Svalbard sits closer to the North Pole than to mainland Norway. In the deep of winter the sun stays below the horizon for months, and the darkness becomes a canvas. When the solar wind hits — and this is a peak year for it — the whole sky ignites: green and rose and violet curtains folding and snapping across the stars.
It moves faster than you expect. And it is utterly, ringingly silent.
You watch from the frozen fjords by snowmobile and dog-sled, far from any glow of town, wrapped against a cold that makes the stars seem sharper. To stand under a sky doing that — vast, alive, indifferent — is the oldest kind of awe there is.