Blogs from Kiruna, Norrbotten County, Sweden, Europe

Just tagged my second high point in Scandinavia (first in Iceland way back in 2011), Kebnekaise in Sweden, the name derived from the native Sami Giebmegáisi, i.e., "Cauldron Crest." I don't know about any cauldron on the summit but the weather on the trek was boiling as Sweden is in the midst of its hottest summer in 250 years. Aside from the mountain, I spent 4 days in Stockholm alternating between sightseeing and gorging myself senseless at all you can eat Chinese food and schwanky hotel breakfast buffets partly as a remedy to overcome the worst jet lag I've ever experienced and partly as a matter of economics as going out is expensive here. $US ≈ 8.8 Swedish Kroner (SEK) KebnekaiseObjective numero uno during one month in Scandinavia. The mountain is only 6,886' ASL but the ... read more

Space exploration, iron mining and aurora watching A few weeks ago I, Ake that is, had the chance to go on a business trip to the town Kiruna in northern Sweden. The main purpose was to visit a few research centres. But I also managed to squeeze in a bit of sightseeing as a bonus. Actually visiting those research centres was not only very educating and informative but also very fun. So the entire visit in Kiruna was good and enjoyable. Kiruna has around 20,000 inhabitants and is situated in the far north of Sweden. Kiruna once held an unexpected record. For a while it was considered to be the largest town in the world, largest when it comes to the area it covered. Most of that area was of course wilderness. The city limits were ... read more

I just experienced one of the best trips of my life. One week in Norwegian and Swedish Lapland with a bunch of lifelong friends. You can’t ask for any more than that. Day 1 Bianca, Kiri, Corrie, Autumn, Aaron and I looking lovely, fresh and excited met at Lund Station around midday to begin the journey. Autumn had Burger King and Aaron had Subway which made me jealous as I had packed banana sandwiches. We eventually boarded the first train of the trip to Stockholm and it was an absolutely beautiful ride. There turned out to be several of these transfers, but we didn’t really care because we were so excited and I heard the most hilarious story in the world: Once Bianca’s friend was dog sitting for her cousin. The dog was very ... read more

So here we are again, After we left Abisko national park we kept on driving as close to Lulea as possible. On our way down South we stopped in Kiruna about 100km from Abisko national park, an industrial town known for its iron ore. It has a very recognizable church completly built out of wood. We had a look in town and the senior year of secondary school were celebrating their graduation in a very peculiar way. Every class got his own truck with banners, they were drinking alcohol, shouting stuff, very amusing. We bought some postcards and returned to our car. Just outside Kiruna we found a sign towards the ice hotel that is built there every winter. We lost the sign but we found a very quiet place to sit and have some lunch ... read more

Continuing on from the previous blog. Every evening we took a walk to the north side of Kiruna in the hope of seeing the Northern lights and one night we got to see this clearly and we couldn’t believe our eyes. They were really strong green and really close to us, and also this time we could see red dancing along with the green. We headed right into the forest so that the city lights weren’t disturbing to take pictures. We think that we were really lucky to see this phenomena with own eyes – it was cold, clear night with many stars. Also this was the time when we got to see true husky’s, a breeder was taking four for a walk where we were sitting in the snow and got to learn quite a ... read more