Northern Lights Guidebook
A practical travel guide
Northern Lights Travel Guide. Holiday and travel advice about where and when to see the aurora borealis, covering Sweden, Norway, Finland, Iceland, Greenland, Canada, Alaska. Also includes: accommodation options; tour operators offering packages; what to wear; how to travel; aurora photography, forecasting and science; and daytime activities.
Size: 130 X 198 mm
Edition: 5
Number of pages: 96
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Bradt Northern Lights Guide
This updated Bradt Northern Lights Guidebook is the only dedicated English-language guide to the Northern Lights.
About this guide to the Northern Lights
The updated Bradt Northern Lights: a Practical Travel Guide guidebook, now in its fifth edition, does what it says on the tin, providing detailed guidance to the best places to gawp at the aurora borealis. It remains the only guidebook to cover optimum locations to watch this natural nocturnal phenomenon across North America (Canada, Alaska), Greenland and Europe (Sweden, Norway, Finland and Iceland) while also covering all manner of practicalities.
Between autumn and spring, the northern lights – surely the greatest light show you’ll ever see – are a major, increasingly popular tourist draw of the Arctic and sub-Arctic. As well as advising on the best places to see auroras, Arctic expert and award-winning travel journalist Polly Evans offers a succinct, easy-to-understand explanation of the science that makes them happen, and provides information on tour operators offering northern lights packages alongside practical tips including where to stay (from budget hotels to Sweden’s spectacular ICEHOTEL, built each year from river water before melting in spring), what to wear, how to drive in winter conditions and how to understand northern lights forecasting.
The updated Bradt Northern Lights guidebook is further enriched by:
- suggestions for complementary daytime activities such as dog sledging, skiing, snowshoeing, snowmobiling and wildlife safaris;
- an examination of the reactions of the early explorers to their first sightings of this phenomenon; and insights into the myths and legends of the northern indigenous peoples; and even
- advice on how and where to get married in ice chapels!
This new fifth edition contains:
- a fully refreshed accommodation section featuring the best new northern lights hotels and accommodation experiences, particularly in the USA and Canada;
- a new section on the best northern lights forecast and tracking apps to increase your chances of success; and
- a fully updated photography section to include the best northern lights photography apps.
Whether the northern lights are still on your bucket list, or you are an experienced aurora aficionado, the updated Bradt Northern Lights guidebook remains the essential companion for planning and getting the most out of one of the world’s most remarkable natural experiences.
Before ordering ebooks from us, please check out our ebook information.
Contents
Chapter 1 What are the Northern Lights?
Magnetic versus geographic poles, The auroral ovals, The sunspot cycle, The different shapes of northern lights
Chapter 2 Where to See the Northern Lights
Sweden, Norway, Finland, Iceland, Greenland, Canada, Alaska, The southern lights
Chapter 3 Practical Information
Tour operators, What to wear, Temperatures, Winter driving, How to photograph the northern lights, Northern lights forecasting
Chapter 4 Beyond the Northern Lights
Something for the daytime, And if you have time to sleep. Extra 1,000 to 1,500 words of text to be added in accommodation for some new listings.
Chapter 5 The Northern Lights in History
Explorers and the aurora, Kristian Birkeland, Great Auroras in history
Appendices
Further information: books, TV, Websites
About the author
When not teaching Spanish at an English public school, Polly Evans is an award-winning travel journalist and author. She has written five travel narrative books: It’s Not About the Tapas (shortlisted for the W.H. Smith People’s Choice Travel Book Award, and Daily Express Book of the Week), Kiwis Might Fly, Fried Eggs with Chopsticks, On a Hoof and a Prayer, and Mad Dogs and an Englishwoman. Polly also writes travel guides, specifically Bradt’s guides to the Yukon (winner of the British Guild of Travel Writers’ award for Best Guidebook), and Northern Lights (now in its fifth edition). She writes for newspapers and magazines including The Times, The Sunday Times, The Independent, The Independent on Sunday, Wanderlust, Condé Nast Traveller, BBC Wildlife and Food & Wine, while her radio documentary for the BBC World Service, The Other Guantánamo, won the British Guild of Travel Writers’ Best Travel Broadcast award.