Northern Lights in Ylläs

Ylläs is a great place to see the Northern Lights, not because it guarantees better auroras than elsewhere in Lapland, but because it combines dark skies, wilderness and easy access. You can stay in Äkäslompolo or Ylläsjärvi and still reach places with very little artificial light. Open lakes, fell landscapes and the surrounding wilderness give you plenty of space to see the sky without having to travel far.

You don't always need to leave the village, either. On a clear night, the Northern Lights can sometimes be visible directly from your accommodation. Streetlights are also turned off from October to March at 10pm, helping to keep the villages relatively dark at night. Move further away from the strongest lights, however, and the difference can be surprisingly large. Under a truly dark sky, a strong aurora can fill the landscape with colour, with snowy forests and fells stretching out beneath it.

You don't need a secret viewpoint. You need darkness, an open sky and the right conditions.

There is no single best month for Northern Lights in Ylläs. The aurora season is much longer than the winter season. The Northern Lights can be visible from early autumn through late spring, essentially whenever the sky is dark enough to see them. For a winter trip, however, December to March is an excellent period because you get the combination of long nights, snow-covered landscapes and proper winter conditions. Aurora activity depends on the Sun, while your chances of actually seeing it depend primarily on the weather. In practice, clear skies matter more than almost anything else.

December & January

The nights are at their longest, giving you plenty of darkness to work with. In December, it can already be properly dark from around 4–5 PM, so an aurora can appear surprisingly early in the evening. The downside is that the weather can be more unsettled, with more cloud cover.

February & March

The days become noticeably longer, so you have less darkness, but the weather is often more favourable. The viewing window also shifts later into the evening. By March, you may need to wait until considerably later for the sky to become properly dark.

Don't wait for a specific time

There is no particular hour when the Northern Lights are guaranteed to appear. If it is dark and the conditions are right, they can become visible at any point during the night.

Our advice is simple: keep an eye on the sky throughout your stay. Don't only go outside when an app tells you there is a strong chance. Some of the best displays can happen on evenings that initially looked completely ordinary.

Four things matter most when you're looking for the Northern Lights.

1. Clouds

This is the big one. You can have a perfect aurora forecast, but if the sky is completely covered by clouds, you won't see anything. A modest aurora under clear skies is far more useful than a spectacular forecast hidden behind cloud.

2. Aurora activity

This is where you'll often hear about the KP index. KP is useful as a general indication of geomagnetic activity, but it doesn't tell the whole story. Aurora visibility is more complicated than simply waiting for a high KP number. You can absolutely see the Northern Lights in Ylläs when the KP index is low. Don't chase the KP number. Look at the whole picture.

3. Darkness

The sky needs to be dark enough for the aurora to stand out. This is why the Northern Lights are mainly a winter experience in Ylläs, although the aurora season extends well beyond the darkest months.

4. Moonlight

The Moon doesn't stop you from seeing the Northern Lights. A bright moon can actually make a snowy landscape look beautiful beneath an aurora. But without moonlight, faint auroras and stars are easier to see.

The basic rule is simple: Find clear skies, an open view and as little artificial light as possible. You don't necessarily need a famous viewing spot. In Ylläs, there are plenty of places where you can get a good view of the sky.

The lakes

The frozen lakes around Ylläs are some of the easiest places to get a wide, unobstructed view of the sky. Lake Äkäslompolo, Lake Ylläsjärvi and Lake Kesänkijärvi can all be good places to watch the Northern Lights, particularly when you want to get away from the strongest artificial lights without going deep into the wilderness. The open landscape also makes the lakes especially atmospheric on a clear night, with the surrounding fells and snowy forests framing the sky.

The fells

Kuertunturi and Kesänki can offer spectacular views over the surrounding landscape, with very little blocking your view of the sky. However, we wouldn't recommend heading onto a fell at night unless you already know the terrain very well. Winter navigation is very different in darkness, particularly when visibility changes or the weather moves in.

Find an open sky

Sometimes the best location is simply somewhere with a clear view of the sky, little light pollution and a good view towards the north. This is particularly useful when the aurora is weak, as the first signs may appear low on the northern horizon. As the activity increases, however, the aurora can spread across the entire sky. You don't necessarily want to be deep in the forest. Snow-covered trees are beautiful, but at night they can block a surprisingly large part of the sky.

And remember: the aurora is happening hundreds of kilometres above you. You don't need to be directly underneath a particular viewpoint to see it. The priority is finding a clear patch of sky.

This is one of the things most Northern Lights forecasts don't explain very well. You can see the Northern Lights even when activity is relatively weak, but the experience can be completely different depending on their intensity.

Weak aurora

A weak aurora can be surprisingly difficult to recognise with the naked eye. Instead of bright green, it may look more like a greyish or slightly whitish cloud against the night sky. It can be easy to mistake it for ordinary cloud until you notice that it is slowly changing shape or moving. You can still see that something is happening in the sky, but the colours and movement may be very subtle.

