This was the tailpiece from my blog entry for having visited Stockholm in Sweden, back in May last year (in case you'd like to recap on that trip - you can do so at http://abroaderhorizon.weebly.com/blog/three-days-in-sweden). I have long wanted to see the Aurora - be that the Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights) or Aurora Australis (Southern Lights). I have never seen the Southern Lights (they were in the sky when I was in Timaru one night - sound asleep in bed, oblivious to the fact they were above!) and activity with them has gotten strong since I've been out of NZ - meaning friends of mine have been able to pull out Southern Lights with their cameras (but not see them with their eyes). I hadn't so far attempted to see them - from memory there was an initial suggestion for an aurora seeking trip not long after I arrived in the UK with Jeremy and Rachel, which eventually evolved into the Canary Islands trip.
Sasha wanted to see the Northern Lights as well, and had hoped to see them when she visited Iceland in late March last year - but for all 3 nights she was there, it was cloudy and she didn't see them. So we were both keen to try and see the Northern Lights sometime during the 2015/2016 winter - and agreed that we'd likely need a full week to try and increase the chance of seeing them. There were half-term school holidays right in the middle of February, an ideal time for me to get leave and therefore for us to attempt to see them. As you can see above from the quote, I already had some preconceived ideas how to achieve this having done research on where and when is best and achievable. So I started scoping up various trips based around those, discovering all sorts of possibilities, but also limitations in the process. In the end, it came down to four key destinations for consideration to see the Northern Lights: they were Iceland (where everyone we know seems to go to see them - easy to get to, it runs the risk of cloud due to its coastal nature); Kiruna or Abisko, Sweden - two remote towns which are protected largely from cloud by the ring of mountains which surround them; Tromso, Norway - further north than Kiruna and Abisko so better positioned for aurora viewing, but its more coastal so runs a greater risk of cloud; and Svalbard, Norway - a large Island group far to the north of Norway, and about as close to the North Pole as land gets. Great positioning for aurora viewing, especially as it would still be in Polar Night (24hr darkness), but being an Island it risks being covered in cloud.
Finland didn't figure because anywhere with potential was much harder to get to than other places. Greenland is too far away/remote, and Canada also for much the same reasons. Here's a picture which helps explain where's good and where's not. This is a guide which tells you how strong a "kp" rating it has to be in particular areas in order to see the Northern Lights with your eyes. Camera's can always pick out Aurora's more readily than your eyes can but really, you want to see it with your eyes first and foremost.
I had been looking at the website this picture came from for some time, watching the different fluctuations of kp strengths being experienced, and most of the time its been hovering around kp2 or kp3. Naturally the further north you are, the better you can see it at those lower levels but every so often I had seen the scale creep up to kp4 or on some nights, kp5 - which is also known as G1, which denotes a level caused by a Geomagnetic Storm and starts giving a much more active light show than the lower numbers. Iceland's minimum level of being able to see it with the eye is largely kp3; Kiruna,and Abisko are about on the kp2/kp3 border, while Tromso is kp2 territory; Svalbard, way off the top of this map is kp0 territory i.e. as long as there's any kind of Aurora no matter how weak, you can see it there. |
I would give you a rundown on each of the options (as I tend to do), but this time I won't. Why? well, two reasons - the first being that it would simply take up too much text; while the second is that the end trip was none of the outlined 18 trip scenarios. Yes, that's right - none of them. After Sasha and I went through them all, weighed up the pro's and con's of each trip (and eliminated Iceland and Svalbard), she asked me which of the trips I preferred and I said I didn't know - I liked elements of some, and elements of others but none of them stood out above the others. For Sasha it was the same, so we decided to see if we could cherry-pick the elements we did like and weave a new trip. After working through it for some time, we managed to create a new, better trip that we both liked and felt good about. There would be no Bergen, no Oslo, no "Norway in a Nutshell" (a day trip from Bergen to Norway via Fjords, the Flam Railway and spectacular scenery), no visit to Denmark either; but we would fly into Stockholm in Sweden, spend a few days there before catching the overnight train to Kiruna; Spend two nights there before travelling to Tromso in Norway, effectively having full day there; Before catching a cruise ferry from Tromso to Trondheim through a large proportion of the Norwegian Fjords and spending 3 nights on board, before flying from Trondheim back to London with a stop-off or two on the way. It was as much as a "best of all worlds" trip as we could possibly get - visiting numerous places and seeing a wide variety of scenery, but we would be in the "aurora zone" for 5 to 6 nights out of the total of 9 nights we had to play with.
