Each year
the Sony offices close down for the days between Christmas and New Year,
meaning that we get free days leave – such a good Christmas present!
This/last year, Tony and I decided to make the most of the days off by flying
to Sweden the day after Boxing Day for 5 nights of hunting the northern
lights. The northern lights are caused by solar activity, which is
apparently on an 11 year-cycle with this northern winter supposedly
representing the high point on that cycle. Tony and I figured that this
should have equated to spectacular displays… if only! Despite my aversion
to all things cold, I’ve travelled north of the Arctic Circle three times in
the last five years in search of the northern lights… and unluckily for me,
it’s been an epic fail every time. I’m now starting to feel convinced
that the lights must just be some photo-shopped conspiracy by the Arctic Circle
tourism board!
Our first
night in Sweden was spent in Stockholm thanks to SAS changing its scheduled
flight plans. It meant we had a chance to check out the city’s
interconnected islands on the way in from the airport, and an opportunity to
explore the narrow streets of the old town in Gamla Stan before catching up
with Amy and Warwick for a dose of lovely Kiwi/Swedish hospitality.
Unfortunately the Christmas markets weren’t open anymore, but thanks to
Amy’s recommendations we did find a gorgeous restaurant for a late dinner (or
at least it felt late, thanks to the way it gets dark so early in the day that
far north!).
The flight
up to Kiruna from Stockholm was stunning, with gorgeous sunlight reflecting on
the wings of the plane and the winter wonderland below. Once there, we
caught a train straight up to Abisko – allegedly the best place in the world to
see the northern lights because of its settled weather and clear skies.
We stayed at the Abisko Tourist Station, which is actually outside of Abisko
town but conveniently close to the chairlift that takes you up to the Abisko
Sky Station. There wasn’t enough interest for us to be able to do an
overnight stay at the Sky Station, so instead we hopped on the chairlift
shortly after it opened at 8 to head up for a night visit… and quickly found
ourselves making our way up the mountain through a freezing blizzard.
Safe to say we didn’t have the most ideal conditions for viewing the lights…
After an
hour or two of sipping hot chocolate and twiddling our thumbs while playing a
made up game of top trumps with our constellation cards in the warmth of the
mountain lodge, someone yelled out that the lights were here. Queue a mad
rush as everyone started pulling on warm outer layers, grabbing tripods and
heading for the door. We set up the cameras in knee-deep snow and waited
for the spectacle to begin. And waited some more. And waited a bit longer
just for good measure. In a twist of fate that now seems particularly
cruel, I took a couple of random shots to check exposure settings and the like,
and wouldn’t you know it - there, on screen, across the middle of the sky, was
a bright streak of green… just a pity that you couldn’t see it when you looked
up! Eventually, at around midnight and when we were virtually the last
guests left up the mountain, we decided to call it a night. Fortunately
there was no blizzard to rub salt into our wounds, and we still held out hope
for nights 3 to 5…
Next
morning we caught a taxi to Jukkasjärvi and the Ice Hotel. The landscape
on the drive between Abisko and the Ice Hotel was spectacular, as was the light
from the sun that barely rose above the horizon. After checking in and
booking on a snowmobile tour that afternoon, we left our luggage in our
locker/changing room for the night and went exploring. Having watched a
documentary about it last week, I can tell you that the Ice Hotel is made solely
from ice blocks and snow. The ice blocks are cut from the Torne River at
the end of each winter and stored in a giant freezer until the following
autumn, when construction of the new hotel starts a mere six weeks before
opening day… and given the price they charge for a room, I’m guessing they
can’t afford to miss opening day!
The whole
hotel complex is made up of warm and cold areas – things like reception and the
“dressing room” (which is where you store your luggage and where the bathrooms
and saunas are located) are in proper wooden buildings. It’s just the
“cold rooms”, the ice bar and the ice-church that are made of ice and kept at
balmy -5 Celsius. The cold part of the hotel has a long central corridor
with three or four branches leading off it with rooms either side. The
most basic rooms have ice walls, a block on which the wooden bed frame sits
with mattress and reindeer skins on top. If you opt for an art suite then
you’re treated to a fantasy icescape, as a team of sculptors are hired to decorate/design
each individual suite. There was a Chinese dragon’s lair and an enchanted
garden grotto with flowers carved into all of the walls. We stayed in a room
filled with crazy snowmen, some of which were made up of balls that looked like
planets. The ice church was also amazing, with a whole altar piece that
looked as though it had been lit from within. I understand that more and
more people are getting married there, but why on earth you’d want to freeze on
your wedding day, I just don’t know!
We did try
to explore the village before our snowmobiling tour but quickly discovered that
there isn’t actually a lot to see… and there aren’t that many places to eat
either. We eventually settled on smoked reindeer and whitebait canapés
and then headed back to the dressing room to don the supplied overalls, snow
boots, balaclavas and layered mittens for the tour. By the time you
manage to get yourself into all the kit you’ve actually worked up a bit of a
sweat and are soon feeling too toasty - if that’s even possible at minus 27
deg! Added to that, the snowmobiles have headed handlebars and
footcovers, which are potentially the most AMAZING invention ever (although
note that the passenger bars don’t heat up nearly as much, which means there’s
even more of an incentive to be in the driver’s seat).
