Tag Archives: northern lights

The Best Holiday Ever

January 22, 2014Finland, Norway, Swedenarctic circle, aurora, camping, cooking, finland, holiday, northern lights, norway, road trip, snow, Stockholm, sunrise, sunset, sweden, travel, walking, winterJudy

Yes, I know. Not everyone would be thrilled to be going overseas with only 2 days’ notice. But I was. Spending almost 3 weeks in sub-zero temperatures, not seeing the sun for 2 weeks, camping in a tent in the snow, sleeping in the car and even the prospect of travelling so far to see a natural phenomenon without any guarantee of success would not be everyone’s idea of the perfect holiday. Gee, we could have just stayed home and enjoyed (or endured!) a long stretch of 40+C days instead. But I’m so glad we went, and not just because we missed Adelaide’s heat wave.

It was wonderful to revisit places we had seen 6 months ago, in mid-summer. At the time, we wondered what it would be like there in winter …. and now we know. Once we got used to colder weather than either of us had ever experienced, and worked out what to wear, the cold didn’t bother us much. Okay, so I wasn’t brave enough to get out of the warm car when it was -36C, but getting out and about in slightly warmer but still sub-zero temperatures, and even sitting watching for aurora was fine as long as we wore enough clothes. The Norwegians are right – ‘there’s no such thing as cold weather, only inappropriate clothing’.

I had always thought that winter inside the Arctic Circle meant existing in complete darkness, and was very happy to learn and experience that it’s not so. During ‘polar night’, which is the opposite of ‘midnight sun’, it does get light even though the sun doesn’t shine above the horizon. The light is weak, like pre-dawn light here, and it only lasts a few hours. For the first few days, we were looking for dinner at 4pm … well, it had been fully dark for HOURS by then, feeling tired at 5pm and sleeping in until it was light … at around 10am. We never really did wake up early unless we used an alarm, but then we don’t at home either.

We did see the Northern Lights … 3 times. The first 2 nights we were inside the Arctic Circle (the night we slept in the car, and the next night when we camped in the tent), they were there. Not spectacular displays, and if we had realised how elusive they really are, we would have paid more attention and spent more time outside watching them. But because they were just there almost as soon as we arrived to watch them, we figured they would be there all the time and we could see them whenever we looked up at the sky. So, so not true. The third time we saw them was the first night we stayed in the cabin at Birtavarre, but they were mostly hidden by cloud. We could see them through the cloud, but wasn’t a good show.

There are 2 enduring images that I’ll carry with me as memories of our trip, and neither were photographed. The first is the one Greg mentioned, of the couple walking their baby in a pram when it was -36C. The other is of a mother pushing a child on a swing in a playground in Kiruna. It was 4.30pm, -5C and pitch black outside. And it reminded me that wherever we are in the world, kids are kids.

As always, thanks to everyone who has read, commented and sent messages – while we really write and share our photos for our own amusement and to keep a record of our travels, it’s great to know that we entertain other people as well.

Just a few last words … for Greg. Thank you. For planning and organising our amazing holiday; for buying the equipment, warm clothes and other essentials; for doing all the driving, including that long, difficult snowy drive back to Stockholm; and most of all, thank you for your adventurous spirit and for taking me along with you!

Birtavarre, Norway

January 13, 2014Norwayarctic circle, aurora, camping, fjord, northern lights, norway, road trip, snow, travel, walking, winterJudy

After chatting with Christian, our campground host, about how best to see aurora, we put in a concerted effort last night. It was cloudy, but there were patches of sky visible most of the time, and we hoped that the cloud might just clear away. It didn’t, but we drove 8kms out of the village to the end of the (cleared) road to see if it was any better there. It wasn’t, but along the way we noticed that most of the houses had lights on inside – when we drove along here in summer, we had assumed that most of the houses were just holiday places, but apparently not. The Scandinavians have a lovely tradition of putting a small light or a standard lamp in every window. Around Christmas and New Year, there were a lot of decorative lights, nearly all of those have gone now, but there are still lights in a lot of windows. And indoor plants too.

