Chasing Northern Lights – Finland & Norway

It was the month of October, and we were approaching the end of the year 2024 and I had not travelled anywhere for this year…in fact for that matter I could not even plan for anything. One day I was just talking to one of my friends, Narendra, and just like that we spoke about Northern lights and that being in my bucket list at almost on the top. And just like that he made me aware of the fact that one of our other mutual friends is staying in Oslo, Norway. I was like, seriously! That was the moment when I decided to think and plan for my Northern lights trip to Norway.

After doing a little bit of research, I happened to discuss this with my other friend and immediately he (along with his family) also showed interest in citing Auroras. He suggested that let’s do a couple of other European countries along with Norway and I was like OK. It started with Amsterdam as we have a mutual friend who stays there and happens to be his wife’s cousin also. Plan was to stay in her house and then travel to Finland, Norway, Belgium and Luxembourg depending on the climate and availability of flight tickets and accommodation. Parallelly I was checking with mom on how well she is prepared mentally and physically to travel to these countries where in minimum temperatures dip in like between -10°C to -30°C. And there she was…all excited to travel and chase the Northern Lights.

Then we started booking the flights and accommodation sometime in mid-November as this was required for our visa appointment. Amsterdam and Finland flights were booked. We found a nice villa that fitted our requirements and budget for our 3 days stay in Finland. The flight tickets included only cabin baggage, so we paid extra for one check-in baggage for each family. Then we started searching for flights to and from Amsterdam to Norway (to be specific, for Tromso). All the flight tickets and accommodation for Tromso were three times its normal price because of Christmas and New Year eve and in fact accommodation was almost kind of unavailable by the time we were making up our minds. Seeing this I started searching for some other place in Norway where we can cite Northen Lights, and the stay would work out little cheaper on our budget. In all my search results, Alta came up on top of the list. Both Tromso and Alta are at the same distance from Oslo, could be reached in 1hr 30 mins through flight. Researched a bit more and Alta seemed to be the apt place in terms of budget but only during the first week of January and hence I pinned it on. The next day when I checked this with my friend, he was a bit reluctant to travel to Norway for various reasons…so I was like ok. At the same time when I discussed this with mom further for our Norway trip she was like when we are very clear to chase the northern lights lets go ahead and book the tickets. And yeah, I did what she said, I booked our stay and flight tickets to Alta. Also, a thought came into my mind that what if we see the northern lights in Finland itself and in that case, I will cancel my Norway tickets later. Everything was with loads of if’s and but’s, so I left it there and we started filling in the Visa application. I got the invite letter from my friend’s cousin as well as from my friend who lives in Oslo. We submitted our visa applications and scheduled an appointment for November 20th, exactly one month before our trip. In a week we did get our Schengen visas. Now, all that remained for us was to do a bit of shopping because travelling to Nordic countries in peak winters was our first time and it came with lot of risks as mom would need extra attention due to factors like her age, day and night temperatures and weather conditions. But as they say, Where there is a Will there is a Way…there was nothing to stop us. As the travel dates was approaching, we were all excited to start our journey. I made sure we visited the doctor before our trip just to keep a check on basic vitals and get the required medicines for the trip.

Finally the day arrived, and we started our trip on the 20^th of December. It was a long vacation for me and mom as we were doing Norway too, around 20 days. It was a 10hr 30 mins flight from Kempegowda International airport to Amsterdam Schiphol airport. We landed at around 8.30am in Amsterdam and by the time we reached our friend’s place it was 10.35am. It was a sunny day, but our friend’s family was a little surprised as it was raining there in Amsterdam for the past couple of days. We had some yummy dosa’s and idli’s for breakfast and told mom to take some rest as we had our next flight the very next day to Finland. In the meantime my friend’s family and I left to do a bit of shopping so that we are equipped with essentials for minus temperatures like snow boots, hand and toe warmers, etc etc. We had earlier planned to buy these items here in Decathlon Amsterdam to avoid adding extra weight in our check-in baggage. By evening 4 or 5pm it became dark, and it was way too windy. We came back home and got warm with some hot coffee and chai. Before the end of the day we had to repack our stuffs that was required to Finland. Me and mom had one check-in and one cabin, and my friend’s family had one check-in and three cabins.

