Lapland and the High Coast with Lill and her squad: Tony, Jim, Rick, Baby, Marita. Nice!
September 1
I flew over to Stockholm yesterday to meet up with Ingalill and her compatriots for four nights visiting the Swedish part of Lapland.
The Lapp people are nomadic and live above the Arctic Circle in parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia. I hope to learn more about them.
Good night in a very cool hotel steps from the terminal gates in the Stockholm airport, when I had a relaxing evening and then met the gang for dinner.
Our morning flight to Kiruna was uneventful and here we are in the airport, me Not getting the car! I am just a tag-along here and it’s going to be FUN.
Lill, Jim, Rick, Baby
We settled into our very cool house and then hit the road for a visit to an abandoned ski lift area. A sunbather! It was probably around 55 degrees, a heat wave in Kiruna.
Jim, Rick, and I went for a walk while Tony and Lill went to the police station in an effort to move forward the resolution of Lill’s Big Problem. She got pickpocketed back in Stockholm and lost both her Swedish and her US passport. It could happen to anyone and, so selfishly, I’m just happy it wasn’t me!
This is an historic church. We’ll go inside another day and I’ll look up the details then.
Some delightful Swedish tourists who told us some information about the church.
This was a wooded stroll in a plot of forest just around the church and two blocks from our house.
Then there was the arrival of Marita, grocery shopping, and dinner. And tomorrow we have a big day planned including a visit to the Ice Hotel.
September 2
Jukkasjarvi Church, the oldest wooden church in Lapland..
A brightly colored altar piece depicts the coming together of traditional Sami and Christian traditions.
Sami Siida Visitor Center, where you can eat Sami food and buy Sami handicrafts and see a very pretend Sami family compound.
The Sami flag. More to tell about the Sami people later. ((Our flight is at 6AM, In The Morning, so up at 4:15AM.))
We came to the Ice Hotel for a tour. This is the complex where they cut and store the blocks of ice from the river and also there are wooden cabins by the river and a small wooden hotel to accommodate guests who have had it with sleeping in the Ice Hotel.
Even after the ‘real’ Ice Hotel melts “there is still a spectacular exhibition of ice sculptures located in a solar powered and turf covered cold room on the riverbank.”
This Ice Hotel is also open for visitors.
What makes both the year-round and the winter Ice Hotel so special are the art rooms – each room designed and built by a different artist.
The temperature remains at a constant -6c, ponchos provided. I was entirely comfortable the whole time and can easily imagine snuggling down in one of the rooms, but I can also easily imagine that one night would be quite enough.
…and another one. We all loved it. In the winter the hotel also has many plain rooms since it is expensive to stay at the Ice Hotel although not as expensive as I at first thought. You can stay for $300-1000 per night.
No problem figuring out how to run a cash register at the Ice Bar where your beverage comes in a hand carved Ice Glass.
Baby, Ingalill, Tony, Jim, Marita, Rick, me
Ingalill and Tony live across the street from where Brigitte and Knut used to live and that’s how I met them. Marita is Lill’s best friend from elementary school in Sweden. Jim and Lill worked together for years and Lill and Tony and Jim and Rick have travelled together often. Baby is Jim’s sister.
…to some of Sweden’s highest mountains and a stop on the Kungsleden (Kings Trail).
These guys had just come down after several days on the trail. I think they did the whole King’s Trail and they were Very Happy.
The guidebook says there should be a small Sami village (Sami are the Laplanders of this area) but we found just a few buildings for backpackers.
There was supposed to be a Sami restaurant too but the woman at the information desk said we’d have to walk one and a half hours to get there. In winter a snow cat could take us but in summer you have to walk. So no Sami lunch for us!
On the drive home one or another of us cried out Look! Look! so many times until we had to stop stopping.
REINDEER. Not how I pictured it, that they would be like deer by the side of the road, but still, I’m Happy.
September 3
In the small woods surrounding Kiruna Church we find this beautiful stone wall..
A wooden church in the shape of a Sami goahti, or tent. The architect was Gustav Wickman, it was completed in 1912 and donated by the LKAB Mining company to the people of Kiruna.
Those golden statues around the outside at second floor level are said to represent a different state of mind – from shyness and sadness to love and despair.
internet.
“In 2001, Kiruna Church was voted the most popular pre-1950 building in Sweden, in a country-wide poll conducted by the Swedish Travelling Exhibitions, a government agency connected to the Ministry of Culture. It is considered to be “the Shrine of the Nomadic people.””
You can see the altar below on the left, in the Art Nouveau style, the altar and the painting famously created by Prince Eugen, Duke of Närke.
I was dying to meet an actual Sami person so I asked this woman at a shop, where do the Sami people live around here. She said “Here’s one, it’s me,” although she was quick to point out she was “a half-Sami girl”. She was very generous with her time and I was so happy we got to chat.
