Hitchhiking to the Arctic (Norway)

I was in southern Sweden when I decided to turn north. I had no itinerary, just a fierce yearning in my heart to see the Northern Lights. Not from a bus tour, not through the foggy pane of a hotel window, but with my own breath visible in the air, my boots in the snow, and nothing but silence between me and the sky.

I made a cardboard sign with just "NORD" in black block letters. North. That was all I knew. I stuck out my thumb on a highway near Gothenburg, not expecting anything to happen. But within twenty minutes, a man in his forties in a beat-up Volvo pulled over. "Tromsø?" he laughed when I told him where I was headed. "That's way north." He took me three hours nearer.

That was the rhythm of the journey: strangers, tales, and slow miles. A retired schoolteacher traveling to see her sister. Two German students on a road trip. A truck driver named Lars who blasted Bruce Springsteen and told me his wife had left him for a magician.

Each ride was a miniature universe. Sometimes we talked for hours. Sometimes we drove in comfortable silence, the rush of tires and wind the only sound. Each night, I either discovered a cheap hostel or asked to pitch my tent in someone's backyard. People were kind. Curious. No one tried to rob me. No one even asked what I was doing it for. Maybe they saw it in my eyes.

Five days in, somewhere north of the Arctic Circle, the landscape changed. The trees thinned out. The sky expanded. It was January, and daylight lasted only about five hours. Everything appeared to be waiting with bated breath.

This meant my final ride was with Ingrid and Olav, whom I picked up just north of Narvik as they drove homewards. They took me in for a night in the cabin outside of Tromsë; it smells of pinewood and cardamom buns, I thought to myself and sat before their fire as dogs snuggle tight beneath my hands as they break out cloudberry jam and reindeer stew. "I'm worn out, happy and silent now," I conclude.

That night, at about 11 p.m., there was a knock on my door from Olav.

"It's happening," he said, smiling gently.

We stepped outside. The world was quiet. Cold nipped at my cheeks, sharp and tangible. Then the sky opened up.

It wasn't what I had anticipated from the photographs. It was alive. Green and purple ribbons danced across the black sky above us. It started subtle—almost smoky—then pulsed and shimmered like a curtain billowing in the wind. I didn't speak. I couldn't. My eyes welled up, and I wasn't even certain why.

Ingrid handed me a mug of hot chocolate. "You'll never forget this," she said. And she was right.

The next morning, I helped them shovel the snow and thanked them too many times. Olav just waved me off. "You had to see the sky," he said. "We're just part of the road."

Now, when I think back on that trip, it isn't the Northern Lights that I recall. It's every stranger who took a chance on a girl with a backpack and a cardboard sign. Every imperfect laugh. Every silent mile. It's the feeling that the world is vast, and good, and waiting—if you're brave enough to stick out your thumb and head into the direction of the unknown.

-Amzad Rahid