Those who are lucky enough to catch a glimpse of the Northern Lights during Untamed Iceland will see colorful curtains of dancing light in shades of green, purple, yellow, and blue.
By Jann Segal, 28-time traveler from Redondo Beach, CA
Iceland in the fall has some great things to see that cannot be seen in the summer, all having to do with lights. Two that you want to take in are the Northern Lights and the John Lennon Peace Tower. These two "light shows" were high on my Iceland to-do list. After traveling on Untamed Iceland with O.A.T., I did not return home disappointed.
The Northern Lights are active twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, all year long. The reason you can only see them in autumn and winter months is because you need enough darkness to see them. The long daylight hours of the spring and summer months in the northern countries do not afford this opportunity.
Due to constantly changing weather conditions in Iceland, you also need to be there at least seven days in order to see the lights. If there is mist or rain at night, you will have no visibility to seeing them—even though they will be active in the heavens.
The Aurora Borealis activity ranges from a scale of one to nine. The activity levels are available online on a weather web site. A few days before I left for Reykjavik, they were an unusual activity level 6 in the city. The entire city turned off all the lights so everyone could enjoy the spectacle. When I arrived a few days later there was still quite a bit of buzz about the lights, which had gone down to an activity level 4. However, the rain and clouds made it impossible to even book a trip to see them from Reykjavik.
We finally saw them in the north outside of Akureyri when they were only an activity level two. We still saw the white, pink and green lights, just not as vibrantly as if they had higher activity levels (the pinks and greens are more outstanding with higher activity levels).
It was more than worth staying up until midnight for the extraterrestrial experience of watching the skies open up and dance, with a full and unobstructed Milky Way looking on in supervision. We even saw them from our hotel parking lot as we were leaving. The real show didn’t begin until we were in an open area near a fjord.
When we were back in Reykjavik a few days later, I was after the lights of the John Lennon Peace Tower. It’s visible only from October 9 until December 8—John Lennon’s birth and death days respectively. His widow Yoko Ono had a peace tower constructed off a small island next to Reykjavik, and she comes to Iceland each year on his birthday to light the tower. The Peace Tower has the same constraints as the Northern Lights in terms of visibility and weather. On the third night I tried to see it, I finally succeeded under clear skies. The life of John Lennon was one of controversy, and not always one of peace, but the conceptual art installation that sits atop the world to beam lights into space as a beacon of peace is a beautiful and powerful artistic message.
After seeing these two amazing sets of lights—one a natural phenomenon, one manmade—I was calmed. The poetry of peace and the message I felt when the heavens opened up was truly haunting. The universe was telling me that things were going my way, and all is right with the world.
Seek out the Northern Lights and perhaps catch a glimpse of the John Lennon Peace Tower during a fall departure of our Untamed Iceland adventure.
