Northern Lights Forecast for Bodø

Northern Lights in Bodø

Bodø is a coastal town of about 43,000 people at 67.3°N, roughly 80 km north of the Arctic Circle. From the north side of town the aurora often shows over the open sea and the island of Landegode, and from the hills above it the Lofoten wall is visible across the Vestfjord on clear days. Winters are mild for the latitude, with a January mean just below 0°C.

Why Bodø has no true polar night

At 67.28°N, Bodø sits just south of the line where the sun stays down all day, and atmospheric refraction lifts the top of it over the horizon even at the winter solstice. In parts of the municipality the sun is still not seen at all from early December to early January. The aurora season runs from September to April, and the midnight sun from about 1 June to mid-July.

Keiservarden, Ausvika and Mjelle

• Keiservarden (366 m) is the summit above town, named after Kaiser Wilhelm II, who visited in 1891. From the Turisthytta car park at Rønvikfjellet, the route follows the Keiserstien, a stone path built by Nepalese sherpas and opened in 2016, for about 2.5 km to a top looking over the town, Landegode and the sea to the north.
• Ausvika is about 15 km north, a 20-minute drive on the road toward Kjerringøy. A short path from the parking area climbs a small hill to a set of chairs facing north toward Landegode. Buses toward Festvåg stop at Geitvågen, a 10-minute walk away.
• Mjelle is a beach on the north-facing coast, about 30 minutes’ drive from the center.

Saltstraumen and Kjerringøy

Saltstraumen, about 30 km southeast by road, is a strait 150 m wide where up to 400 million cubic meters of seawater pour through every six hours with the tide, raising whirlpools up to 10 m across. The road crosses it on a bridge.

North of town, the Kjerringøy trading post is part of the Nordland Museum, with about 15 preserved 19th-century buildings. In Bodø itself, the Norwegian Aviation Museum sits beside the airport in a building shaped like a propeller, with a U-2 spy plane and a Spitfire in its collection.

End of the Nordland Line, start of the Lofoten ferry

Bodø Airport is about 1.5 km from the center, with frequent flights to Oslo and regional flights to Lofoten and Vesterålen. Bodø is the northern end of the Nordland Line, about 10 hours by train from Trondheim. The car ferry to Moskenes, near Reine, crosses the Vestfjord in three to three and a half hours, and Hurtigruten ships call every day.