Swirling in myth and symbolism, the northern lights are an enigma — one that even baffles modern-day physicists. For some, they’re a sign of good luck. For others, they’re the souls of dead ancestors and require reverent silence. Either way, there’s more to these lights than just pretty colours. Humans have been trying to make sense of the mysterious aurora borealis for millennia — and, despite the scientific explanation, legends attribute a deeper, sometimes spiritual meaning to their appearance in the night sky. Here are the best facts, myths and stories about the northern lights.
Main photo: the aurora borealis over northern Norway (Getty Images)
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1. You can find them in prehistoric cave paintings
It has been suggested that the earliest depiction of the northern lights could be in the Cro-Magnon cave paintings — dating to around 30,000 BC — that decorate the Unesco world heritage-listed caves of Cantabria in northern Spain.
2. You can see them from space
Astronauts on the International Space Station will sometimes pass through the aurora borealis while in orbit. While most displays of the northern lights appear between 55 and 80 miles above Earth’s surface, they can reach up to 370 miles into space. The International Space Station orbits at an altitude of 253 miles.
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3. The Finns call them ‘fox fires’
An ancient Finnish folk tale tells of how the aurora was caused by a fox sweeping its tail, sending sparks of snow up into the night sky. Consequently, the Finnish nickname for the northern lights is revontulet, or “fox fires”.
4. They have an Old Norse name
The Old Norse word for the aurora borealis is nororljos, or “northern lights”, as used in the Konungs Skuggsja (“King’s Mirror”), a text of the 13th century. In Old Norse mythology, they were said to be Bifrost, a dazzling rainbow bridge between Midgard (Earth) and Asgard (the realm of the gods).
5. High solar activity means spectacular displays
The sun is a magnetic variable star and solar activity includes solar flares, wind and energetic particles. All solar activity is driven by the solar magnetic field. Times of high solar activity lead to more breathtaking displays of the northern lights. The solar cycle, which lasts on average for about 11 years, has been observed for centuries. The most recent solar maximum — resulting in higher solar activity and therefore particularly spectacular displays — was in 2014. The next is expected in 2025.
6. They can be disruptive
The solar flare that created the solar storm of 1859 was of such magnitude that the northern lights were visible as far south as Mexico, Cuba and Hawaii. Telegraph systems all over Europe and North America failed, and telegraph operators reported receiving electric shocks. A similar storm hitting Earth today could potentially cause mass disruption to global communication systems. The solar storm of 2012 was thought to be of a comparable magnitude, but the solar wind from it missed the Earth.
7. You shouldn’t whistle at them
The Sami people are indigenous to Norway, Sweden, northern Finland and the north-west region of Russia known as the Murmansk Oblast. They believe that the northern lights emanate from the souls of their dead ancestors and must be treated with immense respect. They fear that to whistle in their presence might result in the whistler being spirited away.
8. They’re the ‘dawn of the north’
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Galileo Galilei, the Italian “father of astronomy”, first used the term aurora borealis in 1619. Meaning “dawn of the north”, the phrase is composed from the names for the Roman goddess of dawn, Aurora, and the Greek god of the north wind, Boreas.
After a spectacular light display in Paris in 1621, the French philosopher Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655) wrote: “Truly the brightness was remarkable . . . in the northern part of the sky, so that for many hours it imitated the clearest dawn.” He described a vapour that projected up to the Pole as “very thin and very white vapours cast out in such a swift motion that they resembled lightning”.
9. They’re also called the ancient armies in the sky
There is a reference to the northern lights in the Annals of Saint Bertin — a set of historical accounts that were found in the Abbey of Saint Bertin in northern France. They refer to armies in the night sky in the year 859, when “a brightness like that of daytime shone unbroken from the east to the north”.
10. They’re a sign of good luck
Fishing communities in Scandinavia once believed that the northern lights were caused by light reflecting off a large herring shoal in the ocean. They called it sillblixt — or “herring flash” — and saw it as an omen of a good haul.
• Best ways to see the northern lights
11. They’ve got a southern cousin
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Move over, aurora borealis. In the southern hemisphere, the aurora australis, also known as the “southern lights”, offer up displays that are equally stunning and just as worthy of a place on your bucket list. The best time to see them is from May to August and hotspots include southern Tasmania, New Zealand’s South Island, the Falkland Islands, Patagonia and Antarctica.
