Cold. So cold. Minus 33C cold. But nobody notices. All eyes are locked on the night’s celebrity. Cheers and squeals of excitement mingle with the pop of flashbulbs as the A-lister explodes across the sky in three vibrant green arcs of light, dripping into a molten pool on the mountainside.

The aurora borealis has played the same stage for billions of years, but you can’t accuse it of going through the motions. A quick costume change and the old trouper reemerges as two vast stripy curtains, then mutates into curls of smoke and burning globules, like a supersized lava lamp. It’s what the Japanese tour group have come to see.

Adoration borders on low-level hysteria. People stumble around, necks craned, eyes wide, arms pointing to the heavens. They bump into each other, knock over camera tripods; a man rockets through the hotel, slips and lies on his back in the snow, gesturing to the sky. It’s chaos, and it’s hard to resist. I join the crowd, my “Aaaah!” fusing with others as if we’re a pack of howling wolves.

The Japanese love affair with the aurora borealis isn’t just bizarre subzero theatre, it’s a reliable indicator of one of the best displays on the planet. Maiko, Shinya and Yukari can’t explain their obsession, but, having travelled 36 hours across eight time zones for “the chance of a lifetime”, they expect the heavens to deliver — and their pilgrimage is to Abisko, in the far north of Sweden.

The media can take some of the credit. Just more than three years ago, NHK, Japan’s national broadcasting corporation, sent crews across the world to find the best place to see the polar lights. It reached its climax with a live finale: Abisko v Antarctica. Seventeen million people watched the southern icecap deliver darkness while the Swedish village rolled out a corker. “You can’t buy marketing like that,” says Putte Eby, manager of the Abisko Mountain Lodge, which received 1,000 Japanese visitors last year.

Geography is on Abisko’s side. Lying 155 miles into the Arctic Circle, on northern latitude 68.2 — guaranteeing long, dark viewing nights from September to late March — it’s untainted by light or pollution. It also sits in the rain shadow to the east of mounts Slattatjakka and Njulla. With Atlantic fronts dumping on their slopes, the village claims to have Sweden’s clearest, driest weather.

“We call it the Abisko blue hole,” says Putte. “Go a few kilometres either side and there’s more than double the rain and snow. Relatively, we’re a desert.

“There may well be better appearances elsewhere, but if you throw in accessibility, then this is the best place on earth to see the aurora borealis. Come for three days in season and you’d be unlucky not to catch them.”

The resort is capitalising on its natural bounty with the launch of the Aurora Sky Station, an interactive exhibition at the top of Sweden’s longest cable-car ride, where I made for a blacked-out room for a hit of nuclear and atomic physics.

I failed physics O-level — an E grade suggests I even spelt my name incorrectly — but I can now proudly reveal that solar winds destabilise and energise particles in the earth’s outer atmosphere. These hotfoot it towards the poles along our magnetic fields and collide with atoms of gas, releasing energy — eureka! — in the form of the northern lights.

The Aurora Sky Station fuses night viewings with expert talks. Our guide was the brainy Christer Juren, from the Swedish Institute of Space Physics. His lecture, utilising Coke bottles, screens and antennae to capture crackles of atmospheric instability, felt like stumbling on an Open University module at 2am.

But it’s outside that the Sky Station really scores. As we stood on its viewing platform in the eerie half-light of night snow, the aurora borealis rose like a spectre from behind the mountain. It’s small wonder it has become the stuff of folklore (gods playing football, dancing ancestral spirits or reflections of vast shoals of Atlantic herring).

The Japanese aren’t buying into such outlandish theories. Instead, they believe babies conceived under the northern lights will become intellectuals. Hotel rooms with glass viewing roofs are popular, and every local seems to know about the collision 120 miles away in Gallivare, when a snowmobile hit an amorous Japanese couple displaying remarkable determination — not to mention blood flow — in a sleeping bag.

Hypnotic as the lights are, it would be a crime to visit Abisko and not pay attention to the ground — the landscape has attracted artists since the railway arrived in 1903. The Abisko alps are punctuated by the valley of Lapporten. Before them is the frozen lid of Lake Tornetrask, backed by the peaks of Andra Sidan — “The Other Side” — which appear to float on the early-morning mist.

This is the amphitheatre for the start of the Kungsleden Trail, 264 miles of some of the most civilised, uncrowded hiking on earth, with saunas, huts and Sweden’s highest mountains. I tackled its early stages along the Abiskojokk. Under the snow lay meadows that bloom in spring. The rare Lapp orchid, or “£14.4m orchid” — the cost of rerouting rail and road around its top-secret habitat — grows here.

But with frost on my eyelashes and pen freezing to fingers, this was no day for botanists. Or naturists. In such extremes, appetites rise as the mercury falls. After canapés of smoked reindeer heart — rich with flavour, but unmistakably a big red heart — we had high-quality stomach fillers, including a seriously tender moose stew.

It’s hard to tell whether the Japanese would agree. The buffet system added a new twist to fusion cuisine when at least one excited aurora-spotter ladled the salmon soup over his reindeer stew and side salad.

Perhaps a little confusion is to be expected with severe jet lag. It could explain what befell Maiko and Shinya Kato. The twentysomethings had delayed their honeymoon for the trip — the last “long” eight-day holiday work would allow before retirement — but “fell asleep”, missing the most spectacular lights. If they did, it’s rotten luck, but if it’s a euphemism, there may well be compensation in the shape of Japan’s next child genius.

Travel brief

Getting there: fly to Stockholm with SAS (0870 6072 7727, www.flysas.com ) from Heathrow, London City, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Manchester or Dublin; or with British Airways (0870 850 9850, www.ba.com ) from Heathrow. Ryanair (0871 246 0000, www.ryanair.com ) flies to Skavsta (55 miles from Stockholm) from Stansted and Glasgow Prestwick, and to Vasteras (60 miles) from Stansted and Dublin.

Take the overnight train from Stockholm to Abisko Turiststation (£140pp return for a two-person berth; 00 46 771 260 000, www.connex.se ).

Alternatively, fly from London to Kiruna, 58 miles from Abisko, via Stockholm, with SAS; from £274.

Where to stay: Abisko Mountain Lodge (00 46-980 40200, www.abisko.nu ) has spotless, functional rooms from £60 for a double. Aurora Sky Station: nighttime viewing and displays (£21) are available from autumn until early spring. The vernal and autumnal equinoxes are particularly good viewing times, but the exhibition can be visited during the day at many times of the year (980 40200). More information: try Visit Sweden (020 7108 6168, www.visitsweden.com ) and www.lappland.se .

Times recommends

• Oasis of the Seas: the Times review
• The 20 best new year party places to stay
• Green Spaces 2009: are you the winning writer?