We had our flight to Helsinki on the 21^st of December at 7pm and the connecting flight to Rovaniemi was with a layover of 1hr 20 mins which was less. I had enquired about how big the Helsinki airport is with a couple of my friends who had travelled there before just to understand how fast we need to walk to reach the gates to catch our next flight. Well, everything seemed to be fine till we found out that our flight from Amsterdam to Helsinki was delayed. We waited for almost 1hr 15 mins. We were like what if we miss our connecting flight to Rovaniemi…☹. The next flight from Helsinki to Rovaniemi was only at 2am. Firstly, we were supposed to reach Rovaniemi somewhere in the middle of the night at around 00.55hrs and now with this delay and with no clue of getting or not getting a connecting flight from Helsinki, everything looked absolutely concerning. With all these things running in mind we left Amsterdam at around 8.15pm and reached Helsinki at 11.20pm. Our connecting flight was supposed to depart Helsinki at 11.35pm and the boarding time was over with the gates being closed. It appeared that many passengers on our flight were also headed to Rovaniemi, so the connecting flight was delayed, waiting for us. That was quite unexpected. We ran and ran and finally boarded the flight to Rovaniemi. We reached around 1.30hrs late to Rovaniemi somewhere at 2.30am and started waiting for our luggage at the conveyer belt area. It was freezing cold outside. We waited for quite a lot of time there only to know that our luggage’s were still at Helsinki airport…wow! We were left out with no other option but to leave to our villa that we had booked. We had requested the owner of the villa, Vessa, to come and pick us up from the airport. Poor guy, he also waited for almost 2-3hrs extra. We met him, introduced ourselves and our family and left the airport. My friend did report an issue of delayed luggage at the same time with the airline. On the way home, we bought some food and snacks to eat as we were all very hungry and tired. We got to this villa, just to see it the same as it was in the pictures in the Airbnb site. It was beautiful, big and spacious and totally equipped with everything that is required. Luckily, I had kept a few packets of Maggi noodles (savior of the moment) in my cabin baggage. We had some hot noodles and went to sleep.

The next morning, we got up a little late. I just peeped outside the double-glazed window (Now, all the houses in places where the temperatures dips to minus degrees, the windows would be double-glazed as it creates a barrier that minimizes heat transfer and helps to keep the house warm) of my room to see a beautiful white blanket of snow everywhere. Truly, when I say everywhere I literally mean it, be it on the wooden backyard fence, on the house roofs, on the barbeque, on the car, trees, lamp post, everywhere. There is no road that you can see. The view was just amazing! We went to the backyard, and we could spot the Reindeer’s footsteps on the snow. Maybe it had come and walked around the house during early mornings. We took some pictures of the house in and around and had some breakfast to start the day. It was the 22^nd of December, and we had only one more day in Rovaniemi. I was praying and hoping that our luggage’s should be delivered by the end of the day.

Then at around 1.30pm we left the house to do some shopping as all of us didn’t have much winter clothing. Mine and mom’s snow pants were in the check-in. When I saw the rates of these in the mall there, I was like nah…come on, I can’t buy two of these again and more over it won’t be of any use once we are back to India and hence, I didn’t buy the snow pants. And I was like somehow, we will manage. Also, somewhere, I was still hoping that we would get our baggage’s by evening or so. We bought a couple of veggies, milk, yogurt, bread, toothpaste and my friends got some clothes. We headed back home after this and relaxed in the warm, cozy corners of the house while munching on some chips and cookies watching TV. Days are shorter and night times are longer in these regions, and it becomes dark by 4pm or so. In the background, there was a constant enquiry and check that was happening on the arrival of our baggage. Basic formalities of identification of the baggage’s were done and sent and we had no other option but just to wait to see how things turn up.

The next day we had our plans to visit the Santa Claus village which is around 8kms from Rovaniemi. Our host had agreed on driving us in and around Rovaniemi as we wish. Now, when we decided on Finland initially, I had known about Rovaniemi only for the fact that it is the native of Santa Claus. I never thought I would visit this place anytime soon. That day everything was lit up everywhere as it was the 23^rd of December and Christmas was just the next day. In a few of the European countries Christmas is celebrated on the 24^th of December, at sunset as according to traditions, Jesus is believed to have been born at 5pm on 24^th Dec making this time significant for many Christians. Gifts are exchanged on this eve and people attend the midnight mass.

