Letters from 68 degrees, Kiruna

22nd June, 2025

Letters from 68 degrees has been about Kiruna. It’s been from our perspective, Rolf’s and mine, but almost always looking out at what was around us, rather than focussing on ourselves, though it has included us reflecting on how the experience has affected us. Writing it enabled us to pay attention to what we were learning, and we’ve learnt a lot.

We came to Kiruna eighteen years ago, wanting to experience the extremes of darkness and light. We rented an unfurnished flat (unseen) for six months, and drove up from England with only the basics in the car. We thought we might not last the whole six months, but we stayed for a year and a half. In the end, responsibilities back in the UK, and a lack of local contacts – work or otherwise – made it seem the right decision to leave. After that we missed Kiruna and sometimes wondered if we might find a way to get back. Three years later we were here on holiday and bought this house. It wasn’t a logical decision, and it was definitely a risk.

We only thought of running a bed and breakfast after we’d bought the house, and we weren’t at all confident we’d be able to do it. After a slow start it took off and then we were almost fully booked in the winter months. Having guests from all over the world was challenging and stimulating, and was a big part of our Kiruna experience. These have been some of the happiest years of our lives.

I wrote the following story, a work of fiction, a few years ago. It’s about what it feels like to be letting go of familiar things and not knowing what’s round the corner. It’s also about facing that future with enthusiasm, which we hope we will do.

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The Road Ahead

Most people in town are asleep. If they can’t sleep (are up, looking at their phones) they hear a low rumble, then check the time. It’s nearly two in the morning. They feel a slight movement underground, a barely perceptible shake in the foundations.

Some of the buildings nearby are empty, and some streets are entirely unoccupied, with fences cutting them off from the rest of town. Threatened by collapsing ground, people have been moved on, to other streets further away, and then carried on with their lives. This town is on the move.

Soft yellow light pushes its way round from behind the humped shape of the mine, slants across the rooftops, creeps round the edges of black-out blinds. The one, long, relentless day of summer – lasting for many weeks – will soon begin.

***

Thomas is on the morning shift. His alarm goes off at four thirty and it only takes him ten minutes to get out the door. Most of that time is spent pulling on his coat and boots. The sun is shining through a mist, but it’s ten degrees below.

He drives slowly past the old road to the mine, now closed off because of unsafe ground. He always wants to drive down that road, the old way, the road used for eighty years. This new road doesn’t feel right, it feels like a side track. At the office he lets himself in with the code, leaves his coat and boots in the changing room and takes the lift up to his office on the seventh floor.

‘Alright?’ he says, sitting down to face the screen.

‘Right,’ Gunnar replies, without looking up.

‘See the hockey?’

‘Yeah,’ replies Gunnar.

Thomas’ machine is in a middle cavity, one thousand three hundred metres underground. It was checked last night for faults and got the all clear. It’s newly positioned and he has two fans of ten drilling holes to complete this morning. On the screen there’s a green outline of his machine underground, like a child’s drawing of an animal. Above the animal a fan of thin red lines reach out into the iron ore. These are his target holes. With his joy stick he lines them up with another figure of blue lines, waiting for confirmation of positioning. His screen tells him everything’s ready. He starts drilling and ten blue lines begin to throb in front of him.

***

‘Watch what you’re doing with that!’

Thomas’ son Sean is swinging the remote around on a wire above his head in their living room. Sean’s dumper truck careers over the floor and crashes into a wall. Sean picks up the joy stick, squats in front of the screen and disappears into another world.

Thomas leans back against the worktop and stares at the fridge door. Then he opens it, pulls out a can, flips it open.

***

In another street, Karin goes to the bathroom to wash. She steps around the packets lying on the floor, careful not to trip over. Her gaze shifts from a face in the mirror to five identical pink bottles on the shelf over the sink. She combs her hair (is that why she came in here?) and returns to the kitchen.

She sits at the table to write a list. She tries to think what it is she wants to buy. (Some fish, yes, potatoes, salt, milk.) As she writes she begins to feel dizzy. She knows the feeling well (breathe deeply, it will pass). Last night it happened in bed. Her book just fell out of her hand. She’d wanted to pick it up but her arm wouldn’t stretch out to it. She lay there, willing her arm to move, but it wouldn’t. Then it was two hours later. There was the book, still on the floor. She stared at it for a while, lying there. Then she leaned out of the bed, picked it up and carried on reading.

There aren’t many people in the restaurant at this time in the evening – just some young lads over by the window, and a woman on her own in the other corner. Thomas takes a minute to recognise the woman; it’s Karin. She’s aged. He remembers her coming to meet his old work colleague, Mikku, after a shift. It must be eight years since Mikku died of a heart attack, at sixty. Yeah, shit happens.

