“Good morning ladies and gentlemen. You may have noticed that we had a little weather last night.” As hardy Nordic understatements go, this Tannoy announcement elicited a raised eyebrow from even the locals on board the MS Polarlys. It had not been a good night. Arctic winters can be arduous, but force 10-12 gales (effectively a hurricane) are not a regular occurrence. We were, as the captain put it, experiencing some “un-normal weather”.
For 365 days a year the Hurtigruten Coastal Express plies the waters between Bergen and Kirkenes, passing en route some of Norway’s most spectacular scenery. During the summer this 11-strong fleet of passenger ferries, including MS Polarlys, are packed with midnight sun seekers. During the winter, when much of northern Norway is snowbound, most passengers are commuting locals along with the few hardy tourists who hop aboard hoping to catch a glimpse of the Northern Lights. Unlike other places where the Northern Lights occur, Norway’s slice of the Arctic is comparatively accessible. Travel to Yellowknife, the aurora capital of Canada, for example, and you are entering some of the most frostbitten extremities of the Northwest Territories, the domain of private tour companies, patronised only by those with very well-heeled snowboots.
Unlike Greenland, Labrador and Canada’s northernmost provinces, Norway’s fjord-studded coastline remains free from obstructive ice all year, thanks to the warmth of the Gulf Stream. Its shores are habitable, so that even destinations beyond the Arctic Circle are serviced by a steady flow of passenger and goods ships. Established in 1891, the Hurtigruten has played an essential role in the socio-economic development of the Norwegian coast. Without these ferries many of the coastal villages would be without basic consumables for many months of the year. That said, the ‘un-normal’ weather on my trip meant that Polarlys was not able to put in to shore at several of its 34 ports of call. Out in the open sea its passengers may have been feeling less than shipshape but a high-tech stabilising system means that the ship is well equipped to weather the worst of Arctic storms. “Waves 15-20 metres high, no problem,” said our captain Jon Olaf Klodiussen. “A force 12-er, no problem. But docking with these conditions? That’s a problem.”
Norway’s snaking coves, sheer rocky fjords and densely packed offshore islands make for spectacular sightseeing, but anything stronger than a force nine gale and the picture-perfect features that characterise the country’s coast are the very things that make it impossible to approach. You simply have to ride it out in the open sea. In these conditions sleep is snatched somewhere between the stomach-lurching rise and fall of the ship. Expecting to spend the night out on deck with eyes cast to the heavens, many passengers had in fact spent it in their cabins, faces cast to the relentlessly rolling bathroom floor. In bed it was like pitching your tent on a very uneven bit of ground and waking up to find yourself in a heap at the foot of the mattress – except that unlike in a tent, if you waited a few minutes, you’d be back up the other end, piled up on your pillow like a pair of hastily discarded pyjamas.
The following morning we realised that we had been tantalisingly close to the real reason we were there. Incredibly, through the clouds, the Northern Lights had been spotted. “They appeared for a few minutes sometime around midnight,” says our captain, over breakfast. The ship’s dining room had very democratic seating arrangements, with the captain and cabin crew plonked among the punters. After a rough night this left them open to endless questions from the floor. Captain Klodiussen clutched a strong cup of coffee and managed a more than diplomatic smile. “We would have alerted you, but the activity was brief and there was plenty to do on the bridge.” Passengers who don’t want to leave anything to chance can, however, take advantage of an aurora activity wake-up call. Simply leave your cabin number with the ship’s tour director, position your boots and trousers fireman-like at the end of your bed, and pray for clear skies.
Thanks to the effects that solar wind has on our planet’s atmosphere, we are treated annually to the primordial mother of all light shows. Present year-round, aurora (Latin for ‘dawn’) activity is best seen between November and February when dark Arctic skies act as the perfect backdrop. Called the aurora borealis in the northern hemisphere, the Northern Lights have a more or less identical counterpart in the southern hemisphere, the aurora australis. Both are best seen at higher latitudes (above 60 degrees) but the Northern Lights have appeared as far south as Key West in Florida, the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico and on several occasions have danced across the UK’s night skies. Magnetic activity on the sun and the adherent violent explosions reach a peak about every 12 years, with intense aurora activity in the couple of years to follow. The last ‘solar maxim’, as this is known, was in the year 2000. We should currently be in the middle of some superlative atmospheric fireworks.