We set the alarm to wake up every 2 hours overnight to check the sky and make sure we weren’t missing anything. At 5am, we both saw Lights behind the clouds, but the cloud was too thick to give us a decent show. We gave up after that and slept in until dawn … at 9am.

Greg walked around the campground this morning, taking some of the photos that are in the previous post. There are moose/s around here. I saw one last night and Christian showed us bare patches on trees around the cabin where they had stripped the bark off to eat. There are footprints around the cabin, and I’m being careful when I go outside in the dark – I don’t really want to meet a moose up close. We donned several layers of thermals and other clothes and walked into the village, which has 2 ‘supermarkets’, a car mechanic, a pretty church and probably a few other shops that open when there are more tourists around. The mobile library bus was at one of the supermarkets when we were there.

January is the worst month, according to Christian.Long, dark, too cold to snow and not enough snow to make things interesting. December is good because of Christmas, and February is good because the days are longer and the snow sports people start arriving to do their snow thing.

Tonight, the sky is completely clear and we’re hopeful. It’s our last night here, tomorrow (Tuesday) we have to do the 1600km drive back to Stockholm, which will mean a very long day’s driving, a stop somewhere along the way for some sleep and an early start on Wednesday to get the rest of the way before midday. And then we fly to Dubai for a couple of days to thaw out before heading home on Friday night.

Trees with the bark stripped and eaten by moose

Greg sitting out in the snow watching for aurora

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Mad Dogs and Fishermen

January 12, 2014Norwayarctic circle, aurora, fjord, northern lights, norway, road trip, snow, travel, tromso, winterJudy

…. go out in the winter dark. Apologies to any fishermen reading (*waves to Ian Banks and Mark Nash*), but really they must be some of the craziest, most dedicated people alive. We have seen them ice fishing on frozen lakes where they have to use big ice drills to cut a hole in the ice in order to fish, and today as we were driving out of Tromso, there they were standing on the bank of the fjord with the temperature hovering around -15C. I can’t even imagine how they managed to stand still for more than a couple of minutes, let alone put tiny pieces of bait on a hook when it’s that cold. I do admire their dedication though.

So we spent a couple of nights in Tromso, but had no luck finding any Lights. The first night, we drove across to Kvaloya Island and found a dark spot with views across the fjord, but didn’t see anything. Last night we didn’t even bother going out looking …. and of course there were some Lights where we’d looked the night before, but only for 30 minutes or so, so even if we had gone back out, we might have missed them. It can be a very frustrating pursuit, trying to find these darned Lights.

We liked being back in Tromso, especially as we didn’t get a parking ticket this time. But parking in a parking station for a couple of days cost nearly $40. Cheap hotels don’t have parking, and the least expensive hotel that did have parking was an extra $100 per night, so using a parking station was the best option for us. We wandered around the city centre yesterday morning, browsing in an electrical store and a sports store that had a winter sale. We don’t need anything, but it was interesting to see just how many different kinds of thermals they sold. Merino thermals were around $40, which seems cheap compared with Australian prices, but we already have 3 sets each and I’ve been really happy with the polyamide ones we got at the Columbia sale just before we left. Much more comfortable than the polypropylene ones I’ve had for …. almost ever.

The Tromso library is a magnificent new building that has great views over the fjord and looks across the water to the beautiful Arctic Cathedral. The Library is 4 or 5 storeys with a glass front to take advantage of the view and the light. As always when I’m visiting a library in a foreign country, I headed to the English language section and looked to see how many Tim Winton books they had …. only one, Dirt Music, but I was happy to see that. The library is open every day and has lots of spaces for sitting, reading, using computers , accessing newspapers and magazines and, of course, borrowing books. It’s right next door to the local cinema.