He smiles in Karin’s direction but she doesn’t seem to recognise him. The lads begin flicking sugar at each other. Thomas notices Karin is repeatedly moving a salt cellar from one side of the table to the other. He watches her, trying to understand what she’s doing.

She isn’t sure about the spaghetti. She’d wanted something else, but couldn’t remember what it was called, so she got spaghetti. While she’s eating the spaghetti she notices she can’t see so well, the side of her face hurts. She can’t pick up the salt on the table. She doesn’t want anyone to know, so she just sits there, and waits.

After about twenty minutes things come back into focus. She reaches out and finds she can move the salt. So she moves it again, and again, just to be sure. The girl in the pizza place orders a taxi for her. Karin says she doesn’t need a taxi. She gets into the taxi anyhow (the girl insists) and the driver asks for her address. She can’t remember the street name, so she says, ‘Oh don’t you worry about that, I’ll tell you how to drive there.’

***

Thomas steps into the road and turns right towards a tall wire fence. There’s a house behind the fence, boarded up now, with a distant view of where the land has collapsed ahead. You can’t see it from the road, but if you climb up the hill you can see it all – roads coming to an abrupt end and a vast, dusty pit.

When he reaches the fence he turns left in front of it, down an alleyway. It’s a familiar manoeuvre, avoiding areas now closed off for demolition. You have to find other ways through. The alleyway connects with a road a bit further south, running parallel to the dead-end road, skirting past the pit.

***

Karin likes this feeling, leaning against warm rock with snow all around her, underneath her and next to her, and above her an orange sky. There are no buildings nearby, though she can see the mine office in the distance. Behind the rock is the road that leads to the mine entrance. The road she came on. She walked here this morning – but why has she come?

She fiddles with a piece of paper in her pocket. She pulls it out and looks at it. Now she remembers, she went out to buy fish. But there aren’t any shops here – did she take a wrong turn? She decides to stay put, until she feels a bit better.

After a few minutes she tries to stand up, but as she moves her legs crumple beneath her and she falls back into the snow. She rolls to one side to push herself up, but can’t make her arms work. Her head nestles inside her hood and it feels like being in a tent. It’s reassuring, to be in the hood – though everything’s at such an odd angle. Tall strings of grass wave in front of her face. They poke up above the level of snow, their roots deep frozen.

Sometime later – how long? twenty minutes? two hours? – there’s a whirring noise behind her, a vibration disturbing the grasses and a smell of fuel. A rough, bearded face appears next to hers, low down in the snow and grass. She studies it carefully. It’s her husband. Why is he here? Has he just come from work?She smiles. ‘Ah, Mikku,’ she says.

‘It’s Karin, isn’t it? It’s Rune, Karin – Rune. Are you alright?’

‘Oh. Yes.’ She wonders why he is kneeling in the snow.

‘How about taking my arm and seeing if you can stand up? Here-’. Rune puts one arm under hers, and the other round her back, and pulls her up onto her feet. Karin brushes the snow off her coat and moves to pick up her bag.

‘Let me, Karin,’ Rune bends to pick it up for her, ‘here you are.’ He frowns as he hands it to her. ‘You thought I was Mikku,’ he says. She looks at his face. Did she really think he was Mikku? Isn’t Mikku dead?

‘How long have you been lying there? Shall I take you into the hospital for a check-over?’

‘No,’ she says, ‘I want to go home.’

***

Leaving his office, Thomas comes down in the lift and goes to the changing room. On the wall is a picture of a man and woman running, their hair trailing in the wind, legs high as they leap. He feels tired today, sluggish. He’s only thirty, and his father could have run twice as fast as him at his age.

Rune strides into the changing room. ‘Thomas. I have a favour to ask.’

‘Ah-huh.’ Rune always has a favour to ask.

‘I wondered if you’d give someone a lift home.’

‘Who?’

‘It’s Karin – married to Mikku? I found her – she’s a bit confused so I picked her up. But I’ve to get back to the office, and I wondered if –’

‘Sorry, no can do Rune. My machine’s broken again. I’ve got to take a part down to the first level before I head home.’

‘Damn.’ Rune strokes his beard. ‘But – couldn’t you take her with you? It won’t take you long. Then at least I’d know she’d be in good hands.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Thomas. I can’t take her, I can’t leave her here – I don’t think she’ll find her way home. It’ll only take you twenty minutes there and back. Use my truck.’

Thomas remembers Karin in the pizza restaurant, moving the salt cellar from side to side.

