Yllasjarvi, Finland

We’ve seen them!

After settling in to our Finnish cabin in the snow and exploring it – you know, opening cupboards and drawers, switching lights on and off and on and off, finding power points, moving furniture and making a mental note of where it was originally so we can put it back the way it was when we leave next weekend – Greg checked his favourite Aurora websites to see what was happening, and what they were predicting. It looked like we might see some Lights in the early hours of Sunday morning and the sky was clear, so if there was anything happening, we’d probably see it.

Our bladders always take longer than the rest of our bodies to get used to a new timezone, so when we were awake at 1am, we figured we might as well don all the layers of clothing and go outside to have a look. And … there they were! We’d left some lights on in the house, so we nipped back inside to put even more clothes on and turn the lights off, then walked down a path away from the road to an area behind the house with fewer trees and a better view of the sky. There’s a ski resort a few kms from here and its lights were still blazing, but we were able to stand and look at the sky without those lights interfering. Looking north, we could see a band of light above the horizon, not super-bright, and not really much colour, but it moved and it really was The Northern Lights! We stood and watched for 30 minutes or so, until they moved away from where we could see them well, so we went back inside to warm up.

That’s been it for seeing Northern Lights so far. Last night it was cloudy and there was no aurora activity predicted. It started snowing some time during the night, and is still snowing now, at 10:30am.

A bad picture of the Northern Lights

The cabin in the Finnish Woods

Judy snowshoeing

It snowed covering the Volvo

Inside the cabin with the fire going

Where we are in Finland