In 2013, Associate Editor Liz Kruesi and I took separate trips to the Arctic to witness the northern lights and serve as astronomy experts for a tour of other night-sky enthusiasts. Liz visited Iceland in February, and I toured the Norwegian coast in November. While hunting the aurora borealis was the highlight of both trips, we also packed in a lot of other sightseeing into our journeys. Our July issue overviewed our trips, but here are 18 more photographs from our Arctic travels.
Iceland’s capital city of Reykjavik stands in front of the Esja mountain range.
Jón Gunnar Árnason created the Sun Voyager, a steel sculpture that resembles a Viking ship, along the coast in Reykjavik, Iceland.
The Jökulsárlón Glacier Lagoon was Liz’s favorite land-based sight from her trip to Iceland.
This Icelandic glacier outlet was just a tiny fraction of the Vatnajökull ice cap, which is the largest such feature in Europe.
Liz’s Iceland tour group saw a number of waterfalls during their Icelandic adventure.
Liz’s group visited the Skogáfoss waterfall in Iceland, and a few of them walked up the 350 stairs to the observing deck above the falls.
Thirty-nine fun people traveled through Iceland on Liz’s northern lights tour. (A handful of them are missing from this photograph.)
This small Lutheran church is a part of the folk museum in Skógar, in southeast Iceland.
Black basalt sand covers the beach in Vík, the southernmost town in Iceland.
Because it was 4 p.m. and already pitch dark, some of Karri’s Norway tour group were fascinated by their shadows at Vardøhus Festning, a fortress that was demilitarized after World War II.
Appropriate words on this building in Båtsfjord: “ETERNAL LIGHT ETERNAL NIGHT.” During the tour, Norway was two weeks away from “eternal night.”
This statue marks the northernmost station of the Struve Geodetic Arc (in Hammerfest, Norway), a chain of survey triangulations that yielded the first accurate measurement of a meridian.
Karri’s Norway tour group’s home away from home, the MS Midnatsol, sits at port in Hammerfest.
Karri’s group saw a midnight concert at the Arctic Cathedral in Tromsø, Norway.
Members of the Norway tour group were able to take a bus and ferry journey from Harstad to Sortland, which involved lots of beautiful scenery.
The ship’s ceremony to go with crossing out of the Arctic Circle along Norway’s coast involved a spoonful of cod-liver oil ... yuck!
Trondheim, Karri’s favorite port to visit, is the third-largest city in Norway and was the capital of the area during the Viking Age until 1217.
Trondheim, Norway, is home to the Nidaros Cathedral, built from 1070 on, a Gothic work of art with Romanesque roots that’s an important Christian pilgrimage destination to this day.