We fly to Dubai on Wednesday, so we have a couple of days left before we have to take the rental car back and catch a plane. We’re spending them in a tiny cabin at Birtavarre (you can see some photos here), which is at the end of a fjord 170kms east of Tromso (much less as the crow flies …. those pesky fjords!), and about 80kms north of the Finnish border. We drove through here on our way to Nordkapp, but don’t really remember it as it was just another tiny village on the edge of yet another fjord. We’re the only ones in the campground and it’s the usual Norwegian cabin set up – a couple of single beds, small table, 2 chairs, electric hotplate and this one also has a fridge which is a bonus, although we don’t really need it as we have our own, and it’s still -15C outside. There is a huge mountain right behind us, and one of my first thoughts when I saw it was ‘oh, I guess they don’t have avalanches here’. There’s not much snow on the mountain at the moment anyway. Our host, Christian, is a very helpful man who speaks excellent English and has told us quite a lot about the Lights and where to find them around here. He was born on the property when it was a farm, and has spent most of his life here, apart from a few years in Oslo. He and his family also own a house in Italy and they spend time there as well. He still farms some of the land, but the campground and cabins have taken over from farming as his main occupation.

It’s currently cloudy outside, but we’re hopeful ….

The narrow ends of the Fjords have started to freeze over

The sun never made it over the horizon, but its starting to get dark at 1pm

Birtavarre Campground, our cabin is behind our white car, we are the only guests

The sunrise that is south of us showing up on above the mountains of the fjord at Birtavarre

River behind the campground at birtavarre

Sleds for sale at the local Coop supermarket

Tromso, Norway

January 10, 2014Norwayarctic circle, aurora, finland, northern lights, norway, road trip, sarkijarven, snow, travel, tromso, winterJudy

How disappointing! After watching all the websites for information about the solar flare and CME, with all their predictions for some great Lights last night, we stayed up late watching the clear sky for any activity and … nothing. Nada. Zip. Not a sausage. I went to bed at 10.30pm and Greg crawled in at 2am mumbling something about Tromso in Norway having some great Lights and that we should go there. Okay then, let’s go.

So we did. We drove north and then west for 350 kms to Tromso, and our longer-term readers may recall that we got a very expensive parking ticket here 6 months ago. We’re reading the parking meters extra-carefully now to try and avoid making THAT mistake again.

As we drove, the temperature dropped lower, and lower and lower. We started the day with the thermometer on our cottage porch showing -18C, and at some stage early this afternoon, the car thermometer showed the outside temperature as -29C. It all just feels bloody cold to me, but I think the difference is how long you can stand to be outside ….. and at -29, that’s not very long at all!

We saw the sun, briefly, for the first time in 2 weeks! Just a little tiny bit of it sat right on the horizon. It looked like it was setting the whole time, it was that red ‘sunset’ colour, but it was really just skimming along the horizon from east to west for an hour or so before it disappeared at around 1.30. The sky was a clear, pale blue, with a pink tinge at the horizon for the few hours of daylight.

Tromso is such a pretty town. It spreads along both sides of a fjord and all the lights looked lovely as we drove along and over the bridge to the town centre. We’re staying at a ‘cheap’ hotel for a couple of nights. Cheap by local standards, but still over $110 per night, which is expensive to us. There’s very little snow here compared with the other places we’ve visited inside the Arctic Circle, but there’s enough slippery ice on the roads and footpaths to make walking a potentially hazardous experience. We’ll have to go out of town to do some aurora-watching, to get away from all the lights.

Greg snuck into a supermarket when he was ‘getting someting from the car’ this evening and found his beloved lefse. I’ve just eaten some and it reminded me that I didn’t really like it much …. so it’s all his, and he’s delighted about that. Any spare Norwegian kroner at the end of our stay here will be spent on lefse, I’m sure. Here’s the Wikipedia article on lefse. Greg likes a commercially-made variety that is filled with butter (I think) sugar and cinnamon.

