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From The Sunday Times

March 04, 2007

Let there be light

The northern lights have
the strangest side effects, says Ian Belcher, in Abisko, Sweden

Cold. So cold. Minus 33C cold. But nobody notices. All eyes are locked on the
night’s celebrity. Cheers and squeals of excitement mingle with the pop of
flashbulbs as the A-lister explodes across the sky in three vibrant green arcs
of light, dripping into a molten pool on the mountainside.

The aurora borealis has played the same stage for billions of years, but you
can’t accuse it of going through the motions. A quick costume change and the old
trouper reemerges as two vast stripy curtains, then mutates into curls of smoke
and burning globules, like a supersized lava lamp. It’s what the Japanese tour
group have come to see.

Adoration borders on low-level hysteria. People stumble around, necks craned,
eyes wide, arms pointing to the heavens. They bump into each other, knock over
camera tripods; a man rockets through the hotel, slips and lies on his back in
the snow, gesturing to the sky. It’s chaos, and it’s hard to resist. I join the
crowd, my “Aaaah!” fusing with others as if we’re a pack of howling wolves.

The Japanese love affair with the aurora borealis isn’t just bizarre subzero
theatre, it’s a reliable indicator of one of the best displays on the planet.
Maiko, Shinya and Yukari can’t explain their obsession, but, having travelled 36
hours across eight time zones for “the chance of a lifetime”, they expect the
heavens to deliver — and their pilgrimage is to Abisko, in the far north of
Sweden.

The media can take some of the credit. Just more than three years ago, NHK,
Japan’s national broadcasting corporation, sent crews across the world to find
the best place to see the polar lights. It reached its climax with a live
finale: Abisko v Antarctica. Seventeen million people watched the southern
icecap deliver darkness while the Swedish village rolled out a corker. “You
can’t buy marketing like that,” says Putte Eby, manager of the Abisko Mountain
Lodge, which received 1,000 Japanese visitors last year.

Geography is on Abisko’s side. Lying 155 miles into the Arctic Circle, on
northern latitude 68.2 — guaranteeing long, dark viewing nights from September
to late March — it’s untainted by light or pollution. It also sits in the rain
shadow to the east of mounts Slattatjakka and Njulla. With Atlantic fronts
dumping on their slopes, the village claims to have Sweden’s clearest, driest
weather.

“We call it the Abisko blue hole,” says Putte. “Go a few kilometres either
side and there’s more than double the rain and snow. Relatively, we’re a desert.

“There may well be better appearances elsewhere, but if you throw in
accessibility, then this is the best place on earth to see the aurora borealis.
Come for three days in season and you’d be unlucky not to catch them.”

The resort is capitalising on its natural bounty with the launch of the
Aurora Sky Station, an interactive exhibition at the top of Sweden’s longest
cable-car ride, where I made for a blacked-out room for a hit of nuclear and
atomic physics.

I failed physics O-level — an E grade suggests I even spelt my name
incorrectly — but I can now proudly reveal that solar winds destabilise and
energise particles in the earth’s outer atmosphere. These hotfoot it towards the
poles along our magnetic fields and collide with atoms of gas, releasing energy
— eureka! — in the form of the northern lights.

The Aurora Sky Station fuses night viewings with expert talks. Our guide was
the brainy Christer Juren, from the Swedish Institute of Space Physics. His
lecture, utilising Coke bottles, screens and antennae to capture crackles of
atmospheric instability, felt like stumbling on an Open University module at
2am.

But it’s outside that the Sky Station really scores. As we stood on its
viewing platform in the eerie half-light of night snow, the aurora borealis rose
like a spectre from behind the mountain. It’s small wonder it has become the
stuff of folklore (gods playing football, dancing ancestral spirits or
reflections of vast shoals of Atlantic herring).

The Japanese aren’t buying into such outlandish theories. Instead, they
believe babies conceived under the northern lights will become intellectuals.
Hotel rooms with glass viewing roofs are popular, and every local seems to know
about the collision 120 miles away in Gallivare, when a snowmobile hit an
amorous Japanese couple displaying remarkable determination — not to mention
blood flow — in a sleeping bag.

Hypnotic as the lights are, it would be a crime to visit Abisko and not pay
attention to the ground — the landscape has attracted artists since the railway
arrived in 1903. The Abisko alps are punctuated by the valley of Lapporten.
Before them is the frozen lid of Lake Tornetrask, backed by the peaks of Andra
Sidan — “The Other Side” — which appear to float on the early-morning mist.

This is the amphitheatre for the start of the Kungsleden Trail, 264 miles of
some of the most civilised, uncrowded hiking on earth, with saunas, huts and
Sweden’s highest mountains. I tackled its early stages along the Abiskojokk.
Under the snow lay meadows that bloom in spring. The rare Lapp orchid, or
“£14.4m orchid” — the cost of rerouting rail and road around its top-secret
habitat — grows here.

But with frost on my eyelashes and pen freezing to fingers, this was no day
for botanists. Or naturists. In such extremes, appetites rise as the mercury
falls. After canapés of smoked reindeer heart — rich with flavour, but
unmistakably a big red heart — we had high-quality stomach fillers, including a
seriously tender moose stew.

It’s hard to tell whether the Japanese would agree. The buffet system added a
new twist to fusion cuisine when at least one excited aurora-spotter ladled the
salmon soup over his reindeer stew and side salad.

Perhaps a little confusion is to be expected with severe jet lag. It could
explain what befell Maiko and Shinya Kato. The twentysomethings had delayed
their honeymoon for the trip — the last “long” eight-day holiday work would
allow before retirement — but “fell asleep”, missing the most spectacular
lights. If they did, it’s rotten luck, but if it’s a euphemism, there may well
be compensation in the shape of Japan’s next child genius.

Travel brief

Getting there: fly to Stockholm with SAS (0870 6072 7727, http://www.flysas.com/ ) from
Heathrow, London City, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Manchester or Dublin; or with British
Airways (0870 850 9850, http://www.ba.com/ ) from Heathrow. Ryanair (0871 246 0000, http://www.ryanair.com/ ) flies to
Skavsta (55 miles from Stockholm) from Stansted and Glasgow Prestwick, and to
Vasteras (60 miles) from Stansted and Dublin.

Take the overnight train from Stockholm to Abisko Turiststation (£140pp
return for a two-person berth; 00 46 771 260 000, http://www.connex.se/ ).

Alternatively, fly from London to Kiruna, 58 miles from Abisko, via
Stockholm, with SAS; from £274.

Where to stay: Abisko Mountain Lodge (00 46-980 40200, http://www.abisko.nu/ ) has
spotless, functional rooms from £60 for a double. Aurora Sky Station: nighttime
viewing and displays (£21) are available from autumn until early spring. The
vernal and autumnal equinoxes are particularly good viewing times, but the
exhibition can be visited during the day at many times of the year (980 40200).
More information: try Visit Sweden (020 7108 6168, http://www.visitsweden.com/ )
and http://www.lappland.se/ .

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