Moderate aurora

As the activity increases, the green becomes clearly visible to the naked eye. The aurora may appear as broad green bands or curtains stretching across the sky, with some movement, although it can still be relatively slow and subtle. Under a dark sky, this is already a beautiful experience. You can see the colour, follow the movement and really appreciate how large the display is.

Strong aurora

And then there are the nights when everything changes. A strong aurora can dance, ripple and explode across the sky. The green becomes much more vivid, the movement becomes faster, and the display can spread across a large part of the sky. When the activity is strong enough, you may also see violet, purple and sometimes red with your own eyes. This is the kind of display people imagine when they think about the Northern Lights, and when it happens above a completely dark Lapland landscape, it really is spectacular.

The important part

Don't judge an aurora only by the KP index. A low KP night with clear skies can produce a perfectly visible aurora, while a high KP forecast underneath thick cloud will give you nothing to see. Cloud cover, darkness and actual aurora activity all have to come together.

Modern smartphones are surprisingly good at photographing the Northern Lights. If your phone has a Night Mode, use it and keep the phone as still as possible. A tripod or something solid to rest it against can make a big difference.

A dedicated camera can capture even more detail, but you'll generally want:

• A tripod

• A wide-angle lens

• Manual focus set to infinity

• A relatively wide aperture

• ISO roughly 1600–6400

• Shutter speed around 2–10 seconds, depending on how bright and fast the aurora is

The exact settings depend heavily on the camera, lens and aurora intensity. A very strong, fast-moving aurora may require a much shorter exposure than a faint one. And don't spend the entire night looking at the screen. Sometimes the best way to photograph the Northern Lights is to put the camera down and watch them.

No. You can absolutely see the Northern Lights independently. In fact, many Northern Lights tours are not really about finding the aurora. The lights can cover enormous areas of the sky, so driving one hour away doesn't necessarily get you closer to them. What these tours often do is look for clearer skies.

If the forecast shows clouds around Ylläs but clearer skies elsewhere, having a vehicle and knowing where to go can make a significant difference. A local guide can also monitor cloud cover, aurora activity and local conditions, then choose a location with a good combination of clear skies, darkness and an unobstructed view. But you don't need a tour every night.

If you go independently, avoid the basic mistakes: don't stop on the road to watch the lights, don't head into unfamiliar terrain at night, and dress for standing still. A familiar landscape can look very different in complete darkness, especially in winter.

The biggest advantage of a local guide isn't that they have a secret Northern Lights viewing spot. It's knowing when and where to go. And because Northern Lights tours are often combined with another winter activity, the aurora doesn't have to be the only reason to go outside.

A night snowshoeing or skiing trip, for example, can already be an incredible experience in the dark Lapland landscape. If the Northern Lights appear above you, they become an unforgettable bonus. That's often a better approach than spending every evening staring at an aurora app waiting for the perfect forecast.

The Northern Lights, or aurora borealis, are caused by energetic particles from the Sun interacting with Earth's magnetic field and upper atmosphere. The Sun constantly releases a stream of charged particles called the solar wind. During periods of increased solar activity, stronger bursts of particles can reach Earth. Earth's magnetic field guides some of these particles towards the polar regions. When they collide with gases high in the atmosphere, those gases release energy as light. Different gases and altitudes produce different colours.

Green is by far the most common colour and is produced mainly by oxygen at relatively high altitudes.

Red can also come from oxygen, but generally at higher altitudes.

Blue and violet are associated mainly with nitrogen.

So when you see green, purple or red moving across the sky, you're actually watching the upper atmosphere respond to activity coming from the Sun. And that's part of what makes the Northern Lights so fascinating: the display you're watching is happening roughly 80–500 kilometres above you.

Long before the Northern Lights were understood scientifically, people living in the North developed stories and beliefs to explain the strange lights moving across the winter sky.

Sámi traditions

The Northern Lights are known as guovssahasat in Northern Sámi. Different Sámi communities have their own traditions and interpretations of the phenomenon, so there is no single Sámi story about the Northern Lights. In some traditions, the lights were connected with the spirits of the dead and were treated with respect. This was not something to simply watch as a beautiful spectacle, but part of a wider spiritual relationship with nature, the sky and the unseen world. Some traditional beliefs also warned against trying to attract attention from the lights, including shouting or whistling at them.

Today, the Northern Lights are understood scientifically, but these traditions are an important reminder that the phenomenon has been part of life in the North for far longer than we have understood its physical cause.

Finnish folklore: the fox fires

In Finnish, the Northern Lights are called revontulet, literally “fox fires.” According to Finnish folklore, a magical fox ran across the snowy fells, sweeping its tail through the snow and sending sparks flying into the night sky. The story gives the phenomenon a distinctly Finnish name and is still one of the most recognisable pieces of Northern Lights folklore in Finland.

Whether you see them as solar particles, fox fires, or something a little more mysterious, standing beneath the Northern Lights in the darkness of Lapland makes it easy to understand why people have created stories about them for generations.