The
snowmobile tour was a lot of fun. We first set out onto the Torne River
before heading into some woodland, where Tony almost had the slowest crash in
the history of all snowmobiling crashes. He then sought to recover some
manly pride by driving the snowmobile nearly twice as fast as I’d been willing
to push it… quite an achievement when the snow was pelting down. Much as
I enjoyed whizzing quickly through the snow, I think my favourite bit was when
we hopped off the snowmobiles and walked out onto a lake in knee high snow and
then just let ourselves fall backwards into drifts and the softest landing
ever. The funniest bit by far was when the guide challenged Tony to a
race back to the vehicles – Tony was doing a great job of keeping up with him…
right up until the point where he face-planted in a particularly deep drift!
When we
made it back to the hotel after the tour, there was time for a half bottle of
champagne in the ice bar before dinner. The bar is a great novelty
experience. As you’d expect from the name, everything is made from ice –
the bar itself (which has bottles of absolute vodka frozen into it), the
seats/tables and even the flute shaped glasses. The one thing that I
could have done without was the cheesy disco lights and Gangnam Style blasting
over the radio (seeing as we were virtually the only patrons in the bar at that
time of night, those elements seemed a little unnecessary!).
Although
Tony adored the food the whole time we were in Sweden, I thought it left a lot
to be desired… especially when I was told that they’d run out of lamb and I was
going to have to settle for moose (or elk) carpaccio and smoked fish. Not
ideal.
I
basically wanted to stay up as late as possible and so avoid the ice room until
the very last minute, and so we drank cheap, nasty red wine and played
Mapominoes until virtually everyone else had gone to bed. When it came to
getting ready for bed, we were told to wear no more than one layer all over on
the basis that it’s your body heat that has to heat up the sleeping bag, and
the bag won’t get very warm if all the heat is trapped in layers and layers of
clothes. So we stripped down to thermals, ski socks, glove liners, a
balaclava and a woolly hat, grabbed our super duper uber-thick sleeping bags,
bit the bullet and ventured into the ice room. It turned into quite a
palaver getting ourselves into bed, but after a lot of giggling and maneuvering
we were finally settled and ready for sleep…
Sleep came
eventually, but in my case at least, it wasn’t for long. Turns out
sleeping in a balaclava can leave you feeling rather claustrophobic in the
middle of the night (probably aided by the fact that I’d put my pillow inside
my sleeping bag so that there was just a tiny hole for my face to stick
through…). I was half way through ripping it all off before I’d woken up
enough to realize that I had two options – either take off the layers around my
face and risk freezing, or talk myself out of hyperventilating and just try to
relax… my desire to stay warm won out in the end and I opted for option
B. Typically, when Tony and I were discussing it the next day he
mentioned that the night in the Ice Hotel had been the best sleep he’d had in
ages – to the extent that he was distinctly unimpressed when we were woken up
with glasses of lingonberry juice first thing in the morning and tried to
convince me that we should snooze in the sub-zero temperatures for a little
while longer. Needless to say he wasn’t very successful in bringing me
round to that idea!
After a
bit of a wander round the facilities taking photos of the frozen, snowy lake
and the husky teams the next morning, there was just time for a quick tat stop
at the hotel’s shop before we were in the back of yet another pricey taxi on
our way to our final destination for the trip – Kiruna.
Now, I’m
not going to lie to you – Kiruna is a shit hole. Especially if, like us,
you happen to be in town on a Sunday afternoon followed by New Years Eve.
Our hotel room wasn’t ready when we arrived so we decided to go exploring for
the afternoon before our evening husky ride… which would have been a grand plan
except for the fact that EVERYWHERE in town was shut. Actually not quite
everywhere – there was a fried chicken place that we passed on our walk in that
had its lights on. But literally every other shop, supermarket,
restaurant and bar had the shutters down and the lights off. The only
other people in the streets were bewildered tourists who, like us, had probably
expected a bit more from this mining town of the north. We passed some
poor Asian tourists trying to check-in at their youth hostel, and watched as
they were turned away at the door because check-in didn’t open until 4pm – i.e.
in a couple of hours. With NOWHERE else in town open, and the snow really
coming down, it’s hard to imagine how they killed the time before check-in!
Fortunately
Kiruna wasn’t a complete write off – we had a brilliant dog sled trip with
Fabio and a couple of girls from New York… still no northern lights, but we did
get to hang out with playful puppies who managed to tackle Tony to the ground
and run off with his woollen hat just as we were getting ready to head
home. We also had a couple of lovely afternoons and evenings watching
movies and drinking duty free that we kept cold in a bucket of snow in the
bathroom. It was definitely the most low-key New Years that I’ve had in a
while… so much so that it was only when fireworks started going off outside
that we realized we were now in 2013! Given our location it seemed only
fitting to see in the new year with Abba’s “Happy New Year” as we watched
people in the car park outside struggling to light a Chinese paper lantern
before Tony stripped down to his undies and jumped into a giant drift while I
filmed his escapade for posterity!
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