Lapland - An Arctic Adventure

This amazing picture was taken by my friend Lauren.

I don't even know where or how to begin telling you about the adventure that I just had the opportunity to experience. I have a feeling that words can only fail me. Last Wednesday, 8 other international students (2 Americans, 2 Germans, 2 Finns, a S. Korean, and a Canadian) and I left Karlstad for Kiruna: one of the northern most cities in Sweden. We had to take a three hour train ride to Stockholm and then we took an hour and a half plane ride to the beautiful Kiruna. We stayed in a hostel called Yellow House. It was cheap, close to the city, and not too terribly gross, but it had a wicked smell to it :-S

The first night that we were in Kiruna, we wanted to see the northern lights. So we had to walk as far north as we could to get out of the city and try to get to the highest point possible. Well, we walked for a while, in some pretty deep snow. If you stayed on the hard packed down snow you were fine, but when you got off the path into the soft stuff, the snow could have easily been up to your knees and even higher. After we reached a point where the land kind of ran out, we sat and waited to see if we could see anything. We ended up seeing a whitish cloud that kind of had a tent of green to it. Yes! We could see the northern lights! They weren't even that strong, but it was enough just to catch a glimpse of them to make us excited! #20 on my list of things to do and see: check!

Thursday, we went to explore the "city." When I say city, that might be streching it a bit. Kiruna is a pretty small town. It doesnt take too long to walk from one side to the other. So we went wondering around, seeing the sights. The first place we went to was Kiruna Kyrka.

Not the best picture of the church, but at least you can see it. It was very pretty and the inside was incredible. It was built around 1910 and in 2001 it was voted as Sweden's best building.

Here is the inside of the church. It is almost completely made of wood and you can smell the wood scent when you walk in.

After the church, we found possibly the best thing in Kiruna: Cafe Safari. It was a nice atmosphere and they had the best sandwiches, hot chocolate, desserts, etc. We actually went twice on Thursday and I think 2 more times while we were there. It was nice to go inside the cafe to get warmed up. The high temperature was around 15 F and the lowest it got was -13F.

Thursday night, we went on a northern light snow mobile excursion. This night, it was -13F. Thankfully they gave us really thick clothes to wear. The trip lasted about 4 hours, from 7 - 11pm. We rode the snowmobiles for a little while until there were absolutely no lights visible other than the headlights to the snowmobiles. We stopped in the middle of no where and turned all the snowmobiles off and it was completely dark and silent. Never in my life I have seen a sky like what we saw. Every star was out and we felt so close to the stars, like we were on top of the world. It didn't even seem real, it felt like we were in a planetarium. After a few minutes of taking it all in, we had to keep driving to get to the little cabin where we ate dinner. It was great getting to the cabin and being able to sit around a fire considering how cold it was outside. The dinner we ate was made over the fire. We had a reindeer stew (i guess thats what you could call it) there was reindeer meat, potatoes, and some kind of sauce together, to drink we had lingonberry juice, for dessert we had coffee and cloud berries. After dinner, we went back outside to watch for the northern lights. We got to see them again! This night, they were stronger and more green. It was amazing standing there just watching them move around and grow stronger and weaker. The picture above, was what we were able to see. However, I didnt know this before I went, but a good camera is able to pick up more of the northern lights than one's eyes can actually see. Eventually we had to leave, but on the drive back, we stopped back in the middle of no where. The northern lights were still out. There were actually 2 sets. One reached across the sky like a green rainbow and underneath it was a little glob of green. unbelievable!

Friday was another incredible day! We went dogsledding :-) The dogs were soooo cute! They all wanted to get out and play and run around. We took two dog sleds and ten dogs pulled each sled. On one sled there were 3 people and the dog sled driver (musher?) and on the other there were 4 and the driver. The dogs were so well trained and just did their thing: run. Apparently ten dogs are able to pull a mini van, so pulling 5 of us was no problem for the dogs. Sometimes we would get to go down hill and it felt like we were flying. We would hit bumps and the sled would bounce up in the air!!! It was a bit of a rush! Here is a little clip of what we got to experience!

We stopped at a Sami tent for a warm drink and a snack. We thought that when the break was over, we would get back on the dog sled and go back to the starting place. Well, we were wrong. Some how we didnt get all of the details about what was going on, but it worked out just fine! We traded with another group and they rode the dogsleds and we rode snow mobiles again. It was fun though! The night before we rode when it was dark out, this time we rode when it was daylight out and it was soo pretty! The sun was breaking through and everything was white and sparkling from the sunlight and snow!Taken while we were snowmobiling. It was a pretty day!

On Saturday, we took a thirty minute bus ride to the Ice Hotel and Ice Church. This was rediculously crazy what people can do with some ice and snow! Our tour guide said that 90% of the hotel is water. All of the resources used to make the Ice Hotel come from the Torne River. When the hotel and church start to melt, all of it goes right back into the Torne River. It is such a clean river that you can drink directly from it. This is also the reason that the ice is so clean and see through in the hotel and church. Speaking of the church, here is a picture. There are usually about 150 weddings here every year. I think it might be a little cold!

Each room in the hotel has a different theme. One room was called "Getting Cold Feet" and it had a snow/ice sculpture of a foot in a high heel. Another room was called "Get Bad" and it had a sculpted naked lady. It was a lot of fun wandering in and out of the rooms, seeing the different themes. We also went for a walk on the frozed Torne River to get to another turist attraction. We walked to another church, Jukkasjärvi kyrka. It is over 400 years old! It wasnt as amazing as the Kiruna church, but it was interesting to see a church with such a long history!

Well, to put it simply, this trip was unforgetable. amazing. once in a lifetime. It didnt really sink in until we were snowmobiling that we were north of the arctic circle we were getting to see and do so many wonderful things and Im so glad I got to experience it with such wonderful people! We had so much fun just hanging out, doing the turisty stuff, and laughing way too much! So, if any one is even just thinking about going to Lapland. Do it! I can guarantee there will be no regrets! :-)

If you want to see more pictures of Lapland or the Ice Hotel, just click on the links!

PS: My Swedish teacher pointed out that I made a terrible mistake in translating the birthday song in the post Ice Skating, Birthday Party, and Amazing Weather. Apparently, in Swedish the word shoot and push are the same. So I definitely used the word shoot, when I should I have used push. So if you really want to see the correct lyrics, just click on the link above. :-)