Sweden's northern lights

And there they were. Putting on a show of Broadway proportions for the gathered travellers. Neon green streaks painted the black sky and danced. They danced to the gasps and cheers of a two hundred strong crowd. Then darkness.

The northern lights are a natural phenomenon which when seen are still not to be believed. They're so perfectly beautiful it's easy to think it's all just an elaborate hoax by the Nordic nations to entice foreigners up snow covered mountains and into the nighttime wilderness.

Three days in the city of Kiruna in Sweden, 145km north of the Arctic Circle, and the lights were yet to show themselves. Our time was running out and it was as if they knew we, along with hundreds of others, journeyed to see them, and they decided on a game of teasing the tourists.

Each evening we climbed into our bulky snowsuits and braved the -22°C temperatures, venturing outside the warm confinements of the hotel and over mountains to see if it was showtime.

On our final day we travelled an hour and a half to the village of Abisko with other eager travellers in the hope of returning home and telling our friends we had seen the lights. As the night arrived and the temperature dropped, we cautiously boarded a vomit inducing ski lift for a twenty minute sky high journey. Swaying back and forth and side to side, coming to a halt every two minutes to allow new hopefuls onto the ice covered seats, we rocked to the top in the steady and firm winds, up up and away into the unknown we went.

Atop a mountain in Abisko National Park stood a winter styled cabin known as the Aurora Sky Station. After a quick warm up and a lesson on the science of the lights I wandered outside and looked up in what felt like slow motion, to be greeted with a bright green hue. The lights had arrived and they, along with the canvas of the sky, on went on for miles.

The northern lights march to the beat of their own drum and answer to no one. If they were a person they'd be a Hollywood diva, but enviously perfect in every way.

They shimmied and posed for photos and entertained the crowds, by which time we had forgotten about the temperature and were hypnotised by their class. Thirty minutes later the river of lights had had enough and disappeared as fast as they'd shown themselves, refusing to return again that night.