12. They don’t look anything like they do in photos
The northern lights in real life usually appear very different to the colourful photos we see of them. That’s because the human eye is not good at detecting colour at night. As a rule, you’ll see shades of grey and, if you’re lucky, some green too, as green is the colour most easily identified by the eye. This is why it’s so important to take a good camera on a northern lights trip. Cameras are much more sensitive than the human eye and, using long exposures, can capture colours and details that you won’t see. In terms of photos and what we see in real life, green is the main colour we associate with the northern lights. Most solar particles collide with our atmosphere at an altitude of around 60 to 150 miles and it’s here where the oxygen causes the aurora to appear in green.
13. They’re caused by solar wind
The northern lights are a naturally occurring phenomenon that happens when the solar wind comes into contact with the earth’s magnetic field. (The solar wind is a vast stream of electrically charged plasma that has been ejected from the surface of the sun and escaped its gravity, travelling at five million mph and taking 18 hours to reach Earth.)
Electrically charged particles that have been carried all the way from the sun are funnelled towards the magnetic poles where they collide with the elements in the upper atmosphere: oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen. It is this collision that releases the light energy that creates the aurora. The most spectacular light shows are caused by powerful solar winds created by a solar storm — a mass ejection of plasma via solar flares.
The electrically charged plasma is mainly made up of electrons and protons that have been pushed outwards from the centre of the sun. It has its own solar magnetic field that it carries through space.
14. They wouldn’t exist without both poles
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The magnetic field is an invisible shield around the Earth created by magnetic forces flowing from the South Pole to the North Pole; it protects the planet from the solar wind by stopping it from striking directly. The field diverts the solar wind, but as the wind’s magnetic field meets the magnetic field on the dark side of the Earth, the fields merge and some of the charged particles are funnelled back towards the poles where they meet the upper atmosphere. This funnelling happens towards both North and South Poles, creating both the northern lights and the southern lights.
15. They are Inuit football players
According to some Inuit legends, the northern lights are aqsarniit (“football players”), with the spirits of the dead kicking about the skull of a walrus. The lights have long been feared and revered in Inuit culture. They are also linked to tales of the souls of ancestors dancing in night skies, bearing torches to guide the living or whipping off children to another world.
• Best northern lights tours: Iceland, Lapland and Norway
16. Atoms and particles mix the colours
When charged particles enter the Earth’s upper atmosphere, they come into contact with the gases there, particularly oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen. As they strike the atoms of these gaseous elements they excite them — as they calm down they release light. The green colour of the aurora comes from charged particles colliding with oxygen atoms, the red from both oxygen and nitrogen, and the purple-pinks and blues from nitrogen.
17. You can see them because they’re so high
The northern lights are much higher than GPS satellites (about 12 miles), spy planes (about 13 miles), the ozone layer (about nine to 20 miles) and satellites in high Earth orbit (22 miles). It is because the northern lights are so high up that they can be visible from several hundred miles away.
18. They have a cathedral in their honour
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The northern lights look like the handiwork of the gods and indeed they are worshipped as such in the Norwegian town of Alta, 250 miles north of the Arctic Circle. Right in the aurora zone, the town is one of the best places on the planet to glimpse the aurora. Here the Northern Lights Cathedral dazzles on nights when the aurora come out to play. But even if they don’t, the twisting titanium cathedral is a show-stopper, with bold architecture and an interactive exhibition on the lights.
19. You can hear as well as see them
For a long time scientists dismissed the idea that you could hear (as well as see) the northern lights. But recordings made near the village of Fiskars in Finland in 2016 proved that around 5 per cent of the strongest auroras do indeed make noises — crackling, whooshing, popping and hissing. These auroral sounds apparently happen when there is a temperature inversion and electrical discharge in the Earth’s magnetic field at an altitude of around 70m (230ft).
20. Auroras aren’t just on earth
We think of them as an earthly phenomenon, but we are certainly not the only planet to see auroras. The lights also occur on most planets in our solar system, with the exception of Mercury, which is too close to the sun. The auroras on Jupiter are said to be particularly striking — hundreds of times bigger and more intense than they are on earth because of the planet’s strong magnetic field.
• Best places to see the northern lights
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