The nightmare of the northern lights in Norway

His driving style, with constant stops and starts, was suspicious, as was the driver’s frenetic use of his mobile phone.

When he finally arrived by car at the entrance to the mud-clogged Tromsø airport terminal in Norway, he picked up two passengers.

“As soon as they started driving, we activated the blue lights,” said Superintendent Lars Holtedahl, recalling the February operation.

“It caught them totally off guard.”

The crime? Work as a tour guide for Northern Lights tours without license.

The offense may seem insignificant to outsiders, but to the people of Tromsø, a small Norwegian city located above the Arctic Circle, these guides have practically become public enemy number one.

Unregulated tour operators have wreaked havoc on Tromsø, a city perfectly situated in the fjords between snow-capped mountains to view the northern lights, the colorful light show over the North Pole.

For much of the year, Tromsø is a quiet university city of about 80,000 inhabitants.

In recent years, the number of visitors has skyrocketed, especially thanks to social networks.

In high season, from September to April, tourists can reach triple the local population.

In February alone, more than 137,000 visitors passed through Tromsø Airport’s newly expanded international terminal, according to Norwegian airport company Avinor.

According to local authorities, this unregulated industry has wreaked havoc on the streets and is harming licensed tour operators as well as local tax revenue.

Most of the illegal operators come from China.

The same goes for the growing number of tourists, some of whom are victims of scams.

Many of the illegal guides come from outside Norway, work without proper permits and take their earnings with them.

“We do not see an increase in income in the municipality, only an increase in expenses,” declared Helga Bardsdatter Kristiansen, the city’s first head of sustainability, pointing out the saturation of roads and municipal services.

He added that almost half of Tromsø’s tour operators are illegal.

This season, police seized about 10 vehicles a month and arrested more than a dozen people for illegally transporting tourists, deporting illegal guides who were not Norwegian.

The driver detained in February during the operation described by Superintendent Holtedahl was a Chinese national in his 40s, expelled from the country.

When he was arrested, he lied that he was transporting his family, police said.

Messages on his phone revealed that he had sold a five-day trip for 31,000 yuan, or more than 4,500 dollars.

“It’s an important industry,” Superintendent Holtedahl said.

“A lot of money is made, both honestly and dishonestly.”

A typical tour costs from $115 per person and can be intermittent, with drivers consulting northern lights tracking apps and driving to the Finnish border, 100 miles away, in search of the lights.

The barrier to entry is low.

“You have to know where to go and you need a car,” said Kurt Kolvereid Jacobsen, one of the heads of a special team called the A-Crime unit, which was formed last year to focus on the northern lights industry.

In Tromsø, the local Serious Crimes unit goes into action at dusk, when buses clog the streets waiting to pick up tourists.

Dressed in fluorescent-colored jumpsuits, they search cars for illegal guides.

Illegal operators are usually one step ahead.

Officials working with the A-Crime unit reported discovering a chat group where illegal guides exchanged tips on how to evade checkpoints.

A common tactic was to pretend that their clients were family.

On Red Note, the Chinese social media app, there are hundreds of posts reporting scams.

One user, a woman from Chengdu, southern China, said that the only thing she saw during her excursion was the inside of a police station, after the illegal guide who picked her up was arrested.

“The driver became extremely nervous and demanded that I lie to the police: ‘Just say we are friends, otherwise this is an illegal operation and I will be punished!’” she wrote, saying she had been interrogated for four hours.

Another tourist, Tingting Wang, paid $1,400 so she and her elderly parents could see the northern lights.

The first night, the sky was covered in clouds.

The second night, the guide stood them up.

He returned to Shanghai and lied to his parents that he had received a refund.

Tromsø, he told us, “is very pretty and looks like something out of a fairy tale,” but “tourism is very chaotic.”

On the main road, tourists flock to buy fries at what is billed as the world’s northernmost McDonald’s or to take selfies next to troll statues made famous by Disney’s “Frozen” franchise.

There is almost always a line in front of the reindeer-shaped hot dog stand.

The crowding is annoying for many locals, but especially for experienced northern lights hunters like Gunnar Hildonen.

According to him, unregistered drivers are willing to accept a fraction of the $250 he charges for a seat on his 16-seater bus.

“This season should be a celebration because it’s my 20th Northern Lights,” he said after clearing the way for his guests. “But everything went to waste.”