The best view of the northern lights involves a lot of travel—but it is so worth it
There are somewhere around one septillion stars in the universe. On a clear night in the middle of a quiet birch forest in northern Norway, it feels as if you can see every single one of them. Tiny dots of starlight on a spectrum of brightness dotted every corner of the night sky in a celestial show that, for me, has only been rivaled by what I've seen in the middle of the American desert, far removed from any source of light.
However, I wasn't in northern Norway just to stargaze (though that was one of the major perks). I was one of eight guests of Klättermusen Experiences, a new offshoot of the 50-year-old Swedish high-end outdoor outfitter, Klättermusen, whose focus is on sustainable adventure travel. The plan was to spend a few days ski touring and a few days dogsledding, and if we were lucky, we would see the aurora borealis, the astral phenomenon that has helped build an entire tourism industry in the northernmost reaches of our planet.
After four flights (Raleigh-Durham to Boston to Reykjavik to Oslo to Alta), I arrived in Alta, a small commune in the Finnmark region that calls itself 'the city of the northern lights.' From there, it was still a 90-minute drive to our final destination: The tiny village of Langfjordbotn, population 114. This is where we (me and seven other travelers) would spend the week in two small lodges at the edge of the Langfjorden, a long, slender tributary of the much larger Altafjord. We were four degrees above the Arctic Circle and, less than a week before we arrived, the sun made its first appearance since late November.
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