It’s me, Hei! Five months after the fact, I’m here to tell you a magical tale. A tale of a dream finally come true; one I had been chasing for years.
If you’ve been here before, you may know that I have been cursed when it comes to seeing the Northern Lights (see for reference: Yoohoo! Big Summer Blow Out! and Finnish Wonderland). For years I have obsessed over photos, gone to places where I SHOULD have seen them, and obsessed over more photos. My particular obsession was over one place in particular: the Lofoten Islands in Norway.
In January 2020, my dad and I decided we were finally going to do it. We booked the two hotels in Svolvær I had been stalking and dreaming of for years: Svinøya Rorbuer and Thon Hotel Lofoten. We would go in November and have the best time! Or so we thought… miss covid had other plans though.
After two more years of pushing the booking and praying the Norwegians would let us back into their glorious country, in November (2022) we finally made it!
(airplane noise) London Gatwick ✈️ Oslo Gardermoen
We decided to stop in Oslo for a couple days to break up the trip and hit the Christmas market (you know I love a Christmas market). We were in Oslo on a Sunday and Monday and a lot of things, including restaurants, were closed on those days, so we truly did just wander aimlessly a bit.
Some highlights of the wanderings included: Kveitimjøl bakery for a cube croissant and cinnamon buns, Jul Vinterland, met up with my friend that was also in Oslo, shopping for trolls, you know, the usual.
Not pictured: the Dominos pizza we got dinner the last night – it slapped though.
On the Tuesday it was finally time – we were headed to Svolvaer… after a quick delay to fix a hole in the plane??
Oslo 🛫 Bodø 🛬 Svolvær
Our tiny plane from Bodø landed in the equally tiny Svolvær airport around 1:30pm and the sun was barely visible (the daylight hours in Northern Norway in the winter are about 10am until 2pm). Then we headed for Svinøya and got to our beauty of a little cabin.
Svinøya was everything I dreamed of. 10/10 would go back there and I hope I do many times in my life. We headed into town to find me some waterproof pants due to an amazon ordering mishap before the trip and to the grocery store to get some supplies for the cabin (Babybel cheese mainly), then headed to the restaurant at Svinøya, Børsen Spiseri, for dinner before our aurora tour.
I should tell you, as soon as Norway enters the Christmas adjacent season, it seems that every restaurant offers the same type of meal; a meal I began to call The Meat Pile (a couple different meats, usually a pork and something else, potatoes, sauerkraut). Now I love a meat pile, I had one in Oslo, and I had one again at Børsen Spiseri. It was delicious, but for the rest of the week we tried to find things that weren’t meat piles. We also had to try the reindeer here and it was also delicious.
Alright, now it was time for the main event. The hotel will book you in for Aurora tours that go right from the reception/restaurant area. We chose the Aurora Jäger, which said they find the aurora every time, to which I said: “yeah right, not when I’m with you.” Well, (I think you could probably tell by the spoiler in the title of this post) I am here to tell you, the curse has been broken.
The forecast for that evening wasn’t particularly spicy, I for one didn’t have high hopes, but we put on all the layers of clothes we brought and set out. We were in Lofoten pretty early in the season, and because of the light forecast, it wasn’t crowded at all. We only had one other guest on our tour.
Our guide Odd-Petter loaded us into the van and we were on our way. My man Odd-Petter LOVES his job, and I love that for him (though I could NOT smell the aurora as he says he can). This is not Odd-Petter’s first rodeo, he has his spots he checks and he stops you at other good photo spots regardless of is the aurora has shown herself yet. First stop was this church, and the sky started to get a slight glow. To the eye it looked like just a little hazy cloud, but turns out that is what a weak aurora looks like.
From the church we set off for another spot and don’t you worry, we rolled down the windows to try to catch her scent many times. We stopped at a beach next and the aurora started to turn it up a bit. Still pretty weak to the eye, but this spot also had beautiful views of the Milky Way, and when you live in a very light polluted city, seeing the Milky Way is a treat in itself.
Odd-Peter has a much nicer camera than me and also knows how to use it, so please enjoy his photos of us with the aurora and me with the Milky Way.
Next we went to the final destination of the night, a frozen lake. Here we got a stronger aurora, reflections on the ice, and more Milky Way. Sadly I had my back to the aurora for a photo (I know, I know, I’m the worst) when it was at it’s strongest, but at least Odd-Petter caught it for me. Here’s a couple of his photos.
Odd-Petter is also very helpful in teaching you which settings to use for the aurora, so I managed to get a few shots of my own as well.
With cold toes and the feeling of relief that Lady Aurora finally showed her face to me, we headed back home. I was happy we finally saw it, but, I won’t lie, I also was feeling a bit like… is that it?? The photos look great, but cameras do the lords work and it is much brighter through a camera lens with a long exposure than it is with the human eyeball. Either way, the tour was great and I would highly recommend going out with Odd-Petter. You can follow him on Instagram and hear him scream HOLY SHIT when the aurora comes for yourself if you like – @discoverlofoten.
