Norway Northern Lights Trip

In this post I’m going to talk about another incredible trip with my pal Emilia! After doing research on the best places to see the northern lights, we decided to head to Norway in December of 2022. December is the darkest month of the year in Norway, so we were very hopeful. We met up in Oslo because I was studying in Ireland for the semester, and she was on break from school in Chicago.

Here is a map of where we went! The brown marker is Oslo, the blue marker is Longyearbyen, the purple marker is Tromsø, the green marker is Tromvik, the red marker is Øverbygd, and the yellow marker is Brosmetinden mountain.

Day 1

After an extremely early wake up in Oslo, we hopped on a plane headed to the northernmost town in the world, Longyearbyen. Longyearbyen was in the middle of their 24-hour darkness season, called polar night. This lasts from late October until mid-February. Positivity hats on of course.

Downtown Longyearbyen! There were husky puppies everywhere.

More husky puppies in a coffee shop. We stayed at Mary Ann’s Polarrigg, which was awesome! The lobby was super relaxing.

Day 2

Lots of polar bears today. Starting off we have the stuffed polar bear at the hotel! We tried to go to the North Pole Expedition Museum, but they were closed. We still got pictures with the polar bear out front.

We then went on an ATV tour! This was super awesome because we were able to leave Longyearbyen and see more nature. Leaving Longyearbyen alone/in a group without a gun is illegal because of the possibility of a polar bear attack.

On the tour we went to an abandoned coal mine. Longyearbyen has 7 coal mines, with only one still in use. Longyearbyen’s history is rooted in coal mining, and the town wouldn’t exist without it. We also got to pet 112 huskies!

Views of town. I love the colorful houses.

We packed up and flew down to Tromsø! After landing, we picked up our rental car and drove to Tromvik. Tromvik is much more remote than Tromsø, which means there’s less light pollution aka a better chance of seeing the northern lights. AND WE DID!!! We first saw them in the car on the way to Tromvik, and they kept getting more insane as we got closer. YAY!!!

Day 3

Beautiful views near our airbnb.

We got up early to hike Brosmetinden mountain. This was a short yet steep snowy hike. As I was coming from Ireland, I unfortunately didn’t have proper footwear, and my feet were quite cold. Nevertheless, my vans made do. The crampons were definitely a good call. We also didn’t bring water because it was cold and the hike was short, but Emilia got really thirsty and resorted to eating snow.

If you look really close to the edge of the peak in the left picture you can see me posing. This hike was really fun.

On the way back to Tromsø we stopped in Ersfjordbotn for some post hike snacks and hot chocolate! The drive was beautiful.

Back in Tromsø we went to the magic ice bar (and got to wear cloaks!) and saw a beautiful overlook of the city.

Day 4

We started the day on a frozen lake slightly outside the city to try to go ice skating. This didn’t turn out so good since it was heavily snowing, but we still had fun sliding around on the ice.