Santa Claus Holiday village has everything to offer that you could want for your dream holiday. There is no entry fee to visit the Santa Claus Holiday village. This village is located right on the Arctic Circle. As the Arctic Circle line is marked in the Santa Claus Village’s central square, you can experience something uniquely exciting here – you get to cross the magical Arctic Circle! You can hop, step, jump or even do a cartwheel on it and you can take pictures around it. There are 5-star accommodations including superior cottages and suites that can be booked at any time of the year, online, provided you get availability :P. You have lot of activities that can be done here like you get to do the Reindeer and husky rides, you can have a private dinner in a glass igloo, you can hunt for Northern Lights, you can also see these lights on a Reindeer or a husky safari. It all is based on your comfort as when we were there the temperatures were around -14°C with a lot of wind. And when you have wind, the temperature feels like -20°C.  The first thing that we did when we entered the village was to wear our woolen caps, and cover the head, ear and neck as it was way too windy. Then we stood in the queue to meet Santa Claus. The queue was a lengthy one and we were outside the house waiting for the queue to move a little faster so that we enter the house and become warm, avoiding the winds. We were almost waiting for an hour when we realized that by the time we meet Santa it’s going to take another 3-4hrs. So we decided to do some shopping there instead of meeting him. We were just passing by the queue, and we saw a door that was open. And what we see right there is Santa Claus himself. On the other side of the door, we saw Santa sitting on the couch, yes yes the same couch where you get to sit beside him and take a picture. At first, we were just staring at him and after a few seconds he also saw us. He started waving at us and we were so elated by his gesture. The first mission was accomplished after seeing him.

After this me and my friend’s family explored the village separately as per our preferences. Me and mom went to the shopping arena on the other side of the house. We bought a lot of souvenirs. I bought a pair of neck warmers too as ours was in the check-in. Then we left Santa’s House to get some pics outside. It was freezing cold, and me and mom were not even wearing snow pants. We had only two layers to protect us below our knees.  After taking pics around the Snowman, Arctic center line and points we headed towards the post office. The Santa Claus main post office receives around half a million letters at the Arctic Circle. The letters arrive from children and adults all over the world. It allows you to write your greetings from the Arctic Circle to your friends all over the world. The cheerful Postal Elves will post your greetings for you, whether it’s Christmas or the middle of summer! All posts will be stamped with the special Arctic Circle postmark. They are a full-service post office, so you can also leave your parcels and other mail with them to be delivered to their destination!

A little later, mom started feeling cold at her feet and toes and she said, “I can’t walk anymore” as her toes were paining. I made her sit outside the Post office as it was way too crowded inside and there was no place to sit. All I thought was she might be hungry and ran towards the restaurant to get her some food. I grabbed something from the restaurant in Santa’s house and headed back. I came back to the post office and her condition was bad. I took her to the restaurant and bought some hand and toe warmers. I quickly kept the toe warmer between her snow boots and socks and gave her something to eat. After around 10 minutes she started feeling comfortable as the warmers had started working. After she finished eating, I kept some hand warmers, also inside her jacket pocket so that it keeps her warm when she puts her hands inside. I wish I would have kept at least her snow pants in the cabin bag itself, and this thought was haunting me even more now.  Well, all this was just because of our delayed luggage and me not buying it again in the mall…phew!

Here in the restaurant we met a lady who was dining with her niece. Just happened to chat for few mins with them and we got to know that she was basically from Finland but stays somewhere else. She has been visiting Finland over the years, and this is her 5^th time and this time she was lucky enough to see the Northern Lights. She showed us a few pictures too of what she had captured. She seemed very excited about it and wished us luck to see it during our vacation.

In the meantime my friend and his family were finishing their meeting with the reindeer’s. Initially, the reindeer were sleeping it seems, but later they had some good time feeding them and grabbing some heat in front of the campfire. They even visited the post office towards the end. He also shared the good news that the luggage was delivered to the villa. At that point of time, I was just thinking, what’s the point in getting the luggage now as the next day we had to leave for Amsterdam back. And it would have been so good if I had the snow pants with us before coming here, mom would have enjoyed the entire village experience even more better. But nevertheless, lessons learnt was to have only cabin luggage when coming to places where the duration of stay is less and purchase or rent out clothing even though you feel it’s not worth. You don’t know how well you can manage situations and never underestimate the weather.

We left the Santa Claus village at around 9.30pm and reached home to see our luggage’s kept intact in front of the house door. We were like “Thank God”, at least it came before we left the place. Since it was our last night in Rovaniemi we decided to have a feast. We prepared Rice, Dal and egg fry. Once we were done with our dinner, mom said she will go and take rest as it was a tiring day. After half an hour just when we were about to go for sleep, we got a message from Vessa, our host, that there is some citing’s of Northern Lights in our area and to see it we need to go near the lake which is 10mins walk from the house.

We all got ready and left to the lake, in -20°C. It took us 10-15mins to reach the lake and it was fully frozen. We didn’t venture out near the lake by going too much further. We stood at one place and looked up and the entire sky was clear as we could see the stars everywhere. Just when we were glancing at the sky again and again in all directions, we did see some green shade at one place, but it was somewhat very less visible from naked eyes. My friend’s daughter kept her phone in front of it and that’s when we could see a very slight green shade and realized that we just saw the Northern Lights and she captured it. That was our first experience of seeing an Aurora – The Northern Lights. Though it was just 1% of it as the intensity of Aurora in that area was very low. After spending a few more minutes there we decided to head back home. On the way we took some more pictures as the street that we were walking was no less than a fairytale. It had streetlights and the snow under it was looking yellow as though it was a yellow street, it was just beautiful.