So that was the planning done - we had a trip that would be interesting in itself aside from any potential Northern Lights, while also trying to give us a greater chance of seeing them on any given night. All we could do now is hope that on at least one of the nights, the cloud and aurora might play ball - it was the one thing we could only leave to chance. Would we see them? There was only one way to find out...
Day 0 - Flying to Stockholm
We landed at Stockholm's Arlanda Airport on time, with the airport tarmac covered in a thin layer of snow and the trees and land surrounding rather caked in it. We had been hoping for snow, we knew we'd get snow but we weren't sure if we'd find it definitely in Stockholm but here it was! My new ski jacket and snow boots would get their first real test. We took the Arlanda Express train from the airport to the central city (not the cheapest option but by far the easiest), and walked from there the 10 minutes to our Hostel. As it was out of hours, we had to enter a pin code for the door then retrieve our keycards from a safe box with another key before proceeding to our room. We used the lift, which was an unusual type for me - instead of having the usual metal automatic-closing doors or the manual operation "Titanic"-style concertina gates, this just had what looked like an ordinary wooden door to a room. Which it was - the lift itself had no door, you just opened the conventional door and went into the lift, pressed the button and the lift then moved with no barrier between you and the outer doors or wall. Our room was basic, but cozy and functional and had its own ensuite - as it was almost midnight by then, we decided to get some shuteye ahead of the next day's events.
Day 1 - Stockholm Venturing
Our original plan after IKEA had been to head to a place we'd heard of that described itself as a Swedish Beer Hall, which was somewhere on our way back - we weren't quite sure where. Sasha looked it up, and we discovered that the prices of the beers and the food was rather up there - probably more than we wanted to pay. A few other beer halls we could find online were about the same, then Sasha stumbled across a Viking-themed restaurant that was in the Gamla Stan, but we couldn't properly tell prices. Might be just as pricey but stuff it, lets head for the Gamla Stan and see if we can find it - if not surely there's somewhere else, and the Gamla Stan itself should be nice to wander around. So that's what we did, and eventually we managed to find the place (after a bit of a false prediction on Sasha's Google Maps as to where it would be, I used the Apple Maps on my phone and we found it further down the street). We walked in, past the coat check lady and into the bar area and saw it was rather full-looking. There were tables down some stairs, and we were asked as we were about to head down them if we were after food or drink. "Both" Sasha replied. "Do you have a booking?" the guy replied. "No" was our reply. "Well, you are very lucky that we have space then" was his reply. "We have a table free until 8.30pm - that gives you an hour and a quarter, if you're happy with that you can have it". That was fine by us, so we were told to check our coats in at the lady before the bar while he got some menus and to meet him back at that spot. Which we did, and then he asked where we were from as we descended the stairs. "Australia and New Zealand" we replied. "Oh really? and what are your names?" "Dan and Sasha" we replied. All of a sudden, the guy faced all the other lower tables and shouted "LADIES AND GENTLEMEN! THIS IS DAN AND SASHA, FROM AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND!". We were a bit stunned, but a huge roar of cheering went up from the tables and of course we then felt a bit embarrased. Our table was actually a long bench table - we had two seats at it, and it was clear there would be others who would fill the table also. The atmosphere of the place was rather neat - it seemed rather reminiscent of Viking time, but as we might have expected the food on the menu was slightly on the higher priced side. However, there were some foods listed as "appetisers" which sounded like they might be a bit more than that and they were a more reasonable price. So we got the "Plate from Trogden" (which was a selection of interesting cold meats, and some cheese) and the "Lans aux Meadow's mead and cream boiled mussels" in the smaller size. For drink, they had a selection of craft beers - but they also had Mead, a traditional European alcohol which would have been what Vikings (among many other cultures) drank. They had one variety of Swedish Mead, and quite a number of German varieties. All the drink was a bit pricey, but we were keen to try the Mead - and we decided to splash out and get a whole bottle of the Swedish Mead, as it would work out to 3 drinks each for the price of 2 when compared to buying it by the glass.
