Lapping up the Northern Lights

Our guide had told us to keep one eye on the road and another on the sky, but both my eyes were on the green and blue lights flickering like psychedelic ghosts along the horizon.

As the Northern Lights shimmered briefly between trees and then disappeared into the dark sky, I’d forgotten entirely that I was behind the wheel of a snowmobile.

And in the split-second that I’d looked up instead of straight ahead, our snowmobile had flown off-piste over a small cliff and slammed into the banks of an icy creek.

Our first night on our adventure-packed short break to Norway, and I’d already fluffed the quick health-and-safety talk we’d had just moments before.

“This is the brake, that is the throttle,” our guide Jan had said. “Most people press harder on the accelerator when they panic and end up flying off the road. Try not to do that.”

My partner and I had flown from London just hours earlier into the pretty port city of Tromso, the gateway to Lapland, for an action-packed weekend that would take in snowmobiling, husky-sledding and Northern Lights viewing.

We would be spending two nights in the snowy peaks and valleys of Lapland, a short drive away from the city past fjord-hugging roads and yellow and red fishermen’s shacks. Our third and final night would be in trendy Tromso.

After checking in at a quaint red cabin named Guesthouse Vollan and lunching on a hearty meat stew (washed down with a pint of Norwegian beer named Aas), we met Jan and our fellow snowmobilers, and piled on the supplied woolly sweaters and Snow suits, along with helmets, gloves and night goggles.

We headed for the open snowy valleys between Finland and Norway, where the Northern Lights – caused by light particles blown to Earth by solar winds, and also known as Aurora Borealis – are reportedly best seen.

But the weather forecast for our weekend was dour, and that brief shimmering snapshot was to be our only view of the phenomenon.

Snowmobiles require a tricky balance of weight and speed, making night driving at once exhilarating and terrifying. The natural urge is to speed along the dark woodland trails, even though you don’t know that there are bridges over icy creeks or just how narrow those bridges really are (until, like me, you’ve flown off one).

I was the only girl in our team to try my hand at the lawnmower-on-ice, and while I’m glad I did, I’m not so sure my pillion-riding boyfriend much enjoyed his brush with death.

Luckily, I wasn’t the only one who’d been a bit slapdash in all Jan’s years of guiding eager snowmobilers.

“Broken arms, cuts and bruises – they’re all common,” he told us later over a dinner of reindeer, carrot and onion stew back at camp, where we sat around an open fire in a traditional lavvu, or teepee.

“We haven’t had any serious accidents yet, but then, you, dear Kate, only arrived today.”

Little did he know how portentous those words would be.

The next day, I was more than eager to try my hand at a new (and, I was sure, less dangerous) sport: Husky sledding.

Our ‘musher’ for the overnight sledding adventure was Espen, who shouted over excited yelps as he introduced us to his 14 dogs, among them Wagner, Penny, Podka, Lotta and Vroom Vroom.

After teaching us how to properly hold on, brake and lean into a turn so as not to knock the sled over, Espen hollered “Hunden klar! (Dogs ready!)”, and suddenly we were off bobbing through birches and pines.

The sled’s gentle scraping on the ice was a welcome quiet from the dull roar of the snowmobiles the evening before, and we held on tight as the dogs plodded through the thick snow, up what seemed like a vertical mountain and down into another valley on our full-day trip.

Despite its romantic image, dogsledding is arduous work. Although I’d paid superb attention to Espen’s earlier instructions, I soon found myself wrestling with the sled as the dogs took tight corners through trees and over icy rocks.

And, rather unfortunately, it was only a matter of time until I tipped over and was dragged downhill along the icy path until Espen, sledding ahead of us, was able to stop them for me.

Our fish-stew dinner, brewed over the lavvu’s open fire back at camp, was an all-too-welcome break from an exhausting day spent on the open road.

We rested briefly before heading out again with the dogs to catch the Northern Lights again, but cloudy skies prevented us from seeing anything.

That night we slept in a lavvu, prepared lovingly by a Sami native named Roar (pronounced Ru-arr). He described the traditional art of Lapland reindeer herding, unique to the ethnic Samis of the region, as he prepared our bed, a sort of bird’s nest of branches covered with thick, furry reindeer skins.

We slept surprisingly well, and had hoped to go reindeer sledding with Roar the next day. But we spent the morning dogsledding again with Espen instead, by now feeling like seasoned pros.

And when we left to go back to Tromso, the dogs looked genuinely sad to see us go.

Tromso is known for its trendy shops, cafes and maritime museums, but a heavy snowstorm (the views from our 14th-floor Radisson SAS hotel room in the harbour were breathtaking) meant we spent the evening in the hotel’s state-of-the-art sauna instead.

Although we’d only had a brief glimpse of the Northern Lights – having caught what Jan said was the worst weather in March for the past 30 years – we didn’t mind one bit. The snow, the fresh air and the endless adrenaline had combined to make for such a superb holiday that we’ve already planned a second Norwegian adventure.

Let’s just hope I’m less clumsy this time.