While in English you can also refer to the Northern Lights by its Latin name, Aurora or Aurora Borealis, Swedes almost exclusively use the Swedish word norrsken for this dazzling display of lights. 

It’s made up of the words norr and sken.

The first word, as you can probably guess, means “north”, and you may have also seen it in words such as Norrland (the northernmost region of Sweden), norra Sverige (northern Sweden) or norrut (north in terms of direction, for example vi åkte norrut, we went north). 

The latter is closer to “shine” than “lights” in Swedish. It also features in expressions or words such as skina upp (light up, usually figuratively in Swedish – if you want to use it in the literal sense such as lighting a lamp or a cigarette, the correct Swedish word is tända), påskina (insinuate, imply, make out that), or solsken (sunlight). 

Norrsken is generated when a stream of charged particles from the sun, called solar wind, collides with atoms of oxygen and nitrogen in the Earth’s atmosphere, creating light green, red, orange or blue light. It fluctuates in strength depending on the level of solar activity.

It’s much more common in northern Sweden than the south, as its name suggests, but 2024 is supposed to be an excellent year for norrsken, so there’s a good chance that even people living as far south as Malmö will have plenty of chances to spot them.

Example sentences:

Såg du norrskenet i går?

Did you see the Northern Lights yesterday?

Visste du att norrsken heter sydsken på södra halvklotet?

Did you know that the Northern Lights are called the Southern Lights in the southern hemisphere?