The next day we had a private tour around the islands planned. Our guide Andrea that I booked through Tours by Locals picked us up from the hotel and we set out to take advantage of every bit of daylight we could. We covered a lot of ground, so I will just put the list of places we went here:
Valbergveien
Brustranda fjordcamping
Skifjorden
Vikstranda/Haukland beach
Nappskaret
Kilan
Flakstad church
Ramberg beach
Ramberg Lille Martine cafè
Hamnøy harbour
Hamnøy bridge
Reinehalsen
Å I Lofoten viewpoint
Å I Lofoten village
Sakrisøy
Nusfjord
I would try to match all my photos with each of those locations, but I have a bed time that is quickly approaching, so here is a ton of photos of every gorgeous spot we went to. Norway truly is a dream land.
Another fun thing about Svinøya was that they delivered breakfast to us each morning and it was enough meat, cheese, and bread to last us all day and to make dinner when we were exhausted from being out all day and couldn’t find the will to go out in search of another meat pile.
That brings us to Thursday. Thursday was a glorious day for many reasons. The first of which was that we had nowhere to be, no alarm clocks, just vibes. We decided to slowly start our day then head over to the floating sauna at the hotel.
Norwegians are somewhat crazy in that they like to go to the sauna then jump into a very cold body of water such as a 46°F fjord. Well, we thought they were crazy, until we tried it and became addicted ourselves. Don’t get me wrong, when you hit that water you forget how to be alive for a few seconds due to the 1000 ice daggers in your skin; it truly takes your breath away.
Both of us ended up jumping in multiple times. The Norwegians really have life figured out, it turns out.
After we settled down from the sauna adrenaline, we wandered into town, got some smørrebrød for lunch, hit up the Lofoten War Memorial Museum, picked up a rental car, and then went to the sushi restaurant for a proper Thanksgiving dinner.
After dinner we headed back to the hotel and as always, checked the aurora forecast. It was saying a big NOPE, not gonna see it tonight, sorry. To that I said, welp, we got time to kill and there’s still dark skies, so I’ll just take my camera outside the room and try to take some star photos. My dad asked if I wanted toe warners to which I replied “no, we’ll only be out for a few minutes.”
Oh how wrong I was. Here I am an hour later.
Let’s rewind to what brought me to laying on the ground in total awe. We headed out with my tripod as intended, and shortly after getting outside there looked to be a bit of a cloud by the mountain, which we wondered “is that actually the beginning of an aurora?” Thanks for teaching us what to look for, Odd-Petter, you’re the real MVP.
Not longer after looking at this photo and seeing that it was indeed the beginnings of an aurora, shit. got. real. Lady Aurora came to party that night. I squealed, I cried, I laid on the ground in awe, I yelled Holy Shit! like 10 times. This was what I had waited for for years. I don’t think I’ll ever forget that night with the aurora and her dance.
The show died off a bit so we thought we would go warm up our toes, charge the camera batteries, and see if we see anything through the windows of the cabin. Not long after we got inside, we heard the neighbors outside yelling. She was back. I ran out there in my Crocs. So much for warm toes.
After that, as I’m sure you can imagine, I just died happy. The end. Bye.
JK JK – we still have a couple days left in the trip!
The next day we hopped in the rental car and headed to the other place I had seen pictures of for years and couldn’t make it to as a part of our tour. That famous football (“soccer” for you Americans) field in Henningsvær. Without a drone it is hard to do it justice, but you can google some drone photos of it, who am I to stop you.
Aside from having a sick football pitch, the little town of Henningsvær was also super cute and had one of the best cinnamon buns I’ve ever had at a cute little cafe.
From Henningsvær we headed back to Svolvær to check into Thon Hotel Lofoten. This place and the view from the room did not disappoint (except the glare on the glass when you’re looking for the aurora, but we survived).
We got dinner next to the hotel and as we were leaving, that faint “cloud” appeared again, so naturally we ran back to our room to watch the aurora in the warmth of the indoors. Or so we thought… we ended up running outside a couple times because we really did have to press our faces against the glass while holding dark blankets over our heads to get rid of the glare from the few tiny lights in the room that we couldn’t turn off.
After the show died down, I slept, if you can even call it that, with my face right by the window and woke up every hour or so just to make sure I wasn’t missing any magic.
This brings us to the final full day in Svolvær. We had pretty much exhausted all of the activities in the town and didn’t really feel like driving anywhere else, so we just went to a few souvenir shops, wandered a bit, then mostly sat and enjoyed the stunning view from the hotel room. There wasn’t really an aurora that night, but we did keep entertained by watching what we think was a hiker with a headlamp work their way down the mountain at night.
On the final morning we packed up and hit the breakfast buffet. Thon hotels are known for their incredible breakfast, and the bacon alone was worth the hype. One final meat pile.
Then we were off. We headed to the tiny airport to get on the tiny plane and sadly left Lofoten behind.
Do yourself a favor if you can: go to Lofoten, jump in the fjord, chase the aurora, take the toe warmers out with you just incase, and always check which camera settings your phone is capable of before you go.
Oh well, I guess I’ll just have to go back for those 4k videos 😏. In the meantime, here’s a collection of the non 4k ones. Luckily Norway is gorge no matter what resolution it’s shot in.
*Runs away to start a new life in Norway*
Ha Det
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