northern lights

in search of magic (and the creeping return of an obsession)

I spent Wednesday evening in a carpark in Essex, trying (and failing) to see the northern lights. It was a strange thing to do (although I suspect the people in the other cars nearby were doing even stranger things), but it was the second night of an unusually powerful solar flare, and so the chances of seeing the aurora in the UK were unusually high. It had happened the night before, too, while we all slept, only some people hadn’t slept, and I’d woken up to a newsfeed full of photos of skies - skies stretching from Alaska to the Alps, but also British skies - shining pink and blue and green. I had spent the day wracked with an agonising mixture of FOMO and yearning and hope, and persuaded S that an evening wild goose chase, away from London’s light pollution, might not be entirely in vain.

It wasn’t the first time. In May 2024, for the first time in seemingly anyone’s living memory, the northern lights appeared over the whole of the UK. I missed it - I was inside, oblivious - and felt almost grief-stricken when I saw the photos hours later. I rushed outside but of course it was already too late. It happened again in October 2024: October 10th, S’s birthday. We were enjoying a rare meal out, a rare few hours with phones out of sight, which meant I missed the notifications from the aurora-watch apps I’d downloaded in the previous months. An hour earlier, the northern lights had hovered over London. I kept staring at the faces of people I passed in the street. Had they seen it? Did they know what had just happened?

I couldn’t stop looking at the photos of the northern lights over the UK. There they were on my newsfeed, a backdrop to the northumberland coast and Big Ben and suburban Nottinghamshire and Stonehenge. There they were, photographed badly on low-quality phone cameras: strong enough, that is, that you didn’t need any fancy gear to capture them. I was mesmerised. I started reading about them. I discovered the different names for them, in different places where they appear often: the Mirrie Dancers in Shetland; the very literal Swedish Norrsken, ‘northern shine’); and in Norway, just the aurora (because what would be the point of specifying northern in a country where everything is northern?). And I also discovered that we were at the peak of an eleven-year cycle; that they were going to be at their most powerful for over a decade in the winters of 2024 and 2025. I had to see them.

Going on a wild goose chase to the north of Norway was, objectively, sensibly, a ridiculous way to spend our savings. S, who is much more responsible and rational than me, took some persuading. (I won him over with the tempting prospect of a very long, adventurous train journey). It felt mad and reckless and excessive - but I had also become completely obsessed by the northern lights. It felt almost like a pilgrimage.

In the weeks before we went to Narvik, whenever I told people about our plans, I told them we were going to try to see the northern lights. “But I know it might not happen,” I had to add, every time, careful not to jinx it. “It will be a really fun adventure either way,” I’d grin, with a chirpiness so deliberate I wanted to squirm. I wanted to see the northern lights more than anything, and the idea of going all that way and not seeing them was too painful to countenance. Thinking about the northern lights for more than a few seconds made me feel dizzy. We had to.

It was New Year’s Eve when we arrived in Narvik. We had left London four days earlier, taking trains through Belgium and Germany to Hamburg and a sleeper train to Stockholm. We’d spent a night there before taking another sleeper train to Boden in northern Sweden, and then the final day winding across those vast, empty, arctic wilds, west towards the Norwegian border. It was nearly 8pm when we arrived but it had already been pitch-dark for six hours, the sun having set behind us, south of us, when we’d crossed the arctic circle.

There was nowhere to get food. Narvik was smaller and calmer than we’d imagined: the biggest place for miles and hours around, yes, but only big enough to have a handful of restaurants, all of which were already closed. Norwegians eat dinner early, and they spend New Year’s Eve at home with their families. Even the supermarkets and corner shops had shut for the bank holiday. I had resigned myself to eating the leftover crispbread I’d bought at Stockholm Centralstation when we struck lucky and found a Chinese takeaway, still open. We ordered our food and decided to take it for a nighttime, minus ten degree picnic.

You have to get away from light pollution, if you want to see the northern lights. The Airbnb host had suggested a lakeside beach, ten miles or so from the city, and S followed the satnav down twisty, snow-covered roads, praying the winter tyres on the hire car were up to scratch. I sat in the passenger seat, twisting my neck anxiously to stare upwards at the deep black sky, trying to spot them. There was nothing up there.

Until, suddenly, there was.

Before I saw them, I worried I might not be able to tell whether they were there or not. How silly it seemed now, the idea that there might have been any doubt. What I was looking up at was undeniably, strikingly, present. It was also completely unlike anything I had ever seen before. Imagine lines of driving rain, but bright green and halting far above you. Imagine a cloud, but it’s twisting like a corkscrew in four dimensions. Imagine a firework being videoed through a blurry lens, played back in slow motion. And then, imagine not having to imagine it.

(In truth, the only thing it really did remind me of was the Dark Mark appearing far above the Quidditch World Cup, spectral and green and fleeting - a reference you are free to disregard).

There was a small carpark for the beach. We weren’t the only people there: we saw parents and children, warming their hands around a firepit; late-night dog walkers; other aurora-spotters like us. We sat on the rocks and shared our Chinese take away, the rice already cold and clammy. I couldn’t stop staring up at the display above me. The sweet and sour sauce trickled stickily down my chin. The lights were dancing, shimmering, constantly changing. And then, just as suddenly as they’d started, they were gone.