While this trip doesn’t necessarily fall into the category of being extremely remote, it is nevertheless distant. Having said that, pretty much everywhere is distant from Australia?!

So let’s start with the trip itself, and share where I’m traveling to.

On the map above, the trip starts in Sweden with a key to the stops presented in the table below

Destination	More details about the ‘how’
Stockholm, Sweden (A)	First stop, after some 23 hours flying time. Argh!
Copenhagen, Denmark (B)	By train
Oslo, Norway (C)	By overnight ferry
Flam, Norway (D)	On the Bergen Railway from Oslo to Myrdal, and on the Flam Railway from Myrdal to Flam.
Bergen, Norway (E)	This day’s journey starts with a fjord cruise from Flam to Gudvangen, then bus from Gudvangen to Voss, where we pick up the Bergen Railway again to complete our journey to Bergen
Kirkenes, Norway (A)	We board the Havila ship called the MS Polaris in Bergen for a 7 day cruise north along the Norwegian coastline
Muotka Wilderness lodge, Finland (B)	We travel by bus to the lodge, which is located in the Saariselka region.
Helsinki, Finland	By plane from Ivolo (which is a a bus trip of around 40 minutes from the lodge)

After my travels in the Nordic countries, I decided to add on a visit to London and Ireland…

London, England	By plane
Dublin, Republic of Ireland	By plane
Belfast, Northern Ireland	By train
London, England	By plane

When I decided to write about the various research for this trip, I wondered at first whether I would have enough to write about.

We have all heard at least some of the Viking stories. But I confess that I didn’t realise just how extensive and long lasting their impact and legacy has reached. And in some cases, how misunderstood or misrepresented some of their history has been. Don’t get me wrong….the Viking era was characterised by much violence. Notwithstanding this, putting together the history timeline was an eye opener for me. Hopefully I get a chance to explain this in future posts.

The ultimate goal is to see the Northern Lights. However, the research I have been doing, particularly around the Vikings, has given this trip a dimension which I wasn’t expecting. And then, when I decided to visit London and Ireland afterwards, I originally thought of this as an “add-on”. However, I now realise that the vikings had an important part to play in their histories as well! For example, I had no idea that Dublin was actually established by the Vikings.

It’s all connected.

So, perhaps I should have named this the Viking Trip, instead of Northern Lights??