Northern Lights in Finnish Lapland: Fox Fires, Aurora Science and Tips

Finnish Lapland sits right under the auroral oval, and on a clear winter night the sky above its forests, fells and frozen lakes can fill with moving curtains of green light. Finns call the northern lights revontulet, "fox's fires", after an old tale of an Arctic fox whose tail strikes sparks into the sky.

Revontulet: the legend of the fire fox

In Finnish folklore the tulikettu, or fire fox, lived far away in the northern woods. It was black by day and glowed at night, and hunters dreamed of catching one because its pelt was said to bring wealth for life. In Lapland, people said the northern lights were sparks thrown up as the fox's tail brushed low branches and bushes while it ran.

The word survives in everyday Finnish. Revontulet comes from repo, an old word for fox (its genitive is revon), plus tulet, fires. The modern word for fox is kettu, but the aurora kept its ancient name.

What causes the northern lights

The aurora begins at the Sun. Charged particles carried on the solar wind, especially after coronal mass ejections or from fast streams out of coronal holes, disturb Earth's magnetosphere and are guided down into the upper atmosphere, where they collide with oxygen and nitrogen atoms.

• Green, the most common colour, comes from atomic oxygen at around 100 km, with a wavelength of 557.7 nm.
• Red comes from oxygen at the highest altitudes and usually appears during stronger activity.
• Blue and purple come from molecular nitrogen, low in the display.

Auroras rarely glow below about 80 km. They are seen most often in a band about 6° wide centred on 67° latitude, the auroral oval, and the Arctic Circle crosses Lapland, which puts the whole region in prime position.

When and where to see the aurora in Finnish Lapland

Lapland is Finland's largest and northernmost region, about 100,000 km² with roughly 176,000 people, so dark skies are easy to find. The aurora season runs from around late August to the end of April, when nights are dark enough. Winter lasts about seven months, and permanent snow usually arrives between mid-October and late November, adding snowy forests and frozen lakes to the foreground.

Getting there is simple. Rovaniemi, the regional capital, has Finland's second-busiest airport, about 1.5 hours by air from Helsinki. Kittilä, Ivalo, Enontekiö and Kemi-Tornio airports serve the north and west. The northernmost municipalities form the Sámi homeland, where Northern, Inari and Skolt Sámi are spoken.

Plan days you would enjoy under cloud too, such as skiing, snowshoeing or a husky ride, and keep evenings free to head out when the sky clears.

Photographing the aurora: roads, trees and clearings

The photographers in this gallery give the sky a foreground. A road leads the eye towards the light, a line of trees breaks up the horizon and an open clearing leaves room for the display to spread. A few basics help:

• Use a tripod and a wide lens, and focus manually on a bright star.
• Start with exposures of a few seconds; shorten them when the aurora moves fast.
• Keep spare batteries warm in an inside pocket, since cold drains them quickly.

More northern lights stories

Compare Kaspars Daleckis’ Latvian time-lapse for another northern European perspective, or revisit Ben Pierce’s 2014 northern-lights trip.

Related reading:

• Kakslauttanen’s Glass Igloos: A Room with a Sky View
• Snowboarding and Freestyle in Finnish Lapland
• Sun Halos over Finland: Understanding Pauli Hänninen’s Photographs
• Ten Northern-Lights Regions: Geography, Darkness and Realistic Expectations
• Light Pillars over Winter Towns: Reflections in the Night Sky

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