We walked a bit down a path that led to a campfire and sat on reindeer skins in the snow. Our guide told us about the folklore surrounding the Northern Lights. During Scandinavia's witch-burning times, the people used to believe that the lights were the spirits of the witches they had killed, and so they actually feared the auroras. People also used to believe that when women died as virgins, the lights are the girls flouncing their skirts to make all the men below on Earth sorry that they had never been with them.
This was around 7pm, and the sky was mostly clear. There was still a bit of light pollution from town, and that early in the night is not ideal for viewing the aurora. There was only a faint glow of green in the sky, and it seemed like the other group members were quite disappointed. Kyle and I were the only ones staying the night, so we weren't too worried because we planned to stay up all night to see them; 3am is the optimal viewing time.
We were a bit concerned when we learned that we were the only people staying the night; is there a reason why it is not so popular? But our guide assured us that it was only because we were staying on a Monday night, as on weekends the two communal tents are full with tourists. The tents are modeled after the culture of the Sami people, who are the indigenous people of Scandinavia.
We were shown our private tent which was covered in reindeer skins and heated by a small furnace. It also had windows which let us check on the skies throughout the night without having to go out into the cold. They had set out trays with tea, coffee, and snacks and lit the tent with candles. Very cozy and romantic, our Sami tent for two! Usually a private tent costs extra, but we were lucky to be the only ones there and have the privacy for free. It certainly was a better experience than heading back to a hotel in town before it was even late enough to see the lights.
We were given dinner (reindeer stew for Kyle and couscous and vegetables for me, followed by tea, coffee, and homemade Norwegian chocolate cake) in a larger Sami tent which housed wooden tables and seal skin covered seats. Visitors could also roast sausages by the indoor fire, and our guide made sure that everyone had enough food and drink.
After the other visitors had left, our guide told us that we were allowed to come and go as we pleased. He gave us snow shoes and headlamps and we grabbed some reindeer skins and trekked out into a snow-covered field away from the camp. We laid on our backs and watched the lights grow and recede. One grew larger and larger until it streaked across the sky right above us, although it was still very faint:
I was pleasantly surprised to see these lights at about 10 pm because I thought we would have to stay up all night to see them. We had also checked the weather forecast before we left Oslo, and it looked like the sky would be completely cloudy from 6 pm until morning. If you plan to look for the Northern Lights, you must know that even if there are all the lights there can be, you won't see any if there are clouds in your way. Luckily for us though, it was only partly cloudy for the first half of the night.
The day we visited, the sunrise was at 11:30am and sunset was at 12:17pm, so barely more than 45 minutes of sunlight. During the wintertime in Tromsø there is so little daylight that you can potentially see the lights at any time, if there is a high forecast level of course. Our guide said that he has seen them at 6pm in August, so it is possible to even seen them in the daylight as well.
I would have been disappointed at how faint they were, but I had not expected to see them at all so I was actually quite pleased. Next we should head south of New Zealand to see the Aurora Australis!
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