I saw this image in many forms, a moose with his head in the ground. I have no idea what this is meant to represent.
Two old guys chatting in Sweden. I understand this is common. These guys could have been friends their entire lives but they would still sit six feet apart to visit.
This afternoon we toured the Kiruna Mine, the largest and most modern underground iron ore mine in the world. The mine is owned by Luossavaara-Kiirunavaara AB (LKAB), a large Swedish mining company.
And Luossavaara-Kiirunavaara AB (LKAB) is 100% owned by the Swedish government, so really, isn’t the mine owned by the government.
Because the mine is so rich in iron ore and there is so much more to be had, the town is sinking and it is worth it to the government to pay to move much of the town.
The Guardian wrote a good article about the town, the mine, and the move so you can copy-paste this link if you’re interested:
..to write about the mine since the Guardian article is excellent..
Lill, me, Rick, Baby, Jim, Marita, Tony
We were obsessed with trying to catch the Northern Lights although there was little chance. Still, we followed this website compulsively. You can copy-paste this link and follow along for yourself.
https://services.swpc.noaa.gov/images/aurora-forecast-northern-hemisphere.jpg
And despite the super-slim odds, we went out thinking who knows, it could happen. It didn’t.
September 4
Today’s adventure: Abisko National Park, about an hour north of Kiruna and home to the Abisko Scientific Research Station and the beginning of The King’s Trail.
Red wood buildings with white trim is the predominant style all over Sweden.
I snapped this from the car window as we were leaving because I realized none of my pictures had the landmark image of Abisko National Park.
Then I decided to continue on, to walk to the lake. The boardwalk went on for a short distance on those two boards..
..and then the boardwalk led to a groomed trail the rest of the way.
In this park and in all the others too, the trails are nicely marked.
I met up with Lill and Marita here and we enjoyed the views. There was a sauna house to the left of this picture but it was locked. What a perfect place for a sauna and then a jump into an icy lake.
We are seven travelers and the acquisition and consumption of food has fallen into a routine.
For breakfast we have cereals with milk or yogurt, fruit, bread, crackers, etc with cheese and cold cuts, and sliced tomatoes and sliced cucumbers.
For lunch we have sandwiches or left-overs, I’m having a hard time remembering it all.
For dinner we’ve had a restaurant meal, take-away pizza, take-away Thai, spaghetti and meat sauce, and chicken curry.
It’s been so smooth I’m mightily impressed.
Back at the house, these four nights have been so comfortable, we had a good sized eat-in kitchen and a living room big enough for everyone to play games.
Tony, Jim, Lill, Rick, Baby, Marita
September 5
We’re all up before dawn to get to the airport to fly to Umeå and then drive to our next stay, 2 nights on the High Coast along the Baltic.
It was about an hour drive to our cabin named Forest Guardian, at Hyndtjärn 104 – 870 30 Nordingrå.
It rained for a while and then it stopped which was the pattern during much of my stay in Sweden, rain a while and then stop.
Salsaker is involved too?
Flyg Kiruna till Umeå, kör Umeå till Salsaker, kör Salsaker till Sundsvall, tåg Sundsvall till Eslöv?
The shopping crew headed out for groceries, an activity in which I never participated and about which I feel a little guilty, but apparently not that guilty because I basically don’t care what people buy and my presence would amount to Too Many Cooks.
Then it was time for a stroll around the ‘hood.
That’s either a lake or a river or a finger of the Baltic.
You can’t tell so much from this picture but we were going down a pretty steep hill for a pretty long time, and this was after a previous leg of steep up and back down.
Those are bee hives and I would have for sure bought some honey but they were closed.
At this point I thought prudence should prevail and I would turn back knowing what was in store for me to get back up that hill.
Bye all! Bye Jim, Rick, Lill, Tony, Marita.
And then they found a short cut back and didn’t have to go up that hill!
This reminded me that I didn’t take any pictures of the daisies up in Lapland, of which there were many.
On my way back I went down a short path to catch this photo of More red buildings with white trim.
September 6
Today I climbed a mountain!
Super thanks to everyone else who let me tag along and special super thanks to Rick who hung back with me on the way down, who was always there to offer a steadying hand.
I found this on the map = Skulebergets naturreservat, Höga Kusten Upplev världsarvet, Länsstyrelsen Västernorrland
..and expanses of open rock.
Notice the blue dots. I showed some path markers on another day too. You can see how there’s a mark on both sides of a corner so you could see them coming up and going down.
There’s a Where’s Waldo white and red flag and behind it a blue dot on a tree. The flags appeared often when you needed them most.
So Many Babies. I could hardly believe it, and that’s GRANDMA carrying the baby up the mountain.
The goal is in sight!
I didn’t take any more pictures until I was practically down. I guess I just wanted to preserve my strength?!
