Swedish Parker!

I absolutely had to show my parents around my favourite part of Sweden – Abisko.

(Swedish Lapland! photo album on flickr)

Lying in the middle of Swedish Lapland, it’s apparently both Sweden’s driest and sunniest place. Going by the amazing weather we had I’m not surprised (that being said, it did get down to -25 at one point, and rarely back up above -10… I think the sun forgets how to emit warmth by the time it gets to this far northern part of the world).

Pictures really don’t do this incredible place justice. But I’ll try anyway.

After leaving Kiruna we drove to Abisko with a slight detour through Norway, which is only half an hour down the road:

Then we grabbed packs (containing reindeer skins and tiny, tiny little fishing rods…) to go ice fishing!

If you bury your head under a skin you can see right down the hole as the fish lunch on your bait. Didn’t end up catching anything (the ones we did hook were too big to pull out of the holes in the ice…), but a pretty cool experience (no pun intended lol).

Spent a day snowboarding and skiing just down the road at Björkliden:

I hadn’t snowboarded in two and a half years, and Dad hadn’t skied in over 20, but we managed to pick it all back up pretty quickly. The weather was so good that it took me all day to notice we were the only ones on the mountain not wearing ski masks..

Saw more Northern Lights, snowboarded off-piste down Noulja (the deceptively tough mountain that I only managed to get halfway up the last time I was in Abisko – fortunately the chairlift is now running..), explored the frozen world of Lake Torneträsk, ate cloudberries, thought I was suffering mild frostbite as I tried to walk across Torneträsk facing into 70k/hr wind, spent 38 more hours on the Stockholm to Narvik train, took at least 50 photos of the sun shining like a star (see above & below), and drank far, far too much wine.

(loads more pics on flickr)

As it’s been Stockholm’s mildest Winter for 250 years, Penny, Matyas (both visiting from Aus) and I decided to head to the far North of the country for an authentic Swedish experience.

The 1500km, 19 hour train ride starts at Central Station in Stockholm – one of the most crowded places in Sweden – and ends when you get off at the tiny little Abisko Turiststation stop – one of the least crowded places.

View Larger Map

19 hours on a train sounds harsh, but when you have a bed, plus a cask of red wine to keep you occupied, it actually goes quite fast.

Because it’s so dark up here in Winter, the season wasn’t opening for another three weeks. Which meant we were just about the only tourists staying there.

I first came to Abisko over two years ago, camping for just one night during Summer but instantly falling in love with the place.

And I could have happily stayed here all Winter, but in just five days we still managed to fit in a lot. The highlights being:

1. NORTHERN LIGHTS

Aurora Borealis – the ONE thing I was determined to see while I was in the North.

Fortunately the weather gods were smiling and we had two or three nights of amazing light shows.

I had no real idea what to expect, except something green. But I was blown away. The lights actually move really quickly across the sky. It looks like a flowing river, or sand being swept across a beach, twinkling and swirling along the way with small tints of red and yellow.

We all stood there with our heads tilted straight up – in the pitch black and at about minus 15 degrees – but simply spellbound by the sight.

There is literally no point trying to describe how exceptionally beautiful the Northern Lights are. Nor do pictures do them any justice. It’s something you really have to see in real life to appreciate.

2. HUSKIES

We assumed this would be totally out of our price-range, but incredibly this little youth hostel down the road doubled as a dog-sledding base, so for less than $200 each (that really is quite cheap… especially in Sweden) we got to spend four hours with the coolest dogs I’d ever seen.

Even better, it’s hands-on right from the start. You have to take drag the huskies – barking violently at each other and jumping around like dogs possessed – from their kennels over to the sleds, clipping them in to form very precise teams (apparently if they don’t get along with each other it’s chaos..).

We each got our own sled to drive, with four dogs pulling each one. And as it was the off-season there was just the three of us, some old Swedish guy, and our guide.

After struggling to keep the dogs at bay in the preparation area (you’ve really gotta jam the brake in to stop them running off of their own accord – the huskies have some pretty awesome power in them), we were off.

I almost stacked it in the first 30 seconds, but after a few minutes started getting the hang of it.

We headed straight off into the stunning Abisko National Park, reaching 12 or 13k’s into the wilderness before turning around and heading back via a frozen river.

I had a few more near-crashes – it’s hard to stay focussed when you’re the only few people for miles and miles, surrounded by mountains, frozen rivers and snowy-white trees. Fortunately the dogs just follow the sled in front, so except for a few sharp corners, only our guide had to worry about stearing in the right direction.

This video highlights how easy it is to nearly stack it when you’re not concentrating (or when you’re trying to drive one-handed…).

[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=OAteUrOS_n4[/youtube]

3. Avalanches

Abisko is set at the foot of an 1100-meter peak. Nothing too crazy, a fairly safe looking mountain with a lone ski-lift running up it. But of course it’s the off-season, so the lift just sits there, mockingly-still, as you take the only route to the top – trekking straight up the slalom slope.