The coldest it got on our trip north, -29C. We thought it was cold in the morning when it was -18C

Scraping ice off the inside of the windscreen. This was not just after we started but after an hour of driving with the heater running.

Actic Sunrise, about 11 am. The sun just peaks over the horizon and then and hour or so later drops back. The first sun we had seen in a couple of weeks

Hard to see in this photo, but there was a "Light Pillar" a beam of light extending vertically from the sun caused by ice crystals ib the air — Hard to see in this photo, but there was a “Light Pillar” a beam of light extending vertically from the sun caused by ice crystals ib the air

Lunch spot at the Servo. It was -24C so we ate lunch in the car with the engine and heater running the whole time

Arctic Beer - $A30 for a 8-pack, at the Supermarket! — The most expensive beer in the world. Norways Arctic Beer – $A30 for a 8-pack, at the Supermarket!

Tromso Wharf with the bridge in the background

Tromso shopping, don't slip on the ice — Tromso shopping, don’t slip on the ice

Lunch in Tromso - Club Sandwich $A31, Chicken Bacon Baquette $A18 — Lunch in Tromso – Club Sandwich $A31, Chicken Bacon Baquette $A18

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Waiting for the Aurora

January 9, 2014Finlandarctic circle, aurora, finland, northern lights, road trip, snow, sunrise, travel, wintergreg

We are waiting for possibly good Aurora tonight in Finland. The sun has a very large sunspot on it (it has a number AR1944).

Sunspot AR1944 which is big enough to fit 3 earths in it

Two days ago this very large sunspot emitted a solar flare and a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) which has been heading towards the earth at 2000km per second. The sun was not facing the earth directly at the time of the CME, but it is expected to give the earth a glancing blow. This CME is big enough that NASA scrubbed the Cygnus resupply launch to the International Space Station.This CME is expected to distort the earth’s geomagnetic field which is called a geomagnetic storm. The benefit of a geomagnetic storm is that it ….. creates Auroras!

However we need more things going our way, Firstly the CME is expected to hit in the middle of the day out time, and its not dark then (sunrise here is 11:30am sunset 1:30pm). However no one is quite sure when the CME will hit and it could be some hours later. Secondly we need good weather. It has been snowing here in Särkijärven, Finland for the past 3 days and it does not make good Aurora viewing. However tonight it is meant to clearing, with a crisp clear night of -20C. At the moment it is still snowing so we can only cross our fingers and keep watching the Kiruna Magnetogram which indicates the affect of the CME on the earths magnetic field. Kiruna ia a couple of hundred kilometres west of here so it should give us a good warning.

UPDATE: It is nearly 1am and no sign of Aurora. The CME has arrived but not as strong as predicted, so it looks like no geomagnetic storms. The weather is excellent for viewing with clear skys and -17C:

Katterjokk

January 4, 2014Swedenarctic circle, aurora, katterjokk, northern lights, road trip, snow, sweden, travel, winterJudy

After our 2 nights camping/sleeping in the car, we are now happily indoors surrounded by lots of creature comforts – electric lights, central heating, beds, a kitchen, a bathroom with cold AND hot running water. Ah, the luxury of it all. We are regular patrons of the little supermarket downstairs, but haven’t yet ventured into the restaurant/cafe just down the hall, other than to pay for our apartment for the 4 nights we’re staying here.

It’s so nice to be able to unpack some of our stuff from the car (not the tent stuff, it’s all sitting frozen in a duffle bag in the back. We’ll get to it later) , do some washing, have a second (or even third!) cup of coffee without firing up the gas stove. And, of course, an early morning trek to the toilet is so much easier indoors. We cooked dinner last night – meatballs AND mashed potato – juggling any more than one thing on a gas stove is tricky, so we usually just heat up a can of something when we’re camping. But the warm, canned ravioli we had the night we were in the tent tasted very good!