The next day we were leaving back to Amsterdam by afternoon. So before that we just wanted to play in snow in the backyard. It was absolute fun playing in the snow and throwing it on each other.

Vessa dropped us to the airport at around 12.30pm. We thanked him for letting us stay in his beautiful abode and wished to cross paths sometime in future.

Note: Amsterdam and Belgium would be covered in my next blog post

Our next destination of chasing the Northern lights was Norway. Me and mom were all prepared for this one as we already had first-hand experience of how it feels to be in less than zero temperatures. With all hopes of seeing Aurora – The Northern Lights, we left Amsterdam on 3^rdof Jan 2025.  We had two flights to change, one from Amsterdam to Oslo and the other from Oslo to Alta.

We reached Alta at around 2pm in the afternoon and as we were in a region that experiences the Polar nights, it had already turned dark by the time we came out of the airport. Now, the temperature outside was around -11°C and pulling the trolly on the road that was covered with snow, with 4 suitcases on it and total weights around 60+ kgs was an uphill task. I had to do it without the gloves as it doesn’t give you a grip to push otherwise. I somehow managed to get the luggage’s on the other side of the road where the taxi point was there. By the time we got a taxi, my hands were freezing. We reached the hotel in 10-15 mins as it was not very far. Once I finished the formalities, we checked in the hotel. After having something to eat, we just hit the bed to get some sleep. We got up late in the evening and called up our family to let them know that we are doing good and time just passed away soon. We had our Northern Lights tour planned for the next day, at around 8pm. We had something to fill our tummies and went to sleep again.

The next morning, we were filled with excitement and anxiousness of whether we would see the Northern Lights or not. I had also downloaded an app (Aurora) that gives you alerts of Auroras in your location. Daylight started at around 10am in the morning and I peeped out of my hotel room. The sky looked clear because that is the basic requirement for the Auroras to be visible.

Aurora Borealis – The Northern Lights are natural phenomena. When the solar gases (that contains electrically charged particles in it) produced by the sun gets in contact with the earth’s magnetic field, these natural lights are at display in the sky and its visible to countries or region that are close to the Arctic Circle or to say mostly seen on the belt around the north magnetic pole, like Norway, Finland, Iceland, Canada, Alaska, Sweden etc. The primary colors of the Northern Lights are green, red, and purple, though other colors like pink, blue, and yellow can also occasionally appear.

We had decided to have early dinner that day, say around 7pm types as we had our Northern Lights tour at 8pm. The guide had informed us that he would pick us up from our hotel. We were all ready at 7.45pm, fully geared up, well packed this time and waiting in the lobby. The guide was very punctual. He was bang on at 8 at the hotel entrance. We got introduced to each other and his name was Steven. We got into our minibus and met the other 4 mates of our small group. Before starting our Northern Lights tour, Steven took us first to their office so that he could give us some extra winter clothing as we had to stand in minus temperatures for quite some time. He told us that he would be taking us to 3 different places to see the Auroras and then pinned them on the map for our reference.

Then by 8.15pm we left on our lookout for Northern Lights. To see these lights in a fully wide-angle view, we had to go a bit far from the city as it’s better where there are less lights or basically no lights. We were slowly moving away from the city lights and at one point Steven just took a deviation from the highway and on this road, there were no streetlights at all. It was absolutely pitch dark and the temperature was the lowest of all time, it was -27.5 °C. So technically, in autumn and winter, the sea is warmer than the land and this place was far from a water body around. We got down from our minibus and just looked up. The sky was full of stars and within a matter of a few seconds, we saw a green shade coming behind the mountains and it just took its path in the middle of sky making a curve from one end to the other. We just couldn’t believe what we saw. We saw Northern Lights in our first attempt, thank God…yes yes, we saw it. The second mission also got accomplished, yay! These Auroras just kept changing their shape every 5 secs and it was just amazing to watch this phenomenon. Now when it came to capture this magical experience, I started trying to use my android phone and was so unfortunate that I couldn’t take even one pic also. On the other hand, my mom’s phone was an iPhone, and the moment mom focused it on the lights and clicked, it automatically adjusted the shutter speed, by making it slow, so that the image could be captured in a better way. So basically, I had not done my homework to know how to adjust my android phone’s shutter speed manually. But iPhone is an intelligent one that does this automatically, amazing! I think this was the first time I had to agree that iPhone is better than the android one.

