Today is February 3, and I am writing this a few days after my birthday, still carrying January 30 with me like a quiet echo.
I turned a year older in the far north of Sweden, and even now that feels strange and wonderful to say. We traveled all day to get there, the kind of travel that wears you down in layers. Long stretches of road and rail, the landscape widening, the light thinning, the cold sharpening. By the time we arrived at Aurora River Camp, I was exhausted in the most honest way, the kind where your body feels finished but your mind is still wide open.
We stayed in a glass igloo tucked along the frozen river in Jukkasjärvi. That night, lying beneath the curved glass and watching the aurora ripple and stretch across the sky, I felt wonderfully small. Not insignificant. Just properly sized for the universe. The kind of small that reminds you the world does not revolve around you, yet still makes room for you to witness something extraordinary.
Earlier, in Abisko, we stood in cold so sharp it stole your breath before you noticed it was gone. The air was bone dry and thin, the kind that makes even an easy hike feel earned. My eyelashes froze. My hair refused to cooperate. Even our breath felt solid. And still, the silence and scale of that place made everything feel clearer, more alive. Abisko has a way of stripping things down to what matters. You, the land, the sky.
As the aurora moved overhead that night, I kept thinking about my ancestors. How many of them stood under these same lights centuries ago without glass roofs or cameras or certainty. Some believed the aurora was the Valkyries riding across the sky, their armor and spears catching the light as they crossed between worlds. Others saw reflections from Valhalla, or messages from something just beyond human reach. Whatever the story, they understood this much. It mattered.
We explain the aurora now with solar winds and charged particles, and all of that is true. But the feeling is older than explanation. Awe does not vanish just because we understand the mechanism. It survives. It connects us.
There was something deeply humbling about celebrating a birthday like that. No candles. No noise. Just light moving across the sky like a living thing, ancient and indifferent and somehow generous enough to appear at all.
Now that a few days have passed, I keep thinking about aging, about becoming an old lady someday. I hope I am the kind with stories like this tucked into my bones. The kind who remembers being tired and cold and utterly amazed. The kind who knows that wonder does not disappear with time, it deepens.
More than anything, I am grateful. Grateful for that moment. Grateful for the strange, beautiful life that led me to Aurora River Camp, to Abisko, to that sky. Grateful to be sharing it with my husband, lying beside me, just as tired, just as quiet, just as awed.
Some birthdays fade quickly. This one did not. It followed me home. And I think it always will.
Swedish Wanderlust 