Last shots from my own little pocket phone camera of the aurora, taken on the 22nd, 23rd and 24th of January. Do view these on a larger screen if you really want to see them, in a low-lit room ideally. I fear that otherwise, many of you seeing this on your phone screen under bright surrounding conditions will think I’ve posted a bunch of black box photos. 🙂
Tips for anyone who might want to view them: don’t rush when you get the alert; instead, put on your layers of undergarments, middle garments and wind-proof outer garments. Expect to want to spend time looking at dark skies that your eyes tell you are just showing a bit of mist, until you notice the mist moves around, changes shape, and appears in different parts of the sky. The real life experience is less visually dramatic than what you will see in calendars, or in your own photos if you get a tripod and quality lens, etc. But it’s far more variable and awe-inspiring, from my own experience.
You might recall that my old friend Gary and I first scheduled our cruise in order, once in our life, to see the northern lights live. As I’ve shown through dozens, even hundreds, of posts since January – we saw so much more than just the northern lights, even with the days as short as they were. We did, as I’ve shown you only a few times before, also see the lights themselves, three nights in a row on which we were fortunate to have clear skies. I don’t have a fancy camera that allows a long exposure – but my plain old phone did capture several images, which are hard to make out if you have background light. This was our experience: the first time we thought we were looking at mist or smoke in the sky, until we noticed it was moving and changing shape frequently. The colors only emerge as your eyes sensitize a lot – or on the camera if you have a long enough or good enough exposure. At the bottom, one from Gary where the color is less rich but the lights are more visible than above or in my other small shots below.
Coastal Norway, from our last day at sea. Might still post an aurora shot or two, but this pretty much end o’ the Norway photos…at last, you may be thinking :-).
These were all shot along the way between Finnsnes and Tromsø, which means these are the last photos of Troms County. I’m not sure which town that is, above – one of the 15-minute port calls the boat made, where I neglected to photograph a sign that gave it away :-/.
Last snowy-landscape shots from the Snowhotel Kirkenes, in Norway’s Finnmark county. Above, we’re looking out from the lovely big windows in the dining room over the frozen, snow-covered fjord that runs south from the harbor, on which we also did our King Crab outing that day. At the bottom of this post, for those interested, is a panorama of the compound in which you can see, at the far left, a conical-roofed cafe building which is next the sled dog kennels (shared in our prior post from Kirkenes), then the larger modern glass & brick structure that houses check-in and tour-group visits (tour groups do short trips for the King Crab, Husky Sled Dogs, etc.), then the heated modern lodge hotel building with rounded roofs up the hill from left to right, then the large bulk of the actual frozen Snowhotel itself (where we slept on our ice beds), and at the far right the building with restaurant, sauna, changing and warming lounge reserved for overnight snowhotel guests.
The main city center of Tromsø is actually on the island of Tromsøya (Romssasuolu in the Northern Sami dialect of its first nation inhabitants). In the photo above, the island and thus main city center is to the left, taken as we pulled into the port. Leaving, a few hours later, we passed under that bridge you see above, and during our several-hour port call we walked a bit more than halfway across that bridge, on the other (mainland) side of which is the iconic church you’ll see in some photos below.
The island of Magerøya is now connected to the Norwegian mainland by a bridge. Prior to that bridge’s construction, anyone wishing to see Nordkap, the northernmost point in “mainland” Europe (it’s an island, but a close-coastal island, I guess is how they justify that?), had to take a boat. I took most of these from the tour bus which took us from HonningsvÃ¥g along the windswept landscapes and rocky coastal plains up to Nordkap.
Above, shortly after 8am on the 23rd of January, roughly two minutes before our boat crossed into the arctic circle. Below other mountainous coastal shots from the following hours before we docked at Bodø…including Gary with the ship’s spotlight illuminating the arctic circle monument behind him.
Last photos from Bodø, which was our first port call after entering the arctic circle in the wee hours of 23 January, and is both the capital and the largest city of Norway’s Nordland County.
(so much world, so little time....) 