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Saxa Vord

Northern Lights

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A vibrant, stylized graphic of the Northern Lights on the Sky Trail Saxa Vord with flowing ripples of green, pink, and white against a dark navy sky dotted with grey stars.

Witness the magic of the aurora at The Sky Trail Saxa Vord. This stop is dedicated to the Northern Lights, known locally as da Mirrie Dancers, and the solar science that creates them.

Harp

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A piece inspired by the Northern Lights. Written and performed by Unst resident, Sunita Staneslow, for Wild Skies Shetland.

Northern Lights/Mirrie Dancers

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An evocative description of the Northern Lights/da Mirrie Dancers, written and performed by Shetland resident, Tom Morton. With kind permission from Promote Scotland for use in this project.

Read Along

The Science of Da Mirrie Dancers at Sky Trail Saxa Vord

The Northern Lights might seem magical. In fact, they are electrically-charged particles from the Sun that have found their way into the Earth’s atmosphere.

An educational diagram showing solar wind and particles from the sun interacting with Earth's magnetic field lines to create auroral zones at the north and south poles.

Solar Explosions

Solar storms, called coronal mass ejections, send charged particles from the Sun.

Earth’s magnetic field directs them to the poles, where they enter the atmosphere and collide with gases, releasing light that forms the Northern Lights, also known as da Mirrie Dancers.

Polar light displays

The aurora is the scientific term for these colourful light shows.

There is a similar show at each of the poles, with displays getting more vivid the closer you get.

The Aurora Borealis is the name of our northern display (the Northern Lights), and the Aurora Australis is the name for the southern show.

Causes of colours

Different gas molecules produce different colours of light.

Green is the most common colour of the aurora and is caused by oxygen, whereas nitrogen gives off purples, pinks and blues.

The patterns we see are caused by the waves and lines in the magnetic field.

How to catch a show

To know when an aurora is likely, look out for signs of geomagnetic activity, such as a solar storm.

This can happen at any time but is only visible when it is dark. Fortunately, there are lots of websites and social media pages to help you.

Aurora Watch forecasts local aurora based on geomagnetic activity from the Sumburgh Head Magnetometer.

Once you know that an aurora is likely:

• Make sure it is a clear and cloud-free night.

• Find a dark place, away from light pollution.

• Aim to be there between 10 pm and 2 am.

• Turn off your phone or any light sources.

• Be prepared – wear warm clothes.

• You may wait a while, so get comfortable.

• Got your seat? Sit back and enjoy the show.

Saxa Vord [W3W: petrified.expand.rainbow] 

Northern Lights/Mirrie Dancers

Let me tell you about the Northern Lights. Their symphonies in white and green, always green, great wiggly waves across a midnight blue sky.

Because the Northern Lights, Da Mirrie Dancers in Shetland, move, flicker, sprint across the sky, beam imperiously like massed Batsignals or some Nuremberg rally display, and occasionally envelope you in a sense of otherness, of alien interference. Buzzing.

Sometimes there’s an odd hum, an audible shimmer. Orcadians have been known to compare this to the rustling of silk, while the Lapps say, beautifully, that it’s similar to the cracking of reindeer leg joints as they run.

The Finns call it revontulet, foxfire, as they thought, or a poet told them to think, that the lights were caused by sparks from the coat of the Arctic Fox. Nordlys may be an obvious Danish translation, but in the folklore of Denmark, it is swans flapping their wings while they try to free themselves from the ice they’re trapped in.

What else could the lights be? Ancients racked their imaginations and blamed the glinting of shoals of herring, the reflections of fires or shards of ice in the sky. But as we know, it’s sunspots. Or solar winds. Of course it is. Whatever those are…

In Shetland, these periods of massive sunspot action often coincide with heavy cloud. But not always. I’ll never forget the Up Helly Aa, in the early 1990s, with all of Lerwick’s street lights switched off for the procession, when the Aurora burst forth in its full majesty. And as the ‘Vikings’ and other guisers paraded, shouted, set fire to the galley, there were inescapable thoughts of Norse traditions that the lights were a bridge to Valhalla, that they signified a journey to another world.

When you see them in their full, naked glory, it can leave you disturbed, haunted. Spellbound.

Saxa Vord

Unst Heritage Centre

Viking Haroldswick

Keen of Hamar

Swinna Ness

Halligarth

Framgord

Muness

Belmont

Lund

Collaster

Houlland

Hermaness

Planetary Trail