We were picked up for the Northern Lights tour at around 7:30pm on a cold night. Outside of the city where we were going to was going to be about -17°C. I was wearing thermals under my thermals, plus gloves and a beanie (not my usual cold weather attire because both tend to annoy me!). But I was not going to miss a second because I was cold!
As usual, I had done a lot of research into this tour and decided on the Enjoy the Arctic tour. They were all about the same price, but this one won because it seemed to be more genuine. They were determined that we would see the Northern Lights, even if that meant crossing into Finland, and I was heartened by this – at least we would have a guide who was equally keen to have us see the Lights as we were to see them. Krysty and Emma, of course, came with me on one of the best nights of my life!
We drove out to this one spot not far from the city where the road had been dug out of the snow – seriously, the snow was banked about 50cm on the side of the road. We stopped and got out… There was some green streaking going across the sky but not a lot. Our guide asked us if we wanted to move on or stay where we were, and we stayed, saying we’d see how it went before choosing to move on. The sky was clear, we were just waiting for the colours.
Thankfully, it didn’t take long and the dull greenish lines soon intensified and then exploded across the whole sky. Honestly, the Lights in Iceland were good but nothing on the activity we saw in Norway. The sky was just green and purple in some places and it just kept going.
I was standing outside with the guide just taking photo after photo after photo, while the others in our group kept popping off to the van to warm up a little. At one point, Krysty had to tell me to get into the van as I went to tell her something, found that my mouth was frozen and I sounded like I was drunk – the cold does some strange things!
After a bit, we had all decided to stay there so the guide cut out a sitting area in the snow banks by the side of the road and lit a fire. Yes, lit a fire ON TOP OF THE SNOW!! It was insane. He also demonstrated to us that the road that we were standing and driving on was actually about 50cm down and we were actually just standing on compacted snow. Seriously!!
Anyway, the fire was very welcome, although I obviously picked a bad spot and kept getting smoked out. We had some tea and coffee and warmed up, though I was already cold to the bone that it took ages to thaw out. Then once everyone was happy with the amount of Northern Lights we’d seen (and they had already started to die down) we jumped back in the van and were dropped off home.
Ok that’s the story, now here are the photos… Lots of them! The lights were strong enough that they showed up on mobile phones, and these were not particularly long exposures because they were so bright!
One of the best nights ever…
