160+ reviews
About the tour/experience
On our Northern Lights tour, we’ll pick you up from your accommodation in the Reine area (anywhere from Å to Hamnøy) and head toward the northern coast of Lofoten.
Why the northern coast? Because having a wide, open view toward the northern horizon gives us the best chance of spotting the aurora — especially on evenings with lower activity.
Once we’re on the road, we’ll follow the weather, the cloud gaps, and the best viewpoints of the night. We might stop by quiet beaches, fjords, or open mountain passes — wherever the conditions look most promising. You’ll have plenty of time to step outside, enjoy the stillness, take photos, and soak in the atmosphere of a Lofoten winter night.
We’ll bring hot drinks, snacks, and extra warm gear to keep you comfortable throughout the evening. And of course, we’ll help you take beautiful photos of the experience.
Whether the Northern Lights decide to appear or not, we’ll make sure the night feels relaxed, memorable, and full of good company.
Depending on the weather and aurora activity, we’ll wrap up around 11:30 p.m. and drive back to Reine.
About northern lights in Lofoten
In Lofoten, northern lights hunting is a bit of an adventure, but it’s important to set the right expectations. Unlike Tromsø, where you can head off in four different directions—and even make a dash to Finland if the weather’s being stubborn—in Lofoten, we’ve got just one main route to chase the auroras: east.
But don’t worry, the weather in Lofoten is super local, so while it might be cloudy in Reine, you could find clear skies just a short drive away in Ramberg, and viceversa.
Now, catching the northern lights isn’t just about clear skies (though that’s the most important thing). We also need some good northern lights activity.
Some nights, you’ll be treated to a spectacular display of green and red lights swirling above—though keep in mind that your camera will always see those colors more vividly than your eyes.
Other nights, the aurora might be a little shy, just faintly glowing on the horizon. And yes, sometimes we wait and wait, but the lights do not show at all.
On those nights when the weather looks hopeless and the clouds aren’t budging, we’ll cancel the tour.
What if we do not see the northern lights?
We totally understand that seeing the Northern Lights is the highlight everyone hopes for, and we’ll do everything we can to make that happen. But since we’re at the mercy of Mother Nature, we can’t promise the lights will always make an appearance.
If we believe there’s almost no chance of seeing the aurora (think heavy clouds or storms), we’ll cancel the tour and offer you a full refund or the option to reschedule.
If we head out and the Northern Lights decide to take a night off, we won’t be able to offer a refund.
Our Team
Radka
Co-founder, Guide & Content Lead
📍 Reine · 🇬🇧 🇳🇴 🇨🇿 | Radka is usually behind a camera, behind a laptop, or catching her breath halfway up a mountain while Ivar waits at the summit. She runs sightseeing tours and joins the hikes now and then, mainly to prove that slow hikers get there too.
She’s also the voice behind most of Guide to Lofoten’s content, including the sarcastic remarks about weather, ferries, and Norwegian bureaucracy. The route here was long and full of detours, by way of oil and gas technology and then environmental chemistry. It started in 2015 with an angry article in Czech about tourists misusing Norway’s DNT mountain cabins. That somehow ended with her running a guiding company in Lofoten.
Ivar
Co-founder & Guide
📍 Reine · 🇳🇴 🇬🇧 | Ivar is the engine behind everything. He does logistics, guiding, accounting, and most of the things that keep the company running and Radka from losing her mind. His favourite tours are the winter hikes to Ryten, which makes sense: he’s usually already sitting at the summit while everyone else is still on the way up. Time off has got rarer since keeping this ship afloat turned into a 24/7 job, and what’s left of it goes into hiking, climbing, skiing, or freediving around the islands.
Trained nurse. Certified climbing instructor. Licensed taxi driver. A combination that covers almost every situation Lofoten can produce.
Ondra
Sightseeing Guide
📍 Svolvær · Leknes · 🇬🇧 🇨🇿 | Nothing is ever a problem for Ondra. He describes himself as a jack of all trades and means it as a compliment: he can drive more or less anything with wheels and keep it running through the trickiest conditions Arctic Lofoten produces.
He’s also a proud member of the Svolvær Red Cross volunteer group, so if you get lost or injured in the mountains around Svolvær, you might run into him outside our tours too. He shares our weakness for board games, which would be more useful if he lived at our end of Lofoten.
Tomas
Guide
📍 Svolvær · Leknes · 🇬🇧 🇸🇰 | Tomáš keeps about five forecast apps on his phone and checks all of them constantly. That obsession makes him very good at reshaping a tour around the conditions and getting guests ahead of the rain and the cloud.
Off duty he’s either skiing in the mountains or out on a boat. He’s also an insanely good cook and knows roughly a million ways to prepare stockfish.
Marek
Sightseeing Guide
📍 Reine · Leknes · 🇬🇧 🇵🇱 | Marek has a genuine “we can manage anything” attitude, which is exactly what you want when the forecast looks terrible and the plan has changed for the third time.
He enjoys the sightseeing trips, but he’s really at home in a kayak. We’ve never met anyone more passionate about paddling, or less interested in Lofoten’s mountains. He’d paddle every day if he could, and we still haven’t talked him into a hike up Ryten.
Jitka
Sightseeing & Hiking Guide
📍 Reine · 🇬🇧 🇨🇿 | You’ll hear Jitka’s laugh before you see her, and she keeps it up all day. She has no patience for routine, so she’s lived and worked in more corners of Lofoten than we can count. Which works out well for us: she knows the tiny villages most visitors drive straight past.
She’s also an excellent photographer, shooting our guests as well as professional sessions for elopements and weddings. And she runs her own kayaking company out of Reine and Ramberg. Busy bee.
Jakub
Sightseeing & Hiking Guide
📍 Reine · 🇬🇧 🇨🇿 | Jakub is quiet, funny, occasionally sarcastic, and in the winter mountains he absolutely has your back. He looks tough, but he’s enough of a sweetheart to hold your hand on the way down from a summit if that’s what it takes. Please don’t misuse this information.
He loves skiing and prefers to take the winter trips in harder conditions, mainly so he can keep the good powder days for himself. That suits us fine. Ivar prefers to guide in nice weather and spend the difficult days at home finding excuses not to do the accounting.
Maria
Sightseeing Guide & Photographer
📍 Svolvær · 🇬🇧 🇸🇰 | Long, exhausting days where the weather refuses to cooperate don’t seem to touch Maria. She gets through them smiling, and that calm puts guests at ease straight away. She’s also an exceptional photographer, and her photos regularly end up as guests’ favourite souvenir from Lofoten.
Unfortunately for us, she’s also deeply in love with Finnish Lapland and its far more reliable winters, so we live in constant fear that she’ll move back there one day.
Maciej
Sightseeing Guide
📍 Svolvær · Leknes · 🇬🇧 🇵🇱 | Maciej is relaxed, knowledgeable, and the most organised person in the company by a considerable margin, which the rest of us appreciate more than we probably admit. He’s also the only guide here with (almost grown-up) children, so he can tell you plenty about the school system in Lofoten and what there is for kids to do here.
Outside guiding he surfs, splitboards, and bakes the best sourdough bread in Lofoten. We’re still hoping for the recipe.
FAQ about the northern lights tour from Reine
Is the Northern Lights guaranteed?
The honest answer: no. The Northern Lights are a natural phenomenon, and they don’t always show up on schedule. We’ll keep an eye on the aurora forecasts, follow the weather, and take you to the best possible spots — but the geography and cloud cover in Lofoten can make the chase challenging at times.
That said, we’ll always make the most of the evening. We’ll take beautiful night photos, enjoy the quiet of a Lofoten winter night, and create a relaxed, memorable experience — even on the nights when the aurora decides to stay hidden. While we can’t guarantee the Northern Lights, we can guarantee good company and a meaningful night out.
Will I see the Northern Lights just like in the pictures?
Not quite. The photos you see online often look more vivid and colorful than what you’ll experience with your own eyes, and there are a few reasons for that.
First, our eyes use night vision in low light, which means we’re better at seeing movement and shapes than bright colors in the dark. So, when you look up at the Northern Lights, you might see them as soft green glows or faint colors, rather than the intense hues you see in photos.
