Northern Lights – Frozen lake – Enontekio

Instead of updating I thought I’d do a new post:

The evening here starts around 3pm this time of year, myself and Steve were busily reviewing footage whilst the others headed to the local shop in search of souvenirs. They came back with tales such as ‘We found another shop! We turned left instead of right and found a hardware store and a kebab shop!’. Even though this may not seem significant to the lowly Londoner surrounded by shops all their life, to travellers in the heart of the arctic, this is significant. So much so that they informed us and we discussed it. We then headed to our purchased meal, 7 euros each, provided by the cabin owners which they offer each guest every night. Tonight they had Reindeer casserole (A speciality in the Lapland area of Scandinavia) and what was dubbed ‘Chicken with Rice’. Not liking the Reindeer myself – it is unique, I chose the chicken hoping that the lack of Chicken farms for 100’s of miles wouldn’t deter from the taste. Of course I was wrong and it was only made edible by the fact it was made into some sort of Chicken curry, I ate it none the less. We finished our plates and has some coffee and headed back out, the guys had asked for the Sauna to be ready for 8 O’clock and it was nearing that time when we left.

SO whilst the chaps headed into the Sauna, I ventured out into -30C to see if there was any lights to speak off, a mere glimmer hit me and it seemed that it was worth heading out but not as good as we saw last time.

However an hour later waiting and getting colder Steve decided to join me and I grabbed the now frozen beer out of my pocket to have some. This was when the lights lit up and danced across the sky; green, purple and yellow easily seen with the naked eye and spectacular to behold. It was literally moving like a waving flag across the arctic landscape. We managed to capture some great images but its never as good on a computer screen.

After this the other chaps joined us, but the show had reached its conclusion and even though we waited to see the encore, there wasn’t going to be one. It faded and faded until the hopes were dashed with the rapid onset of cloud drifting across the sky like smoke from a chimney on a cold London evening.

Cold, Hungry and aching I headed back and the others followed slowly as they came to the conclusion that there would be no more tonight. My camera has ice on it and the light box mounted on top had frozen, the laces on my shoes cracked and strained as I tried to take them off and my hands burnt as they hit warm air inside the cabin.

Our last full day awaits us tomorrow and we aim to explore one last time in this untouched area with no tourists to speak of and very few locals. The scenery is spectacular here and unique in the world, some shots below of our day: