Turning thirty last year, I made a decision. I would finally start and tackle some big bucket list items on my travel wish list.

One item on my list within the top 5 read: “See the Northern Lights” and while I did see pink hues literally outside my doorstep not even two weeks later, it was wonderful and exciting, but not quite what I had dreamed of.

First, the pink was not nearly as saturated as it looked in the picture my phone had taken, second, it wasn’t nearly dark enough and it just didn’t have that “Bucket List Moment” feel to it, at almost 1 a.m. on a lazy Saturday night.

So, after accidentally crossing of a bucket list item at home, I ended up rephrasing the list item to include a travel destination.

Originally, I had semi-planned to go in 2026 or 2027, as there were a few more pressing places I wanted to go, but as all of Instagram kept telling me the solar maximum was happening basically right now, and thus northern light activity would be through the roof, I felt like I had to bump this destination up for my 2025 vacation planning.

We have been tracking cycles for a long time, and are now in Cycle 25 which started in 2019. And, we’ve seen sunspot numbers not seen in over two decades, which is why people get excited. It’s been significantly higher than predicted and—that activity directly correlates with the northern lights. The last time we had peak numbers like we saw in summer 2024 and winter 2025 was in 2001, so you get why the internet was excited.

During periods of solar maximum, the increased solar activity phenomena release greater amounts of charged particles toward Earth, which interact with the planet’s magnetic field and atmosphere to produce more frequent, intense, and widespread auroral displays.

So, the sun was super active, I had a bucket list item, and I knew “The Aurora Zone” included Lapland.

In fact, the better term might be Sàpmi, which is less derogatorily charged and describes the land of the Sàmi.

The Sámi are the indigenous people living in the north of mainland Europe. The land of Sápmi covers parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. So, really “Lapland” is much more than just Finland, which is what most people associate it with.

“The Aurora Zone” is places with highest chances of seeing the Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis). While there are also Southern Lights (Aurora Australis), they are much harder to see as they mostly happen on top of Antarctica and can very infrequently be seen from Australia and other closeish countries. But it’s not like people take “Aurora Chasing Trips” to Australia, as chances are very low.

As I wanted to have a maximum chance of seeing the aurora and did not want to drive over icy roads in the middle of the night by myself I bit the bullet and decided maybe I had to take a group trip. (I usually love solo travel for the fact that it happens—well, solo. So travelling with a group usually doesn’t get me excited.) But it felt like I would benefit from having a sky-reading expert on the trip and a driver.

So, that’s how I ended up on a photography trip to Abisko, a small town in Sweden, known for high Aurora Activity.

The day of departure finally arrived, and I embarked on my first of two flights from Zürich. Travelling to Abisko, would’ve taken me over 10 hours if I was to travel the day of the beginning of the tour, so going a day early was the way to go. After flying 2.5h to Stockholm, I had a short layover (thanks delay) and then boarded a 1 hour 40min flight to Kiruna, which is the closest airport to Abisko.

When I landed in Kiruna, it was a rather mild day considering I was arriving on a winter day. It was around -3°C, with a layer of ice covering the landing strip, which would have probably thrown other airports into chaos, but the pilot landed with ease into one of the smallest airports I’ve ever been to. Entering into the building, you are welcomed with the singular luggage belt, and a few people waiting to pick up tourists. This was without a doubt the easiest airport to find my pickup. There is just one door in for arrivals and one door out.

It was already dark, as I was being driven to my hotel for the first night’s stay, which was Camp Ripan. The hotel features very cute small cabins that offer space for up to 4 people (2 in a bunk bed) and a restaurant that seems to be pretty renouned.

As a food lover, I was looking forward to having some fancy dinner and it did absolutely not dissapoint.

The restaurant was lovely, and started with an introduction to a bread specialty I had never heard before. Kavring is a rye bread. In this restaurant it had an almost cake-like texture, with a deep and complex rye flavor that was slightly sweet with molasses. It came with an herbal spread and butter that was heavenly. (Some day I will bake a bread like that!)

Dinner consisted of some incredibly tender reindeer with lingonberry and root vegetables. It was my first time having reindeer and while I tend to eat more non-game meat, I felt like this was the one time I should give it a try, as reindeer and moose are part of the arctic diet and I was interested in giving it a taste. While I usually don’t like having fruit in savory dishes, the lingonberry has a bit of bitterness, that complimented the meat and vegetables nicely, especially since it was paired with a red wine sauce. The meat was tender and not as gamey as I anticipated, it was an experience, I’d gladly repeat if the opportunity presented itself.

Dessert was probably my highlight though. It was labelled as a whey crème brûlée with cloudberry compote. I head heard of cloudberry, which is an arctic berry that looks like a yellow puffy raspberry and has a very interesting taste. Not as much flavor as other berries, it’s sweet and delicate and a little floral. The highlight was the whey crème brûlée though, which was a little tangy and quite a bit richer than the regular egg custardy vanilla crème brûlée I am used to.

Another thing I absolutely had to try when I saw it on the menu was “Kaffeost”, Coffee Cheese. As a coffee enthusiast I love trying local coffee specialties and I had actually heard of this rather strange sounding combination before.

Kaffeost originated within the Sàmi culture, and is a combination of coffee with “Juustoleipä” (translated as bread cheese). Usually served in a “Guksi”, a traditional handcarved wooden cup made from birch burl.

The coffee I had in Sweden was all some very very dark roast filter coffee, which is—fine, I guess. As a specialty coffee lover who likes a light to medium roast, the coffee I had on this trip tasted a little burned to my tastebuds (but hey, it was much better than the diluted bean water I had other places around the world). There are flavor notes of earth and ash with this cup, and served with cubes of bread cheese, it was a very interesting experience.

The cheese is put into the coffee and meant to soak up the coffee and soften over time. This type of cheese isn’t salted, so it is on the sweeter note, and I’d compare the texture to Haloumi. When it starts out, it’s a little squeaky, but as it sits in the coffee, it becomes almost spongy in texture.

In my experience it mostly picked up the cinder flavor within the coffee though, which overpowered the cheese. So, it wasn’t really for me, but I’d say this is still a must-try if you are interested in local coffee culture.

After dinner, it was time to turn in in the lovely little toasty cabin, on a very soft and cushy bed.

Now, my short time alone was about to end in the afternoon, so I spent the morning taking a walk around camp and appreciating the massive amounts of snow. It was my first time seeing people casually use a snow mobile and I got to spot some big magpies flying about.

Once afternoon rolled around, it was time to meet the remaining six group members and the photography guide. They picked me up at the hotel and off we embarked on a 1-hour-drive into the Abisko National Park and to the Abisko Turiststation hotel which would be our base for the upcoming 4 days.

We geared up with warm overalls and thick boots to prevent us from freezing out in the cold and would meet again, for dinner in a short time, where we would figure out, where the most likely location to spot the aurora that night would be.

We decided that the local national park would be our spot of the night and after dinner set off to a 5-min drive to the snow mobile.

Before that happened, though, we already caught a glimpse of Aurora through our cameras right form the hotel, at the horizon line, there were hints of green promising glimpses of the night.

Once we arrived at the snow mobile, we all sat in the trailer and started driving into the national park.

Our first stop was looking at a beautiful mountain range, and while it wasn’t the clearest night, our photography guide was able to point out spots where the Aurora would show up for us.

It was great to get our feet wet in night photography and figuring out the right settings for the night.

This was my first time taking night photos and it was quite fascinating to see. We all carried head torches and if the sky was boring, it was also an option to take pictures of things that were moving (aka, photographers around a snow mobile).

As time progressed, we did see the sky change, and there were some swirls in the distance dancing for us, which got me so excited.

It wasn’t quite the spectacle I had been hoping for when I got here, but it was an Aurora that looked quite gorgeous in pictures.

We did learn the next day, that it was actually quite strong activity-wise, but because it was so cloudy we did not experience it to full effect.

As the northern ligths faded, we drove to a second location, which featured a beautiful tree and our guide showed us how to add interest to a shot with a weak sky by lighting a small candle and turning it into a much more impressive fire with long exposure.

After a few hours exploring different setting in the snow, we returned home shortly after midnight—and of course I ended up playing with editing until 2 o’clock.

Day 2 was all about the Abisko Valley and the national park. After breakfast, we set off to another snow mobile ride in the same direction as our previous night had led us.

The day prior, we had heard, that there was a moose mama with her calf travelling around town, and that we might catch then if we were lucky.

We got lucky and did spot them both as we were riding towards the snow mobile.

When we mounted the snow mobile, snow started to tumble down the sky, deep clouds were hanging, but it was quite fascinating to stop in the same spot, that we had caught some lights the previous night. It looked so different with the dacing snow flakes.

I loved the red X signs that marked the snow mobile way, they offered a beautiful dotting of color and man-made contrast to the whiteness of the surrounding terrain.

