One of the most memorable and truly magical places I’ve ever visited is Norway. In particular Tromsø for its amazing university, complete with science museum and planetarium, but a little further up the cost of Norway is the city of Alta, which is incidentally inside the arctic circle and depending on the time of year you visit you can experience some of the strangest phenomena mother nature has to offer.

Firstly there’s the obvious one, and the thing most people say is on their bucket list. Northern Lights or aurora borealis. This is caused by charged particles from the Sun (solar wind) colliding with gases in Earth’s upper atmosphere, interesting factoid. The Northern and southern lights (aurora Australis) should actually mirror each other. The meat time to see the northern lights is late sept to late march. 

Then there’s the phenomenon known as the midnight sun a natural phenomenon in summer. where the sun stays visible for 24 hours in regions near the poles (north of the Arctic Circle or south of the Antarctic Circle) because the Earth’s tilted axis keeps that pole continuously facing the sun as it rotates. This results in constant daylight, which can be very confusing as I found out on a cruise some years ago, when I woke up to daylight, made a coffee and sat on my balcony. Only to discover it was 0320hrs

There’s also the opposite of this which is polar night. Polar night is the period in polar regions when the sun remains below the horizon for more than 24 hours, plunging areas within the polar circles into 24-hour darkness. It occurs because of the Earth’s axial tilt, which points the polar regions away from the sun during winter. The duration of a polar night ranges from a single day at the Arctic/Antarctic circles to up to five months at the poles. in Tromsø, it usually lasts from late November to mid-January. This like its counterpart is a very disorienting experience as I’m sure you can imagine.

That’s why for the above reasons and many more I would recommend everyone visit, don’t worry if like me your Norwegian isn’t very good. As I found out in Alta, the locals leave school fluent in sometimes five languages and they’re super friendly so if like me you don’t mind the cold then Norway and Iceland are waiting to be discovered.