NORTHERN LIGHTS
Magic spectacle
Sometimes quickly in wavy lines, sometimes very slowly like huge wafts of fog. Green, white, sometimes red, pink or purple. Whether the spectacle will last five minutes or several hours cannot be predicted. The polar lights, also known as the Northern Lights, are different every time and that is what makes them so appealing.
Many myths and legends have described the natural phenomenon over the past centuries and meanwhile there are physical explanations. But you can't really understand it when you're standing in the middle of the wilderness and being enveloped by the gigantic light show. No photo or video, no matter how nice, does the northern lights justice.
You just have to experience it yourself!
light pollution
If you want to observe the northern lights as well as possible, you should go to places that are exposed to as little artificial light as possible. This is a point that is often neglected. Well-known tourist places like Tromsø or Rovaniemi offer a variety of very nice accommodations, but they are still located close to cities and therefore cannot offer the same intense darkness as small, isolated towns or mountain huts in the middle of the wide fell landscape.
Take a look at the lightpollutionmap.com website. Here are two images of light pollution in Central Europe and Northern Scandinavia for comparison:
