Finland Aurora safari
I’ve always wanted to see the Aurora Borealis (…who hasn’t, right?) and tried in Iceland back in 2009 over a long weekend, but it snowed so heavily the whole time I was there that I couldn’t see a thing. No Aurora, no landscapes… I couldn’t even see the (apparently) stunning Godafoss waterfall despite being stood right on the edge of it. Good times.
So then I was meant to go to Nellim, Finland, in 2013 but something else came up so I cancelled my trip and shelved the idea for a while due to other priorities.
2019 was going to be the year I tried again. I’d put it off too long and it had been niggling at me non-stop. Besides, I’d been practicing my night-time photography and was raring to go and capture some amazing Aurora shots.
I booked a 4-night trip with The Aurora Zone, an awesome UK-based Aurora specialist, packed a bag with some warm clothes, camera gear, and a tripod, and off I went!
Read on below to find out how it went!
The start of the night’s Aurora chase and the first hint of some activity
The Aurora Zone
Firstly, I have to give these guys a massive shout-out. I’d booked my previous trip with them back in 2013, the one I’d had to cancel, and when I decided to go again, they were the only company I considered booking with. Aurora specialists, they are experts in creating amazing trips to the Arctic for you to experience the Northern Lights.
Their team is extremely helpful, knowledgeable, friendly, and work really hard to ensure your trip is a success. I can’t recommend them enough; if you’re considering going, give them a call.
The Journey
Getting there was pretty straight-forward. I flew to Helsinki then connected to Ivalo where I was met by the hotel’s airport transfer bus and driven the 60km further north to Lake Inari. The plane for the first leg was probably the most awesome one I’ve ever been on. It was a Finnair flight and the seats were super comfortable, with plenty of legroom, and really good entertainment systems with good tv screens. I loved it. The next leg was also Finnair but, understandably, a smaller, and less luxurious model.
One lesson I quickly learned first-hand - things aren’t cheap in Scandinavia. I grabbed a sandwich at Helsinki airport which was insanely expensive and really very average. Luckily I had two credit cards and a spare kidney on me so was able to cover it…
On that note, take your own alcohol. I went to buy some Baileys at the duty free at Helsinki having forgotten at Heathrow (I wasn’t able to because my next flight was internal) and even so, a tax-free bottle of spirits was still around €40. No problem, I thought, I’ll just have the odd glass of wine at the hotel… for €15 a pop.
The Wilderness Hotel
I was staying at the Inari Wilderness Hotel, a gorgeous, rustic retreat in the far north. The hotel is comprised of the main log cabin building housing the reception, restaurant, and bar areas, complete with huge roaring fires, separate accommodation blocks, and a variety of log cabins, chalets, and glass-roofed Aurora cabins dotted around the main building. I was initially staying in the standard rooms and had upgraded to an Aurora cabin for the last night.
The hotel is right on the bank of Lake Inari, the third largest lake in Finland - no idle boast in the Land of a Thousand Lakes. Even though it was only late September when I went, the water in the lake was so cold that, on the few times I tried to go swimming, I literally couldn’t do it. Now, I’m no stranger to cold water; I’m an open-water swimmer and have swum in the Southern Ocean in Antarctica but this was something else… maybe because it starts off quite shallow so you have to wade in for a while rather than just being able to plunge straight in. Anyway, I only got as far as knee-deep before my feet started burning with cold & I legged it back to the sauna. Fail.
Foooooood (nom nom nom)
The food at the hotel was really awesome. Breakfast was a buffet, lunch and dinner à la carte. I basically had reindeer steak with berry jus and roasted root vegetables every chance I got, which was amazing, but because I’d booked an all-inclusive package, once or twice I was told I needed to have the set menu. However, my first meal was quite dry and disappointing compared to the roast reindeer so I was allowed to go back to choosing every meal.
Win.
Excursions
I’d arrived at the hotel around 7.30pm on a Thursday and checked in, picking up my Aurora phone in the process. This is used to alert you to any Aurora activity that’s spotted up until 1am. I then took my bags to my room and wandered down to the lakeshore to have a look around and take some pictures.
After that, I had an amazing three-course dinner and nightcap and headed to bed, fully prepared to leap out if the buzzer sounded.