As we were starting with the first photos of the day, our guide was telling us about a fun bird, a Capercaillie. It is a ground-roaming bird, that gets pumped full of hormones during mating season, and it was currently on it’s prowl and being aggressive towards anyone that tried to catch a glimpse.

As we were a group interested in wildlife, we dismounted at the spot where it had last been seen, armed with our longest lenses (unfortunately, I had left the 400mm at home, and had only a 200 at my disposal).

Through slow-falling flakes we waded through some deep snow in between trees, hoping to catch the big brown angry bird, but unfortunately, landscape views was all we got.

So off we got deeper into the national park on our snow mobile.

We spoted ptarmigan, or at least some of us got to distinguish these cute round white birds from the snow (I saw one, but it was too far to snap a picture for my longest lens of the trip). And then we arrived at Lake Torneträsk, which is the sixth-largest lake in Sweden and was fully frozen.

We stopped on the lake for fika, which is the Swedish tradition of a coffee break. Soaked in the stunning views and vastnes of the lake, which can’t even really be captured on a picture.

Close by, we saw some traditional huts and then also spotted some open water, which might have given us the opportunity for more bird-watching but no ducks were present at the time.

After lunch at the hotel, we then went on a walk around the park, where we saw an impressive frozen waterfall and then dinner was just around the corner.

After dinner, we realized the national park was going to be cloudy, so we decided to head towards Kiruna and make stops along the route.

It was looking spotty and cloudy, but about 30min in, we finally caught a few glimpses of color on the sky.

We took a few photos and as the clouds came up again, we moved on. Stopping a few minues further along, when we got a nice view of some mountains and then a few beams of green where showing up.

Now, if I had gone out alone that night, I would’ve returned an hour in, thinking it was hopeless and that we never would see anything.

But we stayed and what then unfolded, was the most magical experience ever.

As previously mentioned, when you see a mild Aurora, it can look really good on a photo, but you may not be able to see it with your naked eye. If the Aurora is strong, and moves a lot, it becomes harder to caputre with a camera, but can be seen with the naked eye, and is much more impressive.

This night, was the night we’d see it outside of our camera preview screens.

After a while the lights started to swirl, they were getting brighter and brighter until suddenly, they became visible out of camera. Shivers started running down my spine. Not from the cold, but from the sheer size of the view.

The entire sky was turning green, the aurora expanded from one side of the horizon to the other and overhead, it started to swirl into an eye, right above our heads.

The floor started reflecting off the shades of green, the center of the Aurora was shades of purple.

There were mutters of “wow”, silence in awe and exclamations of “oh I love that picture”, while I kind of could not belive, this was the world I was living in.

At some point, the entire sky was flooded with shades of green and purple and our guide asked if I wanted to jump in front of the camera and I’m so glad I did.

While I am usually not the type of person to get in front of the camera, I am so glad I have a small piece to show the scale of this spectactle.

Auroras are majestic and absolutely giant. They reflect off of the snow and when you can see them with your own eyes, a camera is not able to capture the beauty of that experience.

And it was at that moment, that I just knew, a new core memory had unlocked, that I’d carry with me for the rest of my life.

As the penultimate full day arrived, we started off knowing it would be very cold today at -13°C, so it was definitiely time to bundle up a lot for our first order of business.

We set off towards Kiruna for a multi-hour dog sleighing trip in Jukkasjärvi. We grouped off and were sleighing along and on top of the Torne River.

On route, we took a few stops to take pictures of the dogs in motion and got to learn about dog sleighing racing and caring for the dogs, which other than us actually didn’t ming the cold at all. It was at this point I was getting a bit more chilly than I would’ve loved but the views and different landscape from the previous days was still absolutely lovely.

Lunch was had on the river in a traditional Sámi tent and consisted of a lovely stew, cheese rolls and cinnamon rolls for dessert. All cooked on open fire and served in beautiful handcarved wooden bowls.

As I stepped out of the tent to take a few photos of the view, I did notice a singular cloud in the perfectly blue sky, that had this soap bubble quality to it. It reminded me a little bit of the inside of a sea shell and it was beautiful to see. Apparently Cloud Iridescence happens if there are frozen ice crystals in the clouds that the light can refract through and cause this rainbow scattering. I had never seen anything like it before and though it was stunning.

The afternoon was then spent at the infamous Ice Hotel, which has a permanent structure but is mostly rebuilt each year. Each room is built by an artist and consists of sculpted ice. One can actually sleep in one of those rooms for a very pretty penny, but during day time, the hotel acts as a museum where it is open to explore.