I’d brought my friend’s snowboard along with me and figured it couldn’t be too hard to just walk up to the top in a couple of hours and snowboard back down.

We met a few locals at the pub, the night before we planned to ascent the mountain, and a couple of them turned out to be avalanche inspectors who told us our plans were fairly safe, though just “walking up in your boots” as I had proposed, was impossibly optimistic. They very wisely recommended we hire snow-shoes and walking poles.

So the next morning we grabbed the gear and set off up the mountain.

Before the climb – all smiles!

I quickly took on the role of Sherpa Tenzing, leading the way with backpack, snowboard and two plastic sleds strapped to my shoulders, urging on the lazy, glory-seeking Edmund Hillary – Penny and Matyas – as we trudged through the thick powder (they weren’t really lazy at all, but it was fun to roleplay an over-enthusiastic Nepalese sherpa pretending to climb Everest).

Even with the snow-shoes it was bloody hard work, and in about two hours we’d only made it just over halfway up.

I should point out that we were the only people trying to climb the mountain that day, so we were counting on nothing going wrong…

We were still confident of reaching the summit, until all of a sudden – quite literally out of nowhere – a section of snow directly in front of us, probably 50 metres across, 15 metres up and 1 meter thick, made a chilling cracking noise, split into a heap of huge ice blocks, and started rolling down.

Fortunately it didn’t pick up too much momentum and stopped after moving four or five metres. But it was still enough to knock Penny off her feet and push me a couple of metres backwards – not to mention scaring the absolute f#%k out of us – so after we regained our composure and felt it was safe enough to move, we decided to head straight back down the mountain.

We took in the spectacular scenery of frozen Lake Torneträsk and the surrounding mountain ranges, before I attempted to snowboard down, and Penny and Matyas attempted to ride the plastic, children’s sleds to the bottom (if only the mountain guides we met the night before could have seen us…).

While we rested at the base, the avalanche inspectors we’d talked to the day before came skiing back down from the top. We told them what happened and they seemed quite pleased we were all safe – apparently there’d been a 600-meter avalanche further up the mountain a few hours earlier.

As it happened, the conditions had suddenly become very dangerous overnight – they felt a little bad for telling us it would be easy to climb and quickly added we should stay well away from the mountain for the next few days…

After the climb – not quite as many smiles…

You get an idea how shaken I was from the experience when you see how wobbly my camera work was right after the mini-avalanche…

[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=FAIdMld_qhY[/youtube]

4. Ice

On one side of our cabins was the mountain, on the other side was a 10 kilometre wide, 30 kilometre long frozen lake.

We were advised it was totally safe, as the ice was 10-20 cm thick (although that really didn’t sound all that solid to me…).

We were keen to reach an island about 1500 meters from the shore, but by the time we got organised it was nearing the 3pm sunset. Oblivious to any possible danger we set off anyway, reaching the island (our halfway point…) in near total darkness.

After a ceremonial Grey Goose photo-shoot and round of shots on the ice…

(the World’s Finest Vodka)

… we followed the lights of our cabins back to the other side.

I have to admit I was quite simply shit-scared heading back. As it was so cold the ice was rapidly freezing underneath, and as it did it sent freaky sounding noise waves back and forth from one side of the lake to the other. It was as if someone was sending SONAR signals beneath our feet.

To make it worse, every now and then you would hear the ice crack as the pressure became too great. Each time it did I quickly ran (as fast as I could on the VERY slippery ice) in the opposite direction.

The next day we took a walk in the morning and inspected the damage caused by the crazy noise waves.

You couldn’t walk five metres without seeing a giant crack or faultline running through the ice. And it wasn’t until I saw snowmobiles hooning across the lake that I realised it was actually safe.

—–

After plenty of adrenaline-rushing adventures, two bottles of vodka, two casks of wine, a bottle of rum and not too many other people anywhere nearby, we were all beginning to suffer from Cabin Fever. So it’s probably a good thing that after five nights it was time to head back.

Penny and Matyas took a three-day detour back to Stockholm, whereas I headed straight home on the 19 hour train, sleeping most of the way after an exhausting week in the incredible Far North of Sweden…

If you’re ever taking a near 24-hour journey on an overnight train, then pay the extra 30% and get a sleeper car. Although my thriftiness/sore back mean I may never know for sure, I’m fairly confident it would be worth it. (see the full photo album @ flickr)

Depart: Stockholm 16:58
Arrive: Narvik 13:25 (+1 day)

I’ve come to the North – the land of the Midnight Sun – to visit some good friends I studied with in Australia.

Why I took a seat in the 2nd-class carriage over a comfortable bed in the sleeper car just to save $50 I will simply never know.

15 hours into the trip I think I’d managed just a few hours of awkward sleep, but by this time we were right up in the Nordic countryside and the stunning scenery was keeping me wide-awake.

To get an idea just how far North I went, this map shows pretty match the exact route the train took.

Sweden is a very long country…