Travelling Light

My ears hurt and threatened to snap off. The tip of my nose shrieked with pain. Kirkenes was desolate and fiercely, colder than imagined. I spent a night here after disembarking from the Kong Harold.
The focus of the trip was the Northern Lights. A solar flare occurred during the cruise, so conditions were favourable for strong Northern Light development. The first glimpse was around midnight of the first night inside the Arctic Circle. I soon realised that where I thought that the lights were vibrant greens and sometimes blue and orange and red, in fact what you see is varying intensity of white light against a dark sky. There are teasing hints of rainbow colours that appear, but it is only when photographers capture the sky with slow shutter speeds that the colours are strongly visible. The views that I had of the lights from the ship were amazing, and each night they got progressively stronger.
My tour of Norway was in shades of black and white. I caught the train from Oslo to Trondheim, and as snow covered much of the landscape and the trees were stripped of leaves and foliage, there was very little 'colour' to be seen. What I could see was truly magical, with rivers of snow and ice, dramatic landscapes and craggy mountains. There were the frozen waterways, the small neat cottages with their steep roofs and attic windows, with lights shining from the windows by early afternoon.
The ship was a fabulous vehicle from which to explore coastal Norway. Sometimes the sides of the fjords seem so close that you could reach out and touch them. I develop an appreciation of the navigational skills of the captain.
I had high hopes for a last evening skylight display in Kirkenes and wasn't disappointed. I was about to retire, having decided that nothing was happening for the night, when a glance out of the hotel window gave the hint of a light ray emerging from the west. I raced down stairs and ignored the freezing cold for as long as I could, watching the lights unfurl and roll or streak across the sky. It was spectacular and just as I thought that it was dying down, the display would start again. Eventually, the minus 25 degrees penetrated my indoor clothing and I was forced back inside. It was not over though. I discovered that my hotel window looked out in the right direction, and by opening the curtains in a darkened room, I could still see the lights – with the benefit of oil heating. It was a perfect finale to the trip.