The rooms were wildly different in themse, and ranged from beautifuyl and serene to deep and fun and slightly creepy. There was something for each taste I’d say.

It was a nice change of pace from the nature-watching to see some art and I’m glad we got to see it. I’m also glad I did not have to sleep in that cold though.

As we then returned to the restaurant where I had spent my first night, we were discussing our chances of seeing the norhtern lights that night.

Our photography guide had suggested an open-water area, which was close by, but the chances of seeing the lights was at a slightly disheartening 0% based on forecasts.

After our meal we still decided to go, as it was supposed to be a beautiful location anyways and our guide had a few ideas of how we could add interest to the picture with a non-dancing sky.

As we were approaching the bridge he was saying “so, I have a tent and we could add a lamp inside, so that might be very interesting” and we were all agreeing when he stopped talking, looked out the window and said: “or we might not need it”. Because as we arrived at our destination a big green streak was visible above the water.

The location was beautiful and we set up our tripods on a thin sheet of ice by the water.

The display on the sky was small at first, then grew to a medium size and while we were listening to stories of how the Aurora was explained in the past, it started increasing in size.

The lights exploded in similar ways as the night before. It started showing up in our backs, swirled above our heads and increased in width in shades of green, with hints of purple and even though we had already been able to see it all with our eyes the day before, we were so far from tired of it.

The display was breathtaking, the reflections on the snow at some points made it feel like we were in a sci-fi movie and the water shone the light right back as well.

I might have taken one of my all-time favorite phots that night. And still, it can hardly capture the feeling seeing this in real life evoked.

Our final day of exploring had arrived and it was snowy and windy, as we hopped into the car.

Today’s trip was past country borders to see Fjords in Narvik, Norway and the route would take us past a few pretty views.

We started with a dip in a mountain that is known as the “Gate of Lapland” and it was accompanied by beautiful light.

As we were in the car, we were talking about the fact, that we hadn’t seen any reindeer yet, and that this might be where we’d see them roaming on some mountains a bit in the distance.

We saw them not just in the distance, but by the side of the road a few minutes later.

Narvik is the place on flies into to see the Lofoten Islands, which is another bucket list item on my travel list, so I was very excited to get my first taste of Norway.

It was very interesting to see the change in architecture, it was all much more coastal in the area, and I caught a few glimpses of the gorgeous bridges that had me want to come to this place among other things.

There was much less snow and one could already see how wonderfully green this place would be during the warmer months.

We stopped at a beautiful still fjord and took some photos there, with the reflections and then got to see a few more open water places.

As evening started creeping closer, though, the weather turned worse. It was dark and gloomy and very windy and overcast, and even before dinner, it became clear that luck might not be on our side.

In the end, we did not go into nature that night, but instead spent it with glasses of wine, chocolate and salty licorice (the best I’ve had yet, little salt crusted nuggets were my favorite) looking at our photos and doing some editing.

Even though we didn’t see the lights that night, it was nice that by that point the group had shared experiences, full cameras and great memories to muse on and getting editing tips was also a big plus (though, really, it meant I had to re-edit all the photos I had spent my nights editing because I preferred what they could look like with the tips).

Over night, the wind had not calmed down, and when we got out of the hotel, all packed up, we got nearly blown away.

It was time to drive back to Kiruna and start boarding our flights. I was going to fly over Paris this second time round.

We said goodbye and then off to a packed tiny airport I went.

Boarding happened faster than I’d ever seen an entire plane fill up, but it was one of the most interesting flight experiences, as about 30min later, the pilot told us that the winds at this point where too strong for us to take off.

We were going to be waiting for an hour and then see again.

Waiting and a few non-promising updates happened in the next 45min and I had already seen myself missing my connecting flight, when suddenly, the message came: “Dear passengers, we are now able to take off, so rush to your seats, fasten your seatbelts right now and then we can go go go!” It was quite comical, and a huge relief, when we finally took off.

By the end of the day, I was full of french pastries (you know, spending 3h at Charles de Gaule airport is not so bad, the food is always good in France), filled to the brim with joy about the past few days, and ready to spend the upcoming days reveling in those memories.

This trip was everything it promised to be. It was filled with gorgeous views, lovely people, great food, and absolutely magical displays in the sky.

It was among my favorite trips I’ve ever taken and easily a place I’d return to again, and would love to see the Midnight Sun in as well.

If you ever have a chance of going, take it. And if your travel bucket list is missing the northern lights—add it. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime hunt worth taking.