Northern Light in Lapland

Northern Light - Lapland's magic light show

You may have the luck to enjoy this beautiful light show during your Sleddogs tour in Lapland. From your hut in the mountains of Lapland in the evening after a day of adventure sleddog adventure you have good possibility to get a free ticket to the magic show of Northern Light.

People has been fascinated by the Northern Light for thousands of years, also known by the name Aurora Borealis (latin). So what is this Northern Light - nature's most beautiful light show all about?

Science explanation of Northern Light

The encyclopaedias define the Northern Light as a colourful light phenomenon, which shows itself when charged particles, protons and electrons, carried by solar winds hit the upper parts of the Earth's atmosphere.

Northern Lights are created by electronic particles from the sun, moving in the earth's magnetic field that collide with the atmosphere. At the time of collision, a particle rushing from space excites an atom in the air to a higher state of energy. A moment later, the atom returns to its original state and at the same time, it radiates excitation energy as light of a certain colour.

The Northern Lights form and colour changes

The Northern Lights usually perform at a height of 100 kilometres. There are enormous changes in colour and form. One can observe the Northern Lights as a peaceful east-west line, a curve or beams of light, quickly moving and pulsating forms. The most common colours are greenish yellow and red. Some observers claim that the Northern Lights also make sounds as they blaze across the sky. This however has not been scientifically proven.

Tickets for the light show in Lapland

Northern Lights appear in our sky about 200 nights per year, unfortunately the sky is not always clear and they can not be seen through cloud cover. On average there are approximately 2 bright clear nights per week. We can not guarantee any Northern Light, however you have high possibility to see the light show.

Many would like to buy a ticket to the light show. To see a proper show of the spectacular Northern Lights one should spend minimum one week if not two in Lapland. The strongest and brightest Northern Lights give as much light as the moon. The most anxious 'Northern Lights tourists' are the Japanese. Many guest groups in Lapland ask the night porters of hotels to wake them at any time of night if the Northern Lights are to appear. And no wonder - the Japanese believe that the Northern Lights bring happiness and male children.

Lapland the place to be

In northernmost Lapland, it is possible to see the Northern Lights nearly every evening, if it is dark and clear - clouds and the light nights of summer prevent their visibility. On average the Northern Lights can be seen in the latitude of Hemavan about 100 nights a year, and even in Stockholm on 20 nights. In Central Europe, the Northern Lights appear about once a year, and in the Mediterranean region, about once every ten years.

Only about 1% of the world's population lives in the main area of occurrence of the Northern Lights.

The meaning of the word

In the Saami language, the northern lights are called guovssahasah. It means "the sun glowing in the sky in the morning or in the evening", as in aurora, the Latin word for dawn. But this word could also be translated as "the fire lit by a bird, the Siberian Jay". This word also refers to audible light, although no scientific proof of audible sound coming from the aurora exists.

Beliefs and stories about the Northern Light

It not hard to image - if you have possibility to see the northern light on your sleddog adventure - why the stories and beliefs of the northern light are so imaginative.

The origin of the northern lights has various explanations in folklore and mythology. In addition to the people of Scandinavia, the Inuits, the American Indians, tribes in Siberia, the people of Russia and the Baltic countries and the people of Mongolia have beliefs related to the northern lights.

Laplanders

The Laplanders thought that auroras and the weather were connected. When the aurora was flaming high in the sky the weather would be warm. By the magic influence of the aurora they thought it was possible to also influence the weather.

The natives, for example Indians and Laplanders, who live in the aurora zones today think that the aurora is something to be respected. This opinion is still active in our century. A lot of elderly people living in the north of Sweden can remember as children being told to act nice and silent when there were auroras in the sky. To misbehave at that time was very serious.

In both Scandinavia and North America some people believe that you can call the aurora by whistling, but to do so can be dangerous.

Some people would not let their children outside to play while there were auroras, since they could get killed. Others thought it was all right as long as the children had hats on, so that the aurora would not burn their hair off.

In parts of Lapland people considered the northern lights as the winter counterpart of the thunderstorm in summer. Often one meets the aurora as omens. Omens of war were described in Poland, Prussia, Germany, Denmark, Estonia and among the Sámi people

Swedish beliefs

Three old Nordic explanations are mentioned in the book "Kongespeilet" from the thirteenth century.

At that time people thought the Earth was flat and surrounded by oceans. One explanation was that the oceans were surrounded by fire and that auroras were the light from those fires, reflected in the sky.

One other possibility was that the sun threw its beams high in the sky although the sun itself was located beneath the edge of the earth plate.

A third possibility was that glaciers could absorb so much power that they began to shine.

One of the ancient Swedish names for aurora is sillblixt (herring flash). The name comes from people who thought that the aurora was a reflection of large herring shoals in the ocean.

In Scandinavia, the Vikings had a rich collection of legends, some associated with the beautiful goddess Freja. The goddess riding on horseback was seen by mortals as the glow of the northern lights.

Scots

The spirits of the Scots were waging continuous war, which was both visible and audible as the occurrence of "Fir chlis" (northern lights).

The beliefs of the colours

A lot of people thought that auroras, especially the red ones, foretold bad times, such as plague, war or great fires. The reddish auroras often made people believe that a city close by was on fire and they rushed there only to find that it was not the case. It is easy to see how people who were not used to auroras could mistake them for fires, especially since most of the houses were made of wood and easily caught fire.

For the Laplanders, as for other people in northern Europe, Asia and America, the aurora was a place for the dead. Above all it were people who had died a violent or too early death who came to live in the aurora. It could be people who were murdered, killed in war, took their own life, died in child birth or unborn children.

Links to Forcast to the Northern Light by the University of Lund, Sweden