Looking for Aurora in Norwegian Lapland

He had spent several days in the Polar Circle looking for her. But she didn't show up. I spent nights of intense cold waiting for her in a tent, in the middle of the frozen blanket of Lapland. And she didn't come. Then I tried it in a more civilized place, the outskirts of Tromsø, in case she was more into the urban than the rural. And neither. I was already walking with my head down and half gone, as jilted lovers walk, hurrying through the few hours remaining for the return trip already closed, when the last night it occurred to me to climb to the top of the island of Tromsøya, to a frozen lake in whose center light purity is guaranteed. And suddenly, as soon as I got out of the taxi, I found her! She was there, high up, dressed in bottle green, elegant and sinuous, swinging her long arms in the polar darkness. She was the dawn! The Northern Lights! She furrowing her firmament with her long stamens, as if a gigantic hand had thrown aniline –green industrial dye– on the black rug of the celestial vault.

There are few atmospheric phenomena more fascinating, enigmatic and unpredictable than the Northern Lights. You can travel to the other end of the world, pawn your savings and your time in the company, spend entire nights in the open and semi-frozen... and come back empty without seeing them. And you can have rookie luck and find it fluttering over the horizon the first time you arrive in a suitable area, like a fluorescent gas flag someone hangs from the sky every night.

The northern lights are produced by the impact of solar particles colliding with the Earth's atmosphere. The magnetic field that surrounds the terrestrial globe directs them towards the terrestrial poles. But contrary to popular belief, the highest concentration of northern lights does not occur at the poles, but in an oval area that surrounds them and that more or less coincides with the polar circles. Although there is an average of 240 nights with auroras in these regions, one more variable must be added to the aurora hunter's baggage: accessibility. Just look at a map to realize that most of those areas located between the Arctic Circle and the North Pole are inaccessible. And let's not mention those in the southern hemisphere: the Antarctic Circle falls into the ocean and a part even touches the shores of Antarctica.

For this reason, one of the best places in the world to see this phenomenon, which fascinated the first European navigators who were looking for the Northwest Passage, back in the 16th century, is the north of Norway. Places like Tromsø, the Lofoten Islands, the province of Finmmark or Kirkenes have daily flights from Oslo, warm and comfortable hotels, good infrastructure and tourist service companies, including aurora hunters, who take customers to the best places to contemplate them.

But Lapland in winter is not just auroras. It is surprising that such a northern territory, covered by a blanket of snow throughout the winter season, offers so many things to see and do. Norwegians like to joke about the clichés that travelers know about the country: all fjords are the same, Norway is very far away, everything is very expensive, it's always cold... But when they laugh the most is when some foreigner says that Norway it's just a summer destination.

When the south of Europe shivers with cold, for the Nordics the high season begins. With the exception of brown cheese, nothing excites a Norwegian more than a snowy landscape and a temperature of -15ºC. Not surprisingly, skiing was invented here, at least 4,000 years ago.

For tourists from the sunny continental south, this ability to take advantage of such extreme conditions is almost miraculous. Everything, absolutely everything, is prepared in the Lapland of Norway to enjoy the winter outdoors.

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You can do, for example, snowmobile tours, vehicles that have already become essential for six months a year in these latitudes. Sami herders use them to control their herds, parents take their children to school, and in remote areas it is preferable to go buy bread on the safety of their caterpillar wheels than by car.

Traveling by piloting your own snowmobile through the great Finnmark plateau, for example, a flat and sparsely wooded region where three cultures, Norwegian, Finnish and Russian, come together, is a superb way to discover a still virgin Europe, for which we could travel for days without bumping into another human being.

Another more natural (and ecological) way to get around Lapland in winter is by dog ​​sledding. In addition to having been a traditional means of transportation for all the peoples of the Arctic, and also the most effective method that polar explorers found to advance through these inhospitable territories, Nordic dog sledding is now one of the biggest tourist attractions in Lapland. .

There are also ice hotels, saunas, snowshoe walks, coexistence with Sami shepherds, artisanal cod fishing, theme parks for children, gastronomy based on reindeer and fish... and many more activities.

Who said that the far North was boring in winter?

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