We had picked up Polarlys in Tromsø. Considered by some to be the last point of civilisation north of the Norwegian Arctic Circle, Tromsø is home to the Northern Lights Planetarium, the Polar Museum and the northernmost university in the world. It also has more bars per capita than anywhere else in the country. Before sailing we sampled more than one of them, trudging between venues knee-deep in squeaky fresh snow that completely muffled the akevit (vodka) and beer-fuelled din bubbling behind each heavy wooden door. We made it onto the dock to watch the ship come in, Polarlys’ horn rousing an army of expectant forklift trucks from a neat row of red-painted warehouses. Despite the intake of akevit, ten minutes on the dock made popsicles out of us. We boarded as soon as the gangplank came down and set sail just before midnight, watching the magnificent icicle-sharp pitched roof of the Arctic Ocean Cathedral pass by as we headed south.
The following morning we took a shore excursion in Harstad. Arctic winters were not as I’d expected. Rather than a lack of sun, the twilight-blue glow that just about lit the day suggested that I was simply standing the wrong side of it – on the cold side of the sun. Snow was everywhere: thin curtains of icing sugar hung in the air; white-coated mountains cast an eerie light across the valleys; and tiny red houses wore white Santa’s hats of the stuff as if sewn on. “We more or less live in a fridge all year,” said one resident, shovelling snow off his drive, “But so far this year I’ve seen more snow than I can ever remember.” We toured the town, taking in stern Lutheran churches where, in the Middle Ages, holes would have been cut in the ice to submerge baptised babies. Outside a grocery store an old lady offered me a turn on her ski-mounted walking frame. There was just enough time for a quick spin (literally; it demands some knack) before we had to reboard.
There are a number of short shore excursions available but the principle joy of the Hurtigruten is the blissful lack of activity. There is (thankfully) no cruise-liner style entertainment; only a bar and one or two TVs dotted about broadcasting Norwegian channels. It’s just you, the sea and, if the visibility is good, a moving frieze of exquisite snow-encrusted scenery. But visibility was not good. The foreigners on board transformed into weather-fixated, deck-pacing obsessives. Bemoaning the approaching low pressure, we prayed for the clear skies that would reveal streams of radiation-charged particles as they bombarded the earth’s magnetic field, creating curtains of light in red and blue (nitrogen particles), and red and green (oxygen particles). Evan and Anne Thornbor, a Welsh couple from the Isle of Wight, looked less fidgety than the rest of us, having already made the journey north and seen the aurora. “It wasn’t for long but it was unmistakable. Green swirling lights moving around the sky – dancing, just like they say they do. You could see why the Vikings used to think they were glinting scales from big shoals of herring.”
The aurora itself may be elusive but you can’t avoid the myths attached to them. Over a dinner of fresh lobster and reindeer stew, the talk was of lights legends. “When I was small, my grandmother would tell me to come in when they appeared in case they burnt my eyes,” said Hilde, the ship’s tour director. Ancient legend is less prosaic. Soldiers doing battle in the sky and fiery signs from the gods are just two of the most poetic but as early as 1250, Norwegians were coming up with pretty scientific-sounding theories about the origins of the aurora, one being that Greenland’s ice drew in so much energy it glowed. The favourite theory though, is that the lights are the dance of dead maiden virgins. The punchline either being “there aren’t any of those left nowadays,” or (from women) “what on earth do they have to dance about?”
After another night’s storm, we passed the magic border that circles the earth at 66° 33’ north. From here on, the chances of seeing the Northern Lights diminish with each nautical mile south. True, the scenery does become less barren and perhaps more majestic the closer you get to the fjords but we were already missing the bruised polar skies of the north. Despite the fact that we were travelling south, the ship’s crew decided to give us the ice-water soaking that traditionally accompanies the crossing of the Arctic Circle line northbound. As if blessed with holy water, the sky cleared that night just long enough to see a shower of shooting stars, part of an enormous Leonid storm, the sparkling tails of which, the captain later reported, were so bright that his wife phoned to say they cast shadows over their house in Tromsø. Plenty to wish on but sadly, this time, for us the aurora remained hidden. But now more determined than ever, we tell ourselves that there’s always next year. Just have to remember to pack the seasickness pills.
When to go: Prime Northern Lights time is between November and February. January and February are usually the coldest and clearest months. Christmas office parties are a very big deal in Norway so if you travel in December, expect to find yourself among some onboard celebrations.
