Her tattooed fingers with black nail polish clipped away at the keyboard. The Norsk receptionist looked up and greeted us with a warm smile as we whisked into the hotel lobby out of the frigid arctic blast. I let out a breath of relief; we’d made it– 218 miles north of the Arctic Circle– to Tromsø, to the top of Norway, on a day when not a single ray of sunlight would glint across the sky. My frugality was feeling uneasy . . . tickets for excursions to see the aurora borealis (or northern lights) were thousands of dollars online in advance. We booked the flights with the hope of finding a local…