Your friends can’t have seen much of the northern lights if they weren’t impressed. The thing is, you can go there for two weeks and not see anything, or like me, see this the first night, my picture is taken with my iPhone and is not a time lapse.
The first time I saw the northern lights I cried. That’s how spectacular it is. They must have seen 2 % of it and one with no colors. Too bad, because it can be spectacular, and ever dance across the skies with many colors in it. This one in my pic was a small and rather boring one.