It’s 3:13 a.m. and the phones in my suite on board Hurtigruten’s MS Trollfjord are abuzz. Elation and middle of the night calls don’t usually go hand-in hand, but when you’re searching for the northern lights, these pings can only mean good news.
The aurora borealis is the entire reason for this journey up Norway’s coast and our first major sighting has felt like a long time coming. My husband and I are 7 days into the 15-day sailing and cloudy skies have stolen our chances. (We did get a brief glimpse of the Aurora Oval—a stable ring of auroral light above the Earth’s geomagnetic North Pole—as we sailed under it on day four.)
We are 2 of the 25 people who’ve signed up to be part of the inaugural Astronomy Voyage group on a premium, all-inclusive Signature cruise led by Hurtigruten’s Chief Aurora Chaser, Tom Kerss. The astronomer and author with a background in astrophysics and spacecraft engineering is our host on board this “educational odyssey” designed around the bucket-list phenomenon, first documented as the northern lights in Norway in the 13th century. One of things we’ve learned already? How fleeting they can be. So, when the phone chimes, we are fully prepared.
We’ve ditched the pajamas we brought with us and now sleep in our thermal under layers. And everything we need to head outside—fleece jacket, snow pants, heavy coat, wind balaclava, mitts, heat packs, and all of our camera equipment and backup chargers—are lined up and ready to go. Just before heading out to Deck 9, darkened by the captain in anticipation, we slip on the recommended ice grips for our shoes and waddle along the snowy deck to meet our group in the dark. There, Kerss, with a telltale red light on his zipper (the only way to set him apart from all the other hooded beings out there), uses a green laser pointer to direct our eyes up toward the sky.
What we see when we look up is not the neon dancing lights you’ve likely seen on social media. Instead, the arcs in the sky are wispy white, with the occasional faint green color mixed in. They look like vertical clouds dancing over a green spotlight. But when we lift our cameras for a better look, what greets us is mesmerizing. Bright green funnels lift and arch over the entirety of the ship. In the distance, splotches of purple and fuchsia seem to explode. The deck is silent but for the clicking of cameras and the low buzz of exclamations as a new set of lights appear. We stand together in the cold, staring at the sky and our screens, awestruck by the moment.
