They say the old Sámi people believed the lights were the souls of the departed, dancing across the heavens. My grandmother called them guovssahas—the light you can hear. She swore that on the quietest nights, if you listened closely enough, they whispered secrets from the edge of the world.
I was seventeen the first time I truly saw them. Not the faint green smudge that tourists photograph and call magical. No—I mean the night the entire sky erupted, when ribbons of emerald and violet unfurled like silk banners above our village, when the snow itself seemed to glow with borrowed light.
"Watch," my grandmother said, her breath making small clouds in the minus-thirty air. "The sky is remembering something beautiful."
We stood there for hours, wrapped in reindeer hides, as curtains of light swept from horizon to horizon. They moved like living things—pulsing, breathing, reaching down toward earth as if to touch us. Green melted into turquoise, then deepened to purple where the edges caught fire with pink.
That night changed something in me. I understood then why ancient peoples built entire mythologies around these lights. How could you witness such impossible beauty and not believe that the universe holds mysteries beyond comprehension? How could you watch the sky dance and ever feel truly alone?