***

In the silent truck Karin watches a couple of reindeer standing beyond the fence, ears pricked to the breeze. Until eighty years ago the herds came this way on their migration. Then came the mine; but still, every year, some reindeer wander back, drawn by a genetic memory that sits deep.

A man opens the side door. ‘Karin. How are you?’ It’s someone else now, she’s sure. She wishes she was at home. ‘I can drive you home, if that’s alright?’

She looks straight ahead while he climbs into the driver’s seat. He straps himself in and starts the engine, turning to look at her. ‘You don’t remember me do you? I’m Thomas. I used to work with Mikku.’ He starts the engine. ‘Rune said you were over by the fenced-off entrance to the old mine.’

She looks over to where Rune found her, by a rock, facing the mine entrance. She’s puzzled by the fence. There never used to be a fence there. Why is there a fence there?

‘What were you doing there? I mean, it’s far from where you live isn’t it? Did you get lost?’

She doesn’t feel lost. She knows the area very well. Sometimes she came here to bring Mikku a meal. Other times she and Mikku sat outside in the sunshine, before his shift, drinking coffee from a flask and eating sweet buns.

She is looking in the direction of the town when Thomas swings the truck sharply to the right, towards the mine. ‘Won’t take a tick,’ says Thomas, meeting her look of alarm with a smile, ‘I have to deliver a part to the first level before I can take you home. You just sit back and enjoy the ride.’

She stares ahead. She doesn’t want to go into the mine. She doesn’t want to go down there at all.The gates part upwards and the security guard waves them through. They’re entering the tunnel, rolling down the sloping road into the mine. She looks out the back of the truck at the receding hole of daylight, then ahead at the sparkle of lights on the tunnel roof. What can she do? She grips the door handle with her right hand. Shuts her eyes.

‘Karin – are you ok?’ asks Thomas.

***

The doctor shone a torch into her eyes. She just wanted to shut her eyes, escape all this. ‘Look straight at me, please,’ he said. She did as she was told; she always did as she was told.

Afterwards he asked her to sit down at his desk. He turned his computer screen towards her. ‘You see this,’ he said, pointing with his pencil at a small bundle of lines, leading into what looked like a cabbage, ‘this is where a clot formed, and you can see the damage – here.’ He pointed again, this time at the cabbage. ‘It’s not major damage. You had a small stroke, that’s all. In fact, you’ve had quite a few strokes. And I’m afraid there will be many more. But not to worry. The brain finds other ways through – you’ll manage.’

The doctor tried to explain things to her but she doesn’t entirely remember, now, what he said. It means she’ll forget things, and she will slowly get worse not better. She remembers he told her, ‘You’ve lots of life still to live, Karin.’

***

Karin looks at the curving road ahead, the lights in the tunnel roof, blinking at her as they pass. In the darkness the dials of the dashboard glow, green and red. The windscreen wipers move slowly across, clearing rock dust from the screen.

She hasn’t been here before. Mikku came this way five days a week, for most of thirty years. He didn’t talk about it much. It was nothing to do with her. She wishes she was at home with Mikku, in the kitchen, cooking steak, listening to the radio. These days she’s alone in the kitchen.

‘Oh, perhaps you haven’t you been down here before?’ Thomas is looking at her a few seconds at a time, his eyes flitting between her face and the road. ‘It’s just like any other road – just a bit darker, and with a few more twists and turns,’ he says. She wonders how she got here, sitting in a truck in the dark, going downhill, next to a man she doesn’t know.

It only takes them ten minutes to reach the first level. Thomas is worried about Karin. He guesses she’s anxious, maybe even about to panic. She looks pale, and very tense. He wants to get her back to the surface as fast as he can. He reaches behind the seat for the box.

‘Won’t be a tick, Karin. Do you want to grab a coffee while I deliver this?’ She shakes her head. ‘There’s a café here – just like any other. It’s even got windows. Only there’s no view – just the tunnel. But the pastries aren’t bad.’

In the office Thomas finds the duty foreman to hand over the machine part but the foreman won’t take it from him. His manager has told him that Thomas will take it to the mechanics working at the lower level. Thomas protests – he has a waiting passenger – but the foreman is insistent. Thomas heads back to the truck.

When he gets there Karin isn’t in the passenger seat. He spots her on the road, heading to the lower levels. As he comes alongside he winds his window down. ‘Karin!’ he shouts. She ignores him, and keeps walking. ‘Karin!’ he calls again. He pushes open the side door. She stops but doesn’t turn towards him. ‘You shouldn’t be walking along these roads. It’s not safe. It isn’t allowed. You need a hard hat before they’ll let you do that.’

