[Countrywide] Mountain plateaus with big panoramas: where can you get wide views without extreme elevation gain?

Around Tromsø, the easiest DIY northern lights setups I’ve used were boring but effective: quiet roadside pull-offs or small parking areas facing north, where you can stand on flat ground and escape back into the car without flirting with black ice or traffic. Waiting can be 30 minutes or three hours, so the real luxury is a thermos, a warm car, and zero pressure to “chase” anything. The biggest safety issue is honestly other people stopping like idiots on narrow roads, not polar bears or anything cinematic. Controversial opinion: if you’re comfortable driving in winter, tours are mostly overpriced hand-holding unless you truly hate waiting in the cold.

If you want big, open views without grinding uphill all day, Hardangervidda is hard to beat. I walked a short section off one of the main access roads in late August and within 30 minutes it already felt vast — lakes, low rolling terrain, and that endless horizon feeling. It’s mostly gentle rock and tundra, with some boardwalks in wetter areas, so the effort stays reasonable. Wind is the real factor up there, not elevation, and fog can roll in fast, so a windproof layer is non-negotiable. For payoff versus effort, August and early September were perfect for me. Afterward, stopping at a roadside café near Eidfjord for a coffee or waffle felt like the right way to come back down to earth.