Up All Night, Searching for the Lights: A Finnish Hotel’s Aurora Watcher
Photo Credit: The northern lights are such a major draw for tourists that one hotel employs an "aurora watcher." Arctic SnowHotel
Skift Take
Overnight shifts are usually bemoaned by those who work them, but that's not the case for Mikko Anetjärvi. He spends his nights on the lookout for something many of us only dream of seeing.
For thousands of years the northern lights were a mysterious phenomenon that lit up the sky with spectacular shades of pink, green, yellow, and blue, leaving communities grasping for explanations. Some took the lights as a bad omen, believing they symbolized death or impending war. Others welcomed them as a blessing.
In Finland, many attributed the lights to the mythical firefox. Rumor has it that as the firefox ran through the snow-covered forests, its fiery tail created sparks that lit up the sky. The Finnish word for northern lights, “revontulet,” literally translates to “fox fires.”
To take advantage of this spectacular backdrop, the Arctic SnowHotel in northern Finland has hired Mikko Anetjärvi to alert staff and guests to the occurrence of the lights — also called the aurora borealis. He is the hotel's "aurora watcher," a position
