Northern Lights to Sparkle in 2012

20th September 2011

"Good evening sir, please can you tell me what time they turn the Northern Lights on?” You may laugh but this question was posed by a tour guide at the Reykjavik tourist information centre just a few years ago! 

Though a sighting is never guaranteed, NASA scientists are predicting that 2012 will bear witness to the brightest Northern Lights for 50 years, suggesting they may even be visible as far south as Rome! Then again, the Met Office predicted a BBQ summer for the UK this year!

Joking aside, there is a lot of science at work here; the event will be caused by the Solar Maximum - a period when the sun's magnetic field on the solar equator rotates at a slightly faster pace than at the solar poles. As a result of clashing particles, the most vivid colour is green but is often intermingled with red, yellow, pink and blue - the rarest Aurora Borealis colour.

Our winter trips to Finland and Sweden visit very remote areas where there is no light pollution to dull your view of this spectacular natural phenomena. Whilst we cannot guarantee the Northern Lights during your trip, the odds of witnessing one of nature’s most mesmerising spectacles this winter are better than ever.

By day you could be ‘mushing’ a team of huskies through silent, snow-clad forests or crunching through fresh powder on a snowshoeing adventure, and by night gazing up at the Arctic sky as Mother Nature’s dazzling light show dances overhead. 

One of our favourite accounts of a quest to see the Aurora Borealis is by Bill Bryson in Neither Here Nor There. His pilgrimage saw him venture as far north as one can go on public transport in Norway to the small village of Hammerfest where he found himself isolated desperately waiting for the phenomena to occur. After a week of nothing but sleeping and drinking, the lights finally appear on his last night.

Our Northern Lights holidays are some of our most popular winter activity trips and as such, places book up quickly. So don’t delay - you will have to wait a long time for this opportunity to come around again.

View the latest images from Iceland here.

Below is a list of winter holidays offering the opportunity to view the Northern Lights: