Seeing the Aurora Borealis from Within the Arctic Circle

I've always wanted to see the Northern Lights -- and this weekend, I finally did! In early September, D and I were sipping cups of coffee at a local cafe, sharing the Saturday London newspaper, when we read an article in the travel section about Tromso, Norway -- a town located on the northern coast of Norway, 230 miles inside of the Arctic Circle and only 1200 miles from the North Pole. Tromso is called "The Gateway to the Arctic" and is known for being a great spot to see the Aurora Borealis, aka the Northern Lights. Before we'd gotten up from the table, we decided that we would plan a trip there in the hopes of getting a glimpse of the lights. We returned on Tuesday night from our 3-day stay. And what a stay it was! We got more than a "glimpse" of the lights -- we got a full-on show. We went out with a guide, who drove us about 15 miles outside of the city to a point where the skies were clear and there was little ambient light. The first thing we noticed were all of the stars -- I don't know that I've ever been able to see so many! Then we noticed the many shooting stars -- we were there during a period of meteor shower activity, so there were stars skittering across the night sky all evening long. And before long, we saw the Northern Lights. They started as a single line across the sky -- one which you could almost mistake for a line of clouds -- but they grew and changed into moving bands and swirls of light.(My point-and-shoot camera was rubbish for capturing images from the lights; these photos were taken by our guide.) While the lights appear vividly green in the photos, to the naked eye they are less colorful, a mint green, almost gray. We stood outside for about 5 hours, just watching the lights as they danced across the sky. It was an incredible, unforgettable experience. Here is a 3-minute time-lapse photography video from YouTube that does a good job of showing what it was like to watch.

The Aurora Borealis is caused by an electrical discharge in the sky, similar to lightning, but happening 100km up. High energy electrons generated by the discharge hit atoms and molecules in the upper atmosphere, which give off light. (There is a good FAQs website here if you are looking for more information.)To get to Tromso, you fly 4 hours nearly due north from London. Upon arriving, we discovered a picturesque small port & fishing town: with lots of wooden houses: and Lutheran churches, including this wooden church :and a striking, and far more modern, triangular-shaped cathedral located at the end of the bridge across the water from our hotel. The town has a Polar Museum with exhibits about life in the Arctic and historic attempts to reach the North Pole. We spent a fair amount of time at the museum, as D has read a lot about the polar expeditions and was particularly interested in the artifacts. At this time of year, the sun never rises above the horizon in Tromso. It gets "bright" at about 10:00am, just like it does anywhere at dawn, and stays that way until about 1:30pm, when this photo was taken:By 2:00pm, it's pitch black dark again. But that's OK -- there were plenty of cozy pubs: and restaurants to enjoy by candlelight! (That's a local Tromso beer, by the way, from Mack, the world's northernmost brewery. There's a lot of "the world's northernmost ___" in Tromso...) (And if Santa doesn't make it all the way to your town this year, it might be because D was eating reindeer steak in that photo. Blitzen, perhaps?) To see the sun, you have to gain elevation, which we did on a day-long snowmobile trek. We didn't make it to sunlight, but riding into the mountains got us close enough to see sunlight on the tops of the peaks. The snowmobiling was great fun -- it was just us (sharing a snowmobile) and a French couple (each on their own machine), led by a guide. (But after all those years of snowmobiling in Bedford, it didn't seem quite right not to have Tom, Jamie, Bart, Lauri, and Mom & Dad there too!) We rode through trees on private land: before reaching the mountainous public area. On the open flats you could really get the snowmobiles going; D says we were going about 65 kph at this point:

Woohoo! The temperature was around 15 degrees F, but we were dressed warmly in the thermal suits provided by the trek company so we never got cold. The scenery was gorgeous, and we never saw another person until we encountered this dogsledder upon our return to the camp: where we were given coffee and a steaming bowl of stew fresh off of the fire inside of a teepee: Merry Christmas everyone!