Which it didn’t. Boo.
Shopping trip to Inari town
The next day was at my leisure, with the first scheduled activity included in my package being an Aurora-chasing drive that evening. I had a late breakfast, getting in just before the buffet ended at 10am, ate, and set off on the 35-minute walk into Inari town for a look around.
I had the vague idea of buying some wine and snacks for my room and had a look around the three supermarkets, to no avail. It turns out that supermarkets don’t sell alcohol (apart from beer and low-alcohol wine); the government controls the Alko shops which are the only ones licenced to sell spirits. And the nearest one was 60km away in Ivalo.
Aurora chasing
That evening, I met up with two couples who were booked on the same trip in reception after dinner and we piled into a minibus to head out and look for some Aurora action.
We drove about 45 minutes north and the driver stopped when he thought he saw the beginnings of some activity. We all got out and, sure enough, there were some misty wisps of light in the sky so we set up tripods and cameras, fiddled with settings, and started snapping away.
First glimpse
Initially the Aurora we could see started as a glowing stripe across the sky which steadily grew, but it wasn’t the incredible dancing display that you really want. It didn’t look like much to the naked eye but the cameras were picking up the electric green colour really well with 15-second exposures.
After an hour or so, it began to fade so we turned around and headed back to the hotel, having captured some pretty good shots and feeling rather pleased with ourselves.
We stopped off on the way to take pictures of the moon reflecting in a lake and noticed that the Aurora seemed to be following us, and as we carried on driving, it essentially kept pace with us. When we arrived back, I immediately went and set up on the bank of the lake along with about a dozen others.
Mind = Blown
Sure enough, the Aurora kept coming, creeping steadily across the sky until they were seemingly right above us. Still though, not much was happening - there was very little movement although it was still beautiful to see.
After a few hours, shortly before 1am, most people called it a night and went to bed, leaving a die-hard group of 4 or 5 of us still hoping to wring the very last drop of Aurora experience possible out of the night.
Within 15 minutes, our commitment paid off, massively.
A band of Aurora shooting across the sky from behind the Aurora cabins
We were treated to the most indescribably epic display of Northern Lights which lasted just a minute or two, but left me feeling totally awestruck and giggling like I’d lost my marbles. I genuinely felt that I’d experienced them at something approaching their most majestic and (though I’ll never stop trying), if I never see them again, I really can’t complain. But I’m sure I will!
Trying to put into words how visually intense the Northern Lights are is virtually impossible, as is attempting to convey with some degree of accuracy how stunned it leaves you feeling, but I’ll do my best.
Whereas before they’d just been a slowly moving, pale glow across the sky, what happened next was about as dramatic as it gets. A streak of intense green light suddenly appeared from behind the glass roof of the nearest Aurora cabin, shooting up into the sky and arcing over to come down right above us and the lake.
I was amazed because this wasn’t the insipid-to-the-naked-eye, wispy glow we’d been seeing for 3 hours; this was a much stronger electric green colour and could be seen clearly, like my previous shots on camera. Half of the sky seemed to light up and then we saw the mystical dancing effect it produces, moving rapidly across the sky and shooting down in mile-high columns of beautiful light. The energy was incredible; it made me think of a celestial being playing a magical piano in the sky, producing bars of colour instead of music which charge down towards the ground. (Just go with me here - it makes sense in my head.)
It was completely mind-blowing; easily the most surreal, profound, awe-inspiring and magical experience of my life.
Even though I was completely awestruck, I managed to aim my camera and fire off a few shots, but only a few - as I said, the whole thing was over with in about a minute.
But what a minute it was! I was literally so excited while it was going on that I was breathless and couldn’t string together a cohert thought - I just stood there giggling to myself, feeling completely overwhelmed and amazed. I do specifically recall thinking that I wished my girlfriend was with me to experience it too but she hadn’t been able to come on the trip.
The series of three pictures below are from this moment and illustrate exactly what I saw with my eyes - for the first time all night, it looked almost exactly like this. Almost because the photos are 15 or 20 second captures so naturally display more light than you can see live. If you look closely, you'll see I also managed to capture some shooting stars!