Cameras, however, have a big advantage. They can use long exposure times—sometimes up to 30 seconds—during which the camera’s sensor collects all the available light. This allows it to capture much more detail and color than our eyes can in real-time.
Additionally, the vast majority of Northern Lights photos you see online are post-processed. This means that after the picture is taken, the contrast, brightness, and colors are adjusted to make the image even more striking. So, while the photos are beautiful, they don’t always represent exactly what you’ll see with the naked eye.
That said, witnessing the Northern Lights in person is still an unforgettable experience.
Do I need to bring a camera?
Absolutely, you can bring a camera to capture the Northern Lights! If you don’t have a dedicated camera, don’t worry—newer smartphones, like the iPhone 14 Pro, can take pretty decent photos of the aurora, and if the lights are strong enough, they can even capture some nice videos.
For those serious about getting the best shots, we recommend bringing a camera with a few key accessories: a tripod to keep your camera steady, an external shutter release (or use the timer function on your camera), and a wide-angle lens—we use a 14mm lens for our shots. The wider the lens, the more of the sky you can capture in your photos.
We’ll also have our own gear with us to take photos of you with the Northern Lights.
Is there a lot of walking involved?
Most of the time, we’ll head to a big sandy beach on the northern coast of Flakstad island, which is one of our favorite spots for Northern Lights viewing. The beach is absolutely stunning, with a wide open horizon facing north—perfect for watching the aurora. It’s also one of the best places in Lofoten for photography, thanks to its minimal light pollution and the way the sea and wet sand create a beautiful mirroring effect in your photos.
The good news is that the beach is located right next to a parking area, so we won’t be trekking for miles to get there. However, you should be prepared to walk about 200-400 meters on an uneven surface to reach the best spots on the beach. The terrain is generally easy to navigate, but it’s not perfectly flat, so sturdy footwear is recommended.
What our guests say
Rated 5.0 on Google and TripAdvisor across 160+ reviews.
Cancellation & refunds
We’re a small, family-run local company, run by two people, offering private tours for up to 8 guests. Private tours are planned specifically around you — your timing, route, and preferences. Compared to larger, high-volume operators, last-minute changes have a much bigger impact on us.
We also operate in Arctic Norway, on weather-exposed islands where conditions can change quickly and play a major role in whether a tour can safely run.
When a private tour is cancelled, it’s often not possible to find a replacement booking on short notice. This means the vehicle is reserved, the guide is scheduled, and the day is blocked, even though the tour is no longer happening. To run our business sustainably and keep our schedule predictable, we need a reasonable time window to adapt — which is why our private tour cancellation policy works the way it does.
Even when a tour is cancelled by the guest, there are still costs involved on our side (payment processing, fees, vehicle allocation, and staff planning). These costs are non-refundable for us.
👉 Life happens, we get it!
You can cancel your private tour up to 30 days before departure and receive a refund minus a 5% transaction fee, which covers payment and booking costs we can’t recover in case of a guest-initiated cancellation.
👉 If you cancel your booking between 30 and 14 days before departure, you will receive a 50% refund.
👉 If you cancel your booking less than 14 days before departure, or do not show up at the agreed pick-up point and time, no refund will be given.
👉 From our side, if the weather turns too rough to safely run the tour, we may need to cancel it. In that case, we will offer to reschedule, suggest an alternative plan, or issue a full refund.
👉 Life happens on our side too.
In the rare case that we need to cancel due to operational reasons (vehicle issues, guide illness, road closures, accidents, or closed bridges), you will of course receive a full refund.
⚠️ If you’re not able to join the tour due to flight cancellations, illness, road closures, or similar circumstances, we completely understand. We’re happy to provide any paperwork you need for your travel insurance. Please note that these situations are not covered by our cancellation policy and should be claimed through your insurance (make sure it includes trip interruption or cancellation coverage).
Thank you for your understanding and for supporting a small local business ❤️
Make your inquiry here
Tell us where you’re staying, when you’re visiting, and what you’d like to see. We’ll come back to you within 24 hours with an honest recommendation — including whether a different tour format might suit you better than the one you were considering.
Radka & Ivar
Guide to Lofoten founders
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