I never have been up that far north and even though I was prepared, it was freaking cold. But in short, it was a fantastic trip. I had a lot of fun. I went with 4 other friends from Uppsala and Los Angeles respectively. We started our trip by train from Uppsala (40 min. from Stockholm) and went for 16hrs straight north, according to google maps 1 171 km. It’s more or less as far north as northern Alaska.
In Kiruna my first impression was the noise the snow made, when walked on. I’ve never been in such a cold environment before and therefore also not such a dry climate. The snow is incredibly loud at temperatures around -20°C. And you can’t make any snowballs out of it, definitely to dry.
Over the weekend we were there, Kiruna had the so-called Snow-Festival going on. This is obviously known for its ice statues. The first thing, crossed our way was a meeting of Husky-dog owners of northern Sweden. Real ones, not ice-sculptures. The next thing was a big ramp, right outside of the hotel, were you could watch some snowboarders perform their tricks. No ice-sculptures so far. This was all on the way to the hotel, which was right downtown (Kiruna is not to big) were all the action was going on. After checking in and putting on some layers (I perfected the onion-look: long underpants, jeans, snowboard pants, 3 pairs of socks, ugg boots, 3 sweater, head, hoodie from the sweater, jacket+hoodie, 2 gloves; the everyday look to survive), we checked out the town (and still couldn’t find the ice sculptures, but some ice-blocks).
We stayed in total three nights, plus two nights on the train. The second we went 20 minutes east to a village called Jukkasjärvi. There is the ice hotel (icehotel.com) situated. We spent the whole afternoon there. The temperature in the hotel, made of ice and snow was rather tropic, compared to outside. With just -5°C we took a drink out of ice glasses at the ice-bar. We were probably the attraction of the day there because we rocked the dance floor at 2pm (with our multiple layers of cloth, we video taped it, I’ll put it online). We could also look at all the rooms. The hotel is open to the public until 6. My favorite room had a slide made of ice it. You could slide quite well on it. I want that here in my room too.
The next day we’ve been cross-country skiing and snowshoeing in the morning. It was my first time on skis and the first track I hit was the world cup trail ;). It wasn’t that hard, but getting up the hills was kind of like two steps ahead, one step back. I would always slide back downhill. I need some training in that. And I shouldn’t forget my faceplant, when I couldn’t see where the trail was leading to. A nice snow bath with full speed and skis heading in all directions, but yep it was fun.
During the afternoon we went mining. Ok not directly, just on a tour to the world’s biggest (iron-ore) mine. This mine you can see from nearly every angle from the town and is the reason why this town exists. 200 years ago you could just find Sami-people (the indigenous inhabiting northern Sweden, Norway and Finland, known for reindeer herding). The mine is slowly undermining the town that it has to be moved somewhere else. The tour we’ve taken was pretty interesting. Especially as I now, through my current MSc program got some background in Natural Resource Management that I was wondering the whole time of the impacts on the environment and the culture of the Sami. This though wasn’t really considered during the tour, what a surprise.
At night we went snowshoeing again as the sky was pretty clear and we were hoping for Northern Lights. After a quite tough walk (especially considering the work out we already had in the morning) we tried to get away from the city lights. At a good spot facing north, we waited till we nearly frozen to the ground they suddenly appeared “the cloud, it’s moving” “this is no cloud it’s moving to fast and its green”. Yep, we had our northern lights. They weren’t as spectacular as they are on the pictures, but a green shimmer on the night sky I could see. But the next time I want a car with park heating.
About the ice sculptures; I found two (2). For a whole festival was that a bit sparse, but one night we got some snow-mobile action instead, including backflip and all that stuff like this, couldn’t find one from this year, so this is from 2008, but it was mostely like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuPdkdghAFI&feature=related.
And I shouldn’t forget to tell about the reindeer race we’ve seen. I always imagined them to be bigger. They always seem so big with Santa and in the freezer in the super market you can’t guess the size.
I think my general résumé of the trip is that it was great but I definitely didn’t become a greater fan of the cold. I always wanted to take an Arctic trip, preferably by ship. I really have to think twice about that plan.
I hope I could give a little bit of an impression what happened the last days. The photos I took were in the old-school way on a film which needs to be revealed and this is not done yet. I hope I get the other pics soon and will upload them.
In less than two weeks I’ll go on a field trip to an area two hours from here (Darlana) where they have to struggle with moose and wolves. I’ll send the next report from there.
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