In that zest of seeing the northern lights and capturing it, I totally forgot that my hand was out in those freezing temperatures for more than 3-4 mins. Now that’s because, if I keep my hands inside the gloves the camera will not work and then if I take my hands out of the gloves to click pictures, my hands will stop working after a while. I mean it had become real stiff turning red. Just for everyone’s knowledge, I only had a woolen glove with touch screen but alas it was of no use as I had to touch the screen for 4-5 times to make it work once lol…wish I would have bought a waterproof glove with touch screen instead…lessons learnt! At that moment, I quickly went inside the minibus that had its heaters on and kept my hands in my jacket pocket that had hand warmers. After 5mins, I was back to normal. I came out and started witnessing the magic of Auroras again. Me and mom were just speechless.

Then Steven took us to the second location which was near a water body and this time the temperature was -15 °C. In fact second and the third both were near a water body. These were more better than the first one in terms of the Auroras and the temperature. We almost saw most of the colors of the Northern lights changing its hue from white to grey to orange to red and purple and finally with the green lady gracing herself. It was as though God being a painter striking his paint brush on the canvas called sky. At the third location, Steven gave us some hot chocolate and pastries. Every moment under the Northern Lights was a dream come true for us and of course we had ticked it from our bucket list…hurray! It was around 11.30pm when we started to go back to reach our hotel after our wonderful tour of chasing the Northern Lights. The memories of the Auroras would be always cherished.

The next morning, I had booked a tour of Sleigh ride on the Arctic countryside at 10am and that was for 3hrs. This ride was with the Norwegian Fjord horses that are basically amazing looking breeds. These horses have a great combination of muscular bodies, hot looks with long and dark stripes running from their forehead to their tail but are short though when compared to horses here. These horses can survive in Arctic climatic conditions well.

Our guide picked us up from the hotel in the morning and took us to the stable near his house where the chariot was ready to take us through this mesmerizing Arctic countryside. We got onto the chariot and the charioteer gave us some blanket to cover our legs. Me and mom sat close to each other so that we could keep ourselves warm and we left for the tour.

Initially the chariot was a little slow but then later our horse picked up its speed. The path we were going was reminding me of those movie shots where you could only see blankets of snow everywhere and we were thoroughly enjoying this enchanting experience. The variety of trees was changing from pine to conifers to mountain birch and so many of them during our entire journey. There were frozen lakes around and a few streams of water were still flowing across. We could see a lot of houses at some point of time. One of the main communities around Arctic regions of Finland and Norway are the indigenous Sámi population. With a rich cultural heritage and a deep connection to the Arctic landscape, the Sámi have thrived in one of the world’s harshest environments for centuries.

We almost had come half a distance in our tour, and it was break time. We got down from the chariot and went into a closed space which had a fireplace and some seating arrangement around it. We were offered some hot blueberry juice along with some freshly baked homemade cinnamon rolls. Trust me, it was just mouthwatering! We had some good conversations here with our local hosts and a few other people. We didn’t realize we spent around 30mins there and it was time to leave. We left the place and hopped back to our chariot. In an hour’s time we were back to the place where we started our tour.

Exploring the Alta River valley with our friendly local hosts and then taking a break for delightful northern-Norwegian snacks, hot drinks and good conversation…everything was perfect. I will recommend everyone to do this if they visit Arctic regions. The views were just breath taking and beautiful. Before getting back to the hotel, mom insisted me to check for a horseshoe (they say a metal horseshoe brings good luck if you have it in your house) as there was a stable there. So, I just checked with our host, Levi, that if he has a used horseshoe that he can give to me and to my surprise he was like “yeah, yeah, I have it and I am going to give you one”. He went to his tack room and came back with a horseshoe and gave it to me. We were just more than delighted and I thanked him. We were totally soaked in the beauty of the Arctic countryside.

We were dropped back to the hotel and before getting into the room, we visited the Northern Lights cathedral that was right in front of our hotel.

Our vacation of chasing the northern lights was coming to an end and we had our flight the next morning back to Bangalore, through Oslo. We had a 16-hour layover time in Oslo. My friend who stays in Oslo was in India during that time and because of this he had already booked a hotel room for our stay in Oslo. I had told him so many times that this and all is not required but he never listened to me. He was like if he was in Oslo, I would have visited his house and hence I had no other option other than giving up on this. We had a brief stint in Oslo and headed back to Bangalore on the 8th of Jan. We had an amazing time during our entire vacation with loads of unforgettable experiences to be cherished for a lifetime.