Here’s a link to the apartments we’re staying at – Katterjokk Apartments. There is a train station and a ski-lift just up the hill. The lift isn’t working at the moment, not sure why, maybe not enough snow yet. The restaurant manager told us that there would be a lot of snowmobiles here today as it’s Saturday. We think it’s the Swedish equivalent of guys riding their dirt bikes at home.

We will go in search of aurora tonight. The lake near Abisko seems to be the pick of places to view The Lights, so we’ll drive there and take lots of warm clothes so we can sit and watch. It’s a bit overcast, but there are patches of sky amongst the clouds. It’s currently 12.30 and the clouds are turning pink because it’s getting close to ‘sunset’ here. In another hour it will be dark.

Pink "Sunset" except the sun never got over th horizon, but it is setting south of us — Pink “Sunset” except the sun never got over the horizon, but it is setting south of us

Judy standing on the balcony of the apartment we are staying at Katterjokk

Judy's possum fur and marino wool gloves — Judy’s possum fur and Marino wool gloves

Don't you think the shopping trolleys should have skis instead of wheels? — Don’t you think the shopping trolleys should have skis instead of wheels?

Inside the Arctic Circle – in winter

January 3, 2014Swedenarctic circle, aurora, camping, northern lights, road trip, snow, sweden, travel, winterJudy

Before we did our Scandinavian road trip to Nordkapp to find the Midnight Sun, I couldn’t really get the whole ‘sun never sets’ concept. Same with the Arctic Circle’s seasonal opposite, where the sun never rises. It sets in late November and doesn’t rise again until late January. I thought it meant that it just stayed dark the whole time. Well, it’s close to that, but thankfully for the locals it does get light for a few hours during the day. It starts getting light here in Abisko at around 8am, and is totally dark again by 2pm. The light is dim, but all the snow reflects it and makes it seem brighter. I keep wondering how people managed to live here before the invention of gas and electric lights and figured that they must have just gone to bed for the winter, then stayed up all summer to get stuff done.

We have seen some Lights! The sky is very clear tonight (it’s currently 7pm), and there are aurora over the lake. They look like long green curtains, flowing and moving along from north to south.

We are camping in a hollow near the railway line, just off the main road. Greg brought an extra tent fly which we have put over the tent, and anchored all around with snow. It’s very comfortable inside the tent, we brought compresed foam squares to make a floor inside, and then use a lightweight inflatable Thermarest camping mattress, 2 sleeping bags and a thermal sleeping bag liner. All that plus a layer or 2 of thermals keeps us warm. We slept in the car last night because we got here in the dark and couldn’t find anywhere suitable to set up the tent. A lot of people go snowmobiling beside the main road, so we had to find somewhere that our tent woudn’t get mown down by snowmobiles – not so easy as very few side roads are cleared by the snowploughs that keep the main road clear. We got lucky and found a clear side road this morning. It goes up to a power sub-station, and there is just enough space to park the car off the road, with space for the tent not too far away.

A couple of vehicles drove up the road while we were there, and no one stopped to tell us to leave. We think that maybe they thought if we were crazy enough to camp in the snow, they would just leave us to it.

We are now spending a few nights in an apartment at Riksgransen, which is very close to the Norwegian border. There is a supermarket downstairs and a restaurant/bar. The barman told us that a lot of Asians come to this part of Sweden to see the aurora, and that it will be very busy tomorrow because snowmobilers like to come here to do their thing. We found Santa’s reindeer on the way here, in a stockyard. It was -1 outside and they didn’t look particularly cold – I guess they are used to it, must have good cold-repelling fur!

Cooking dinner in the shelter of the rear of the car

In Stockholm

December 29, 2013Swedennorthern lights, Stockholm, sweden, travel, winterJudy

Exactly 6 months ago to the day, we arrived in Stockholm to begin our month-long Scandinavian road trip. It was just after the Northern summer solstice and it seemed like it was light all the time. We didn’t see any stars for a month.This time, it’s the complete opposite. We arrived yesterday morning and it was overcast, rainy and the light was dim. We went for a walk in the afternoon and by 4pm it was completely dark. Which was fine by us – we were ready for bed, although flying here this time was a much nicer trip. The first time, we flew Malaysian Airlines, stopped at Kuala Lumpur and Heathrow and arrived 34 hours after we left home. This time, we flew Qantas/Emirates, stopped at Dubai and arrived 22 hours after we left home.

We’re staying at the Hotell Dialog again. We stayed there night before we left Stockholm to start the Russian part of our trip. We know this part of town, it’s near the largest Ikea in the world and a heap of other shops – we need to shop for a few things before we head north in search of the Aurora. Food, snow shovel, more food, booze …. I’m beginning to understand why schnapps is popular in cold weather climates, it certainly gives one a nice warm glow.

It’s not actually very cold here, and there isn’t any snow in Stockholm. Yesterday the temperature range was 2 – 5C, and the forecast is similar for today. I haven’t quite worked out how to dress for both walking outside AND being inside heated shopping centres. Yesterday I wore a pair of thermals and a couple of other layers to walk to the shops, then peeled most of it off when we were inside, and piled it all on again to do more walking. I guess I’ll just get it all worked out, then we’ll head north and I’ll just want to wear everything I brought with me, all the time.

Greg is watching the Space Weather website for signs that we’re going to get to see some lights soon. There is a lovely video which was taken on Christmas afternoon, from the lake we’re heading to, so we’re feeling hopeful that we’ll be lucky enough to see them. The customs officer told us that he had never seen any in Stockholm – too much light pollution in the city. Greg will do a post soon about the technical stuff, with some of the websites he’s following for information.

It’s almost 8.30am and there’s a glimmer of light outside. Time to get this day started.

One more thing, for Sam and Brianna … and any other Scrubs fans reading. We’re sitting having breakfast at the hotel and back-to-back Scrubs episodes are playing on the TV, with Swedish subtitles.

The Best Present Ever

December 26, 2013Swedenarctic circle, northern lights, sweden, travel, winterJudy

Yesterday, on Christmas morning, we woke up at the decent time of 8am, reminisced briefly about all the years of early Christmas morning awakenings when we had little people in our lives, and then got down to the business of exchanging presents. I gave Greg a soft-sided, powered fridge bag, which he knew about and wanted, plus a signed limited first edition of Donna Tartt’s latest book The Goldfinch. We are both reading it at the moment and enjoying it very much. I also slipped in a copy of the South America on the Cheap Lonely Planet guide as we have been talking about going there next.

Greg gave me a book on the Northern Lights. Now, Greg is always a very good present-giver, so I had a suspicion that there might be more to it than just a book about something we thought we might like to do some day, but I didn’t want to seem ungrateful by shaking the book to see if anything would fall out. So I looked through it page by page until he gave up waiting for me to say something like ‘wouldn’t it be great to see this’ and brought out our itinerary. Oh. My. Goodness. Plane tickets to Stockholm this Friday. In 2 ½ days. In 60 hours. Unbelievable. Incredible. And probably the Best. Present. Ever.

He has been planning it for weeks – working out the best time to go in terms of the sun and moon cycles, the best place to go that will give us the best chance of seeing the Lights, car hire, warm clothes, guide book on how to camp in the snow. Because yes, we’ll be camping inside the Arctic Circle in winter … as you do. Well, actually most of you probably don’t … but we do. Of course we’ll let you know how it all goes, with pictures.

The soft-sided fridge bag will come with us …. but that’s so that we can stop our food from freezing, as opposed to keeping it cold! We have a small mountain of camping gear, clothes, tent, and assorted other paraphernalia to go through and pack. But that’s okay, we don’t fly out until late tomorrow night. Plenty of time.