In the first part of this story, you could read how the sauna thawed Teemu. Three cans of beer later, he even turns out to be a gifted storyteller. The sauna stones act as an ersatz campfire. “According to a well-known Sami legend, the foxes of the polar region could generate the northern lights”, he says, “Every time a fox swept up some snow with his tail, the aurora borealis appeared in the sky.” The Finnish word for the northern lights finds its origin in this story: revontulet – or ‘fox fire’.
Folklore is rife with northern lights
For decades, the northern lights have fascinated the people who live close to the poles. The countless legends and forms of superstition bear witness to this.
The Sami from the north of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia believed that the spirits of the dead manifested themselves as aurora borealis. That is why they stayed in their lavvus during such a display. Children had to be quiet, out of respect for deceased blood relatives and not to aggrieve them. (On a side note, wouldn’t it be nice to have more northern lights, if only to shut up the children?) Whoever ignored those unwritten rules, called for sickness and death.
Scots thought the northern lights originated from epic battles between warriors in heaven. Other medieval Europeans saw in the red-hot sky a bad omen for calamity, war, and bloodshed. (Although, let’s admit it, even a peace dove could have preceded those in Medieval Europe).
Blubber baking or walrus skull football?
The north of North America has almost as many stories about the northern lights as there are Indian tribes.
They are the campfires of medicine men from the northernmost regions, who let their enemies simmer in giant pots, thought the one clan. The torches of friendly giants who helped people with nightly spearfishing, said the other. No, a tribe of dwarfs bake blubber from a whale over a fire, claimed a third. Those dwarfs are half the size of a canoe’s paddle, but strong enough to catch a whale with their bare hands.
And I can go on. My favourite, however, is a folk tale which almost all the Eskimos believed. According to them, the aurora borealis came from their dead comrades who played a rough game of football in the hereafter, with the skull of a walrus as a ball.
The hunt for the aurora
I have been eagerly anticipating my first screening of the polar light for two months. It was one of the reasons to travel to Lapland in the first place. Two months earlier, I believed I could scratch the aurora borealis from my bucket list already in Sysmä. Even more southerly, the phenomenon appears in the sky now and then, friends had told me, so in Finland that would certainly happen.
That’s why, at first, I was not actively looking for signs of the aurora. Simply turning my eyes skywards in the evening should suffice, I thought. Nope! When I still hadn’t noticed anything by mid-December, I started panicking. Time was ticking. Another half a month and our writing residence in Sysmä would be finished. Would I really leave without seeing the northern lights?
The hunt for the aurora started. I scoured the internet like a madman. After a while, I was able to read a magnetogram without any problem. I knew everything about solar winds and their speed and densities. Magnetic field and coronal hole no longer held any secrets for me. But the aurora borealis – no, I still hadn’t seen a glimpse of it.
Another northern lights disappointment
“Come out of bed!”
It was December 21, and I could hardly hide my excitement. Anete rubbed the sleep from my eyes.
“What? What’s the time?”
It was half-past one. I waved her question away.
“Hurry up! A geomagnetic storm is happening! The Kp index is going through the roof! Come on, let’s go! According to this website, there is a small chance of aurora at our latitude.”
We exchanged pyjamas for clothes and rushed out of the door for an evening stroll… under thick clouds. I was disappointed, Anete grumpy because I woke her up for no reason. Then I was green – ha! – with envy when I saw pictures of northern lights taken that night in Iceland and the north of Scotland.
No time to get dressed
All of that just to say I am full of expectations in that sauna in Kelujärvi. In Rovaniemi, nature paints the sky about 200 times a year. Sodankylä is more than 100 kilometres more to the north. If it doesn’t happen here, then I am doomed and I better give up my dreams of polar light.
Teemu’s mobile phone rings in the dressing room. It is his father, an amateur photographer who has been shooting auroras for years.
“Out!” shouts Teemu from the dressing room. “Now! No time to get dressed, you can never predict how long the northern lights will show.”
With just a towel around our loins, Anete and I storm out. An arc of diffused white light appears in the sky. It is vague, hardly visible. It looks like a gate of clouds, were it not for the stars visible through the white glare. For a moment I think: is this it?
Disco in the sky
But then it explodes.
An immense curtain arcs over Kelujärvi. The white changes to bright fluorescent green. Then suddenly there are two curtains, now three. The curtains start flapping, the famous dance of the northern light. And this is not a tame slow dance at a boring wedding party. No, the light dances exuberantly in the firmament, like a winding green river which is unsure which course to follow.
“Disco in the sky”, Teemu grins. The dance speeds up, the light constantly getting brighter, as if aliens are parking their flying saucers. It is not surprising that the aurora is sometimes so bright and clear that you can read a newspaper in its light.
I don’t even feel the bite of the cold, my body expertly prepared by the sauna. Now I understand why all those tribes watched this spectacle so contemptuously. Even with all the scientific knowledge available, this Stairway to Heaven remains a powerful phenomenon. Above our heads, in more ways than one.
I have no idea if fireworks will ever impress me again. Rubens and Picasso, eat your hearts out… nature is the greatest painter of all time.
In the final part of this mini-series, we head to the Disneyland of Lapland.
We visited Lapland after our writing resideny in Sysmä, awarded by Finnish literary organisation Nuoren Voiman Liitto. This article was first published in Dutch on Tom’s blog.