The first photo is the point at which the Aurora first shot up from behind the cabin.
The second is where it really intensified and started to go absolutely crazy, dancing all over the sky with the bars you see to the right darting down towards us one at a time. The energy was incredible and it felt even more surreal for being completely quiet although it seemed like I could feel the music the lights were dancing to.
A few more seconds of the heavens dancing and bouncing up and down and then that was it… it stopped as suddenly as it started and faded away, leaving me completely blown away.
Mere words and pictures can’t hope to convey the emotion of experiencing this first-hand but I’ve done the best I can. Suffice to say it’s every bit as incredible as I hoped it would be, and more.
After the amazing few minutes, there was still Aurora to be seen for another hour or so. The band of green swept over us, at one point fully covering half the sky, and then moved off across the lake towards the moon. It was still beautiful, but not doing the dancing movements it had done before.
Green Aurora covering half the sky
I stayed out until the bitter end, not wanting to miss a second of it. I took a bunch more photos and only gave in and went to bed, tired but elated, around 2am when I finally accepted the show was over for the night.
Boat Trip & Another Aurora Chase
The rest of my time there was less dramatic.
The following day, Saturday, I was booked on a boat trip on the lake and a visit to the Saami Museum in Inari to learn about the local culture and their history. I was again with one of the couples from the previous night but the other couple had left to go back to New Zealand.
We had a great day, all in all. The boat trip was fun, complete with commentary from the crew teaching us about the lake, local area and customs. We stopped off at a tall sacred island in the middle of the lake before heading back to shore where the museum was. That was really interesting too - we saw models of sleds, igloos, canoes, tools, weapons, and homes, as well as learning all about the local wildlife.
I spend some time in the afternoon sat by the fire, reading, doing some picture editing and enjoying a coffee. And a Baileys. Very enjoyable.
That evening we had another Aurora chase, this time to a cabin about half an hour away that had been built specifically for this purpose. While there, we had hot chocolate made on the open fire and tried to catch a glimpse of the Aurora. We did actually see some, but it was very weak and didn’t develop into anything note-worthy.
Woodland Hike
On the final day of the trip, we were to be led on a hike through the woods to a camp where we’d cook lunch before heading back. This was great - we were out for a good 4 or 5 hours and we were slap bang in the middle of Ruska which is the part of a Finnish autumn where all the trees and bushes are various shades of yellow and red, so the scenery was gorgeous.
We crossed a narrow footbridge over a raging river, learned about different plants and reindeer habits, and almost fell off a log before arriving at the camp. Once there, I used a very rustic outdoor toilet before we got a fire going (there were logs stacked ready, we didn’t have to chop any trees down or anything) and cooked the lunch which our guide had thoughtfully brought with him.
A stunning white-water river we crossed on our hike
Aurora Cabin
When we returned, I packed up my room and transferred to my glass-topped Aurora cabin for my last night, which I was super excited about. It was a really cool room, very comfy and warm, with a heated roof so you can always see through it even in the middle of winter when there is 2ft of snow everywhere.
I was two cabins down from the sauna, so I booked an hour slot (that’s how it works there - you don’t all share it, you have it to yourself for an hour at a time whenever it’s free) so I spent a relaxing 40 mins alternating between sitting in the sauna with a drink and nipping out to get in the lake, only to chicken out as soon as I was up to my knees. Hardcore.
Final Night
That was my trip, in a nutshell. The rest was uneventful - I had an amazing meal on my last night - exactly the same thing I’d had most days - and relaxed with a book and glass of wine by the fire. After that, I went and read for a while in my cabin, glancing up occasionally in the hopes of another magical display but there was no Aurora to be seen that night.
The next day we were transferred to the airport after breakfast for the flight home, but I definitely left a piece of my heart in Lapland.
Aurora Portfolio
The complete collection of my Aurora shots from this trip can be found here.
Standard evening by the fire, processing pictures with a book and a coffee. And a Baileys
Thanks…
Massive thanks go to:
the whole team at The Aurora Zone for answering all my questions and organising a flawless trip; and
all the staff at the Wilderness Hotel, Inari, for a brilliant stay and wonderful hospitality.
Until next time!