Aurora Furore: Who Owns the Northern Lights?
The Norwegian tourist board is unhappy about an attempt by its counterpart in Finland to market the country using a video of the northern lights. The Norwegians claim the Finns are trying to “steal” the celestial phenomenon from them.
The aurora borealis, also known as the northern lights, normally inspires awe in those who are lucky enough to see it. But in Norway and Finland, the spectacular celestial phenomenon — which is caused by charged particles entering the Earth’s atmosphere — is currently provoking mainly envy and resentment.
A recent attempt by the Finnish Tourist Board to use the aurora in a marketing campaign has sparked concerns among Norwegians, who like to think that the northern lights are associated first and foremost with their country, that the Finns may be looking to muscle in on their territory.
The tension was triggered by a short film that the Finnish Tourist Board posted on its channel on video-sharing platform YouTube, featuring time-lapse footage of the aurora in Finnish Lapland. The film has been viewed almost 400,000 times since September, prompting Norwegians to complain that the Finns are trying to “steal” the northern lights.
“We can not stand by and watch the Finns try to grab a bigger share” of the northern lights market, said Per-Arne Tuftin of Innovation Norway, a state-owned company that promotes tourism in Norway. “We will not give up — the northern lights will be ours,” he told the Tromsø-based newspaper Nordlys, whose name translates appropriately as Northern Lights. Back in 2009, Innovation Norway launched a campaign to brand the northern lights as a Norwegian phenomenon.