Wings of Heaven

Magical lights of Aurora Borealis appear over a traditional Sami village in Lapland, northern Sweden. There is a deep connection between people of the far north and these majestic dancing lights. Visible near the windows of the foreground house is a pair of reindeer fur. Reindeer have been herded for centuries by some Arctic people including the Sami and the Nenets Eskimos. Sami people in Lapland (northern Norway, Sweden, Finland some areas of Russia) traditionally believed that the northern lights were the energies of the souls of the departed. Eskimos in some areas described aurora as the dancing spirits. Some Indians in the North America described it as a fire in the far north, a reminder from the creator of the Earth. Aurora is produced by the collision of high-energy charged particles, originated from the sun, with atoms and molecules of Earth’s atmosphere (at altitudes above 80 km). When aurora is very active as captured in this view its most beautiful form known as aurora corona appears near the zenith. Its form can appear to boil with motion, its colors can range across the entire spectrum and, when bright, it can easily cast a shadow.