Our Northern Lights Blog

Though we don’t usually like to reveal all of our Northern Lights secrets, this one is too good to keep to ourselves – autumn is a spectacular time to go Aurora hunting.

During my first trip to Finland, I was thrilled to find out that my itinerary included snowmobiling in Harriniva. Now, I’m an experienced, confident driver but when I found out my first time on a snowmobile was going to be at night, I have to admit I was a little apprehensive. After watching the introduction video, which was very informative and had a touch a humour to help settle the nerves, we headed out to be shown the controls and get ready to set off. 

Between late August and mid-November, the Arctic undergoes a spectacular transformation. As the Midnight Sun starts to set and the landscape prepares for the winter freeze, autumn’s reputation as the season of change has never been more apparent than in the North.

Recently, NASA made their entire media library accessible to the public and since then, we’ve been excitedly scrolling through some spectacular images from space. Now, the Northern Lights are mesmerising to see from land but there’s something about a space station’s unique vantage point that really shows off just how magical this display is.

Packing for a winter holiday is a completely different experience to a holiday in the sun. When you start adding jumpers, thermals, coats, hats and gloves to your suitcase it can start to fill up very quickly!

I’ve been lucky enough to travel quite extensively over the last three years working with the Aurora Zone and have enjoyed some truly memorable experiences. What I have had less luck with, however, is the Northern Lights. Whilst my colleagues kept coming back from trips with tales of majestic Auroras, I seem to have hit periods of cloud and stories of ‘you should have been here last night it was incredible’.

Our family ski holiday has been sacrosanct since I was 5 years old. To put that in context, that was 30 years ago and we’ve never missed a year since. My sister and I even made a pact with our super active Dad that we would continue the tradition and now, our husbands quite frankly get no choice in the matter and our very merry group now includes family friends and three generations of skiers!

I have been very lucky to travel to Lapland and Northern Scandinavia in each month of the winter season over the years. Each has their merits in my mind; December is great for that festive feeling (and making the most of bank holidays of course!), January typically offers incredible winter scenery and February is ideal for half term travellers and enjoying the elongating days. However, when my parents wanted to travel to Finland four years ago, I sent them in March. When I wanted to show Finland to my new husband, we went in March. When we decided to do ‘the big family holiday’ this year…. we chose March.

I have to admit I was extremely apprehensive to drive a dog sled for the first time. However, the instructions provided by our guide were very clear and easy to follow. He went out of his way to explain all details thoroughly – he must have seen the fear in our faces!

As we have mentioned in many a previous blog, March is a brilliant time to go in search of the Northern Lights. This is not just our personal opinion either! Studies by NASA solar physicist David Hathaway show that March is one of the most geomagnetically active months of the year (see graph below), and the reason for this is springtime. Or to be more accurate the spring equinox.