[Closed] Viewing the Northern Lights

Trømso (sp?) seems to be the destination you seek. There are also cruises that promise a high chance of seeing the aurora. Would possibly be ideal for the senior traveller?

Get in touch with origin travel - we went through them last year to Alta - it was ace!

There is a website that predicts the likelyhood from various locations on different days, maybe worth a google.

We had them most nights from the ski centre just outside Oslo but I think that was unusual rather than the norm.

Reykjavik seems to be a good shout too.

Thanks all. Will explore those options.

Iceland, Finland, and possibly northern Canada, but as mentioned, there’s no guarantee that they’ll appear, the Aurora Watch* site can give some clues.
I’ve stood by the side of the A4 near Avebury with a mate, stunned into silence at a display of aurora around 1am, but that was an exceptional occurrence, it’s very, very rare to see them that far south.
*I think that’s the name, it’s somewhere like Loughborough University who run it.

You can get special night flights from some UK airports for viewing them, might be the cheapest and easiest option. The aircraft loops up round Iceland or thereabouts IIRC. There's never any guarantee though.

60 = Coach to Blackpool

We went up to Northern Sweden last Feb which is far enough north (near Artic circle) to see the Northern Lights, but as people say here they are unpredictable. We were there for almost a week and studying the solar particle websites we were able to see them. An amazing sight and definitely worth seeing.

I've seen them quite a few times out of an aircraft window over northern Scandinavia in winter, but less so on the ground. I did see them last winter during the Rovaniemi 300, which is nice when you're out in the wilderness on your own.

Google images.

Hope to see them tomorrow as I am off to Northern Finland.

Anywhere around the arctic circle should provide reasonable opportunities, but as others have said its entirely dependent on having clear skies.  We were in Northern Finland last year and despite a brilliant aurora forecast for 2 nights we didn't see anything because of cloud cover.

We saw them whilst on holiday in Iceland.
I'm far from jaded and I but was seriously underwhelmed. They looked great when played back on the camera as it "sees" more colours than the human eye.
Maybe we caught a bad showing though. Saw them on 3 different nights and they just looked like grey, quickly moving, wispy clouds.

Anyone else have this experience?

From what I've been told,there's no guarantee of seeing the lights but I'd recommend Finland,last year,we were Fatbiking,saw the Northern lights on 3 or 4 nights.
This was in Oulanka National Park,northern Finland next to the Russian border.
Its fairly painless to get there,transfer in Helsinki.
Have a look here https://www.exodus.co.uk/finland-holidays
FEEFOO The lights we saw were often green & blue,never saw any grey lights.

@feefoo when we saw them it was a sky full of bright green (sort of) flashes, fast moving with yellow and purplish moments. Surprisingly dynamic - sounds like you didn’t get the full experience.

Have seen them in Tromsø - spectacular (but minus 25 degrees taking pictures is cold!)</span>

Tried to see them in Iceland but very poor on the nights we were out - not really visible at all with the naked eye.

"@feefoo when we saw them it was a sky full of bright green (sort of) flashes, fast moving with yellow and purplish moments. Surprisingly dynamic – sounds like you didn’t get the full experience."

Cheers! Good to hear! Was quite disappointed and thought the stuff we'd seen on TV was the camera images or something.