Seeing the northern lights in Lapland

A big dream of mine was to see northern lights during my time in Sweden. So when I had the opportunity to go to Lapland in December with some friends, I knew I had to do it. Lapland is a province in the very north of Sweden, a big part of it is north of the polar circle. That means the sun does not rise at all in the winter, which gives you perfect conditions for seeing the northern lights. On the other hand it also means that it is going to be dark for a big part of your trip. But we embraced this as a challenge and a new experience!

In Lapland we chose to stay in Abisko, which is a tiny village of 100 inhabitants, right at the gates of the Abisko National Park. To traverse the 1.500 Kilometers between Linköping and Abisko is actually easier than you might expect. There are different ways of travelling, like taking the plane up to Kiruna or going by car/bus, but we took the night train. This train leaves every afternoon from Stockholm Central and arrives in Abisko the next day in the morning. We had little beds on the train and shared a nice evening with our compartment companions. As soon as we arrived we were greated by a snowy winter wonderland. As the sun doesn’t rise over the horizon, the light gives the appearance of a sunset/sunrise the whole day, which is just gorgeous.

The next days we spent in a rush between different activities and chasing the northern lights. Abisko is a hotspot for winter activities and it was really exciting to try out iceclimbing and snowmobiling for the first time. On the evenings we did our best to find the northern lights and we very actually very lucky in this regard. We saw them multiple times and each time was better than the last one. It is a very impressive natural phenomena and I was really happy to cross this off my bucket list.