Viking Vela In Search of the Northern Lights and British Isles Explorer Cruise Day 7/32 – Extra Edition - Alta, Norway, Pæskatun Northern Lights Excursion
This is a special edition blog entry. This is a second entry for March 22, 2026, from Alta, Norway. Tonight, we took a late-night excursion to Pæskatun, a slate mining facility high up Mt. Pæska, about 30 minutes south of Alta. The purpose of this excursion was primarily to get out of the city for a glimpse of the Northern Lights.
Before we even left the ship, we got an announcement that they were visible off the back of the ship. They were there, but nothing much to speak of.
We headed for Pæskatun. We visited several buildings, tried local sausage, and saw reindeer.
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| An ice igloo building |
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| Reindeer carving in the ice |
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| Northern Lights carving in the ice |
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| A Sami tipi |
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| Traditional Sami clothing |
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| Reindeer |
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| Reindeer |
We happily snapped away at the ever-changing display of lights in the sky. It was an amazing sight to see, and the show lasted for the entire two hours we were there.
All photos were taken with handheld cell phones at three to four-second exposures on Arlona's Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra or my S25 Ultra. The aurora was constantly moving, so the blurring of the aurora in the photos came from its movement during the long exposure. The star trails came from our unintentional minor movement while the photo was being captured. The extremely bright white spot in several of the photos was the roughly 20% waxing crescent moon.
I will let the photos speak for themselves.
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| I probably should have turned off my heated jacket, as the red indicator light made my face look sunburned |
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The show began to fade about the time the buses arrived to return us to the Vela.
