I am in Longyearbyen on Svalbard, the Norwegian archipelago at around 80 degrees North.
On my way to Svalbard I spent a day in Oslo. I visited the Fram Museum and saw the polar expedition ship that I had read so much about. It’s rests in a dry dock on the peninsula of Bygdøy, housed in a triangular-tent-shaped building where one can circle the ship whilst reading about polar expeditions past.
The Fram
“You should be here earlier in the winter. When it was colder,” said Knut, the Sami reindeer herder in his gruff, accented English. “Now it’s warm weather, rain, we can’t see the northern lights.”
“We haven’t seen them at all since I’ve been here,” I replied. “That’s nearly a week. It’s been cloudy every day.”
“When it’s so warm it [the northern lights] doesn’t come.”
“When is the best time to see it?”
“December or January. When it’s very cold.”
We were out in the hills with the reindeer somewhere around Karasjok, a few hours’ drive inland from Alta, near the Norwegian–Finnish border. That was March last year. I was in northern Norway researching a book I am writing on the northern lights. I am a plasma physicist and the aurora is plasma, so despite my academic interests in nuclear fusion (I was the IOP Schools’ Lecturer in 2010 on this subject), the northern lights have long fascinated me. Read more
Map of the North showing the Arctic Circle
I’m writing a book on the Northern Lights, and as part of the research I’m travelling to various Arctic regions – Sweden, Norway, Canada and Iceland being the main ones. Looking at the map, I feel I should be visiting Russia too, as I’m actually missing out half the world!