We had our breakfast in our hostel before we departed.
While my friend was sitting in the dining room, facing the large windows, working on her computer, she suddenly screamed with excitement. She said, ‘Look!! Look!! It’s a…, it’s a…, it’s a…, what is it?’ I screamed too. It looked like a fox and it was standing in the woods outside the hostel. We could clearly see it through the large windows. We ran into our room to get our camera. Her husband was packing in the room and was shocked when he saw these two crazy ladies rushing in.
‘What happened?’ he asked. I answered, ‘We saw some wildlife.’ We rushed back to the dining room. Apparently, it didn’t pose for us. It had left. Disappointed. Her husband followed us to the dining room and said calmly, ‘see? You two were way too excited. You shouldn’t have come into the room. You should have just stayed there and watched it.’
My friend used a website to check the density of aurora in the area where we were almost every night when she had the opportunity and time to do so. She said, ‘I know some people who had been to Norway but weren’t able to see the northern lights.’ In fact, the northern lights weren’t that active and dense the year we went there. She wasn’t too optimistic. We still had little hope though. ‘What should we do if we couldn’t see it?’ she asked. I didn’t know if it was a rhetorical question but I answered anyway, ‘well, we’d be doing so many things so if we couldn’t see the northern lights, it’d still be ok.’ As I previously said, I enjoyed snow so I was happy already and we’d be dogsledding (huskies!! 😊) so that’d be good enough for me. Of course, if we could see the aurora in this trip, that would make this trip perfect and that would also mean I wouldn’t need to make another (expensive) trip to northern Europe (or maybe Alaska?) just for the northern lights but there was nothing we could do… except praying. I did pray quite hard on those days. Were my prayers answered? You’ll see. 😊
After we finished packing, we started our journey.
Our car went past something large but interesting.
My goodness!! They were immense!
My friend and I were like little kids and suggested we should stop here for a little while. Her husband was obviously… not interested. LOL!
The two of us walked around the place.
The entire place was covered with thick snow. We saw a shop in the premise but the door was closed and we didn’t see anyone. We looked through the windows. Suddenly, a woman appeared. My friend asked her if we could go inside. She said, ‘sorry, our shop is closed but sure, you can come in.’ We were so excited. We thanked her for opening the shop for the two of us, yeah, just the two of us.
Not only did they open the shop for us to visit, they also took a picture with us. 😊 Due to privacy issue, I am not putting the photo here. 😛 The male owner is actually shorter than I so I had to bend my knees when I took the photo with him and his wife. He also made a statue of the troll version of himself. That was so funny.
Unfortunately, this troll park was on fire in March 2019 and was completely destroyed. ☹ I hope all these little trolls escaped from the fire.
I am really thankful that we had the chance to see these little / huge creatures.
My friend booked a wooden glass house for two nights in Burfjord. It was the only time we’d be able to catch the northern lights. If we couldn’t see it here, we couldn’t see it.
I prayed.
It was another very quiet, peaceful and beautiful area.
Our house was facing a lake with mountains surrounding it. The view was spectacular.
The house had one bedroom only but there was a sofa bed in the living room. My friend and her husband let me sleep in the bedroom. When darkness fell, both of us got our cameras ready inside the house facing the windows. We turned off all the lights in the house. It was pitch-black inside. We talked (actually whispered because it was just too quiet) to each other about how to set our cameras. I had my tripod that I borrowed from my colleague with me but my friend didn’t have one so she rested her camera on a stack of books.
We waited.
We waited patiently.
But there was no luck.
We put all our gear back in place and went to bed.
I prayed harder that night.
1 April 2009
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