Day 2 - Strolling Around Stockholm
One of my not-so-bright ideas was I wanted to check out the cafe/restaurant car, just so we knew where to go in the morning. I was certain it was either the next car along or the car beyond that, so Sasha decided to come along too and since it wasn't far she'd stay barefoot. The doors between the cars were hard to open, and the cars had metal gangways in the concertina area between cars - a bit cold on Sasha's feet, but we weren't going far. Or so I thought - turns out the cafe/restaurant car was 5 or 6 cars forwards from our sleeping car, and as each new car we came across wasn't the restaurant car the scowl on Sasha's face turned ever more deadly. Upon reaching the car we were after, Sasha announced that having come all that way we'd better be buying something from it - which was fair enough! we settled upon getting these mini-pizza things that were quickly microwaved up, and we ate in the cafe car while I was glowered at by Sasha. They were nice enough, but nothing special and once that was over, it was time to begin the trek back to our car. Which we did, and having got there Sasha went straight past our compartment. "Hey this is our room here" I called out, to which Sasha replied "I know" and kept walking - I knew what she was doing, she was going to see if the next car along was a cafe/restaurant car. It wasn't, it was another sleeping car, but we walked the length of it and found another car, which also wasn't a cafe. Sasha stayed in the previous car while I walked the length of this car (a compartment car with presumably 6 fold down bunks in each), and found that there was yet another car beyond that - but it too was not a cafe car. Reporting back, we then went back to our compartment and eventually settled in for the night once we'd worked out how to turn the compartment into night mode and get my bunk down in place.
Day 3 - Spectacular Snow, Spectacular Sky
Day 4 - Snowy Kiruna
At the Landstroms Kok & Bar, we had a rather nice dinner where Sasha got finely sliced strips of Elk (Moose) with mushrooms, lingonberries and potato mash; I got a fillet of Reindeer, which also came with Reindeer sausage, lingonberries, mashed potato and a kind of pastry filled with "Vasterbotten" cheese. Although we'd previously had it, this was the first real chance to pick up on the actual distinct flavour of Reindeer and Moose - unsurprisingly, Reindeer tastes like Deer and is just as gamy; to me the Moose was much more muted, kinda like beef but with a slightly stronger taste. For drink, Sasha had a cider while I had the craft specialty beer on tap (which was a Pale Ale - fairly nice) and for dessert, we got a Cloudberry Compote to share. I'd never seen or heard of cloudberries as far as I had known, and Sasha said they looked like little oranges but tasted tomato-like. This is very apt and exactly what it looked and tasted like, which added a slightly odd but not un-nice contrast to the vanilla ice cream and waffle. It was all very nice, although the main room of the restaurant (not where we were sitting!) became rather full at one stage and seemed to stretch the staff, which is why it took us forever to get the bill - in the end we gave up waiting at the seat, and went to the counter and stand there to get it and pay for it. After all this, we walked up to the Cathedral again just to see if we could see any hint of the aurora in the cloudy sky (the Cathedral being the darkest nearby spot in the town), and we could just see a faint trail. Back to the accommodation, grabbed our camera gear and back out to the snow by the Cathedral - although I am certain we saw one or two other traces of the aurora, while there, we could not capture it on camera due to all the light pollution from the town lights around us and the website said the aurora was on the wane at that time and at the strength it was sinking to, probably wouldn't be visible in Kiruna at all in 30mins - so not worth travelling to where it was properly dark. We got a few night photos of the Cathedral, but nothing of the aurora for our efforts before calling it a night.
Day 5 - Crossing Borders
Day 6 - The Northernmost Day
Day 7 - Fjordin'
Day 8 - More Fjordin'
Day 9 - The Long Hop Home
Summing Up
So, Northern Lights - tick. Sweden, tick and Upper Norway, tick. Where to next, I wonder?