a very remote place:

Ok, this is in Norway, near the city of Tromsø. The red arrow points approximately where the above picture is taken. Now let’s zoom out:

As you can see, this is as far north in Norway as it is possible to go and still have civilization. It is approximately at the latitude of Barrow, Alaska. And yes, there are people in Tromsø:

I wonder how Google decided to provide immense Streetview coverage in Tromsø, Norway, down to dirt roads under bridges, when some quite populated areas in the United States are still “off the map?”