Northern lights

Northern lights (na Gealáin Thuaidh - Northern Lights, Na Saighdeáin - The Lightnings, or Na Fir-chlis - literally 'the nimble men').

I have driven out to The Isle of Doagh, well after midnight, to spend time watching the Northern Lights or aurora borealis (Dawn of the North). Driving away from the lights of Carndonagh town to see nature’s insurgence through light and colour.

In Scottish Gaelic folklore the Northern Lights are known as the Na Fir Chlis – the merry dancers. The Lights were described as epic fights among sky warriors or fallen angels. Blood from the wounded fell to earth and spotted the bloodstones or heliotrope found in the Hebrides.

Over the years, we’ve been lucky enough to see the lights from our back garden. The magnetic green shimmer on the horizon can be transformed through a camera lens into all manner of pinks, purples and reds, so I guess what you see is very much dependent on how you look at them.

Crossing the Atlantic in 1830, Derry-born migrant merchant David Blair Little described his experience: ‘[the aurora] broke fantastically from behind the white border of a cloud in lucid, transparent columns, giving a lustre to the stars, danced about, assumed a thousand shapes, flitted from place to place, vanished rapidly, returned […] they exhibit bright and rapidly evolving hues, emitting pale coruscations which undulate upwards amid streaks of yellow and red, shooting across the zenith’.

In August–September 1859, a massive solar storm generated magnificent aurora across the northern hemisphere, its magnetic force was such that it brought down telegraph services in Ireland and elsewhere.

A raw and natural phenomenon which can interfere with our main method of communication. Somehow it’s humbling to realise that for all our advancements, we are still very much at nature’s mercy.

• Original Irish Landscape Seascape oil painting
• Donegal landscape painting
• Péinteáil Tírdhreach Dhún na nGall
• Original artwork
• Oil on canvas.
• Painting size 50.5 x 40 cm
• Framed size (approx.) 51.5 x 241.5 x 4 cm
• Off white limed wooden frame
• Price includes frame.