She turns to him. He wonders, for a moment, if she recognises him, and what he would do if she just ran off. Then she climbs back up into the passenger seat and shuts the door. ‘Are you ok?’ he asks for the second time.

Thomas is speaking to her. She doesn’t know if she’s ok or not. She no longer feels she can influence anything. She can only go along with what comes and try not to think about it too much, try not to worry, try not to think about the enclosing darkness, and how deep they’ve come already. Not think about all that weight of rock above, the exploding rock below, the shaking land.

She looks out of the window at the tunnel sides and sees roads going off to the right, marked with numbers and symbols she doesn’t understand. There are machines there, but no people. She feels dizzy and shuts her eyes.

Thomas glances at Karin as he eases the truck round the dark bends. He will have to try and keep her calm. He doesn’t want her freaking out on him at this depth. ‘It’s got a lot deeper since Mikku’s time,’ he says, trying to make conversation, ‘let’s stop here and get some air.’ He stops the truck, and goes round to her side to open her door. ‘It’s so deep these days, you need to get acclimatised. Five minutes should do it.’

Karin steps down out of the truck, holding on to Thomas’s arm. ‘It’s perfectly normal to feel dizzy,’ says Thomas, ‘we drive down a bit too fast these days – the body needs to catch up.’ Karin lets go of his arm and leans against the door. Her eyes are shut. He wonders what to do. What if she runs off screaming and he gets the blame? He needs to keep her talking.

‘Not many people work down here now. Just maintenance, and the guys that place the explosives. I’ve only ever done remote drilling myself.’ He’s trying hard to engage with her. It’s odd, he thinks, that he’s down here, trying to talk with an elderly woman who won’t talk back.

Then he says, ‘I wonder if I could do that – sit down here in a machine all day, drilling. Did Mikku talk to you about what it was like?’ At last, he hears her speak.

She says, ‘Quiet. He said it was – quiet.’

‘That’s the ear protectors then. Must be a racket when those machines start drilling. All I hear in the office is a beeping on the screen. I kind of like the idea of making a lot of noise with a machine. Or an explosive, yeah, that would be fun.’

She doesn’t respond. He continues, ‘Well, best be getting back in then.’

He helps her back into her seat, walks round to the driving seat, starts the engine and moves off. The headlights illuminate a sign, Z458cAP, and an arrow to the right. He has no idea where that leads, but he knows the way down to the lower level. He turns left and the road continues to descend.

‘I’m really sorry about this, Karin. I’ll get us up and you back home as soon as I’ve delivered this. OK?’ Still no reply. He knew this was a bad idea. He doesn’t know what’s wrong with her – something is. He agreed to take her because he felt sorry for her. Sorry for Mikku. He died way too young. Could it happen to him – a heart attack? Suddenly. Jeez. Being down here in the dark takes your mind to strange places.

He tries to think. What’s the practical thing to do in this situation? They have to keep going somehow. How can he make it feel alright? Sometimes he has to do that, for Sean – make things feel alright.

‘You know, my kid – Sean – he’s eight years old. Full of energy. He’d love to come down here. Thinks it’s the most exciting thing in the world. I’ve shown him pictures, but he wants to come down here and see the real thing.’

After a short pause, Thomas continues, ‘So here we are, you and I, seeing the real thing.’

The road descends, bends, descends.

Then he says, ‘You know what? I’ve an idea.’ He pulls a small camera out of his pocket. ‘Sean’s always wanted to see what it’s like down here. Do me a favour?’ With one hand he presses a few buttons on the camera, and holds it out to Karin. ‘Hold this up in front of us?’

He sees she has opened her eyes again and is staring at his hand, and the camera. ‘Please, Karin.’ She takes the camera. ‘Just press the button on the right when you’re ready.’

She holds the camera up. She looks at the small screen and the image of the tunnel walls rushing by, the front of the truck bobbing up and down, the lights flicking past. She thinks about what it’s like, being eight years old, a boy wanting to go down a mine, thinking it thrilling to be in a dark, windy tunnel.

Once her parents said they were going on a boat trip. She didn’t know where they were going, but she didn’t care. She’d been so excited, wondering what it would be like. She imagined them all arriving there, pulling the boat onto land, building a hut to live in, fishing for food, sleeping on banana leaves. She would have a parrot as a friend, and a collection of seashells. She hoped they would never come home. When they arrived, it wasn’t like that of course. But it didn’t matter. At night she lay with her head at the tent entrance and looked out at the rocks and grass and the dark sky and stars.

Funny, how easy it is to remember that. This is a sidetrack, she thinks; I can get stuck in sidetracks.

She concentrates on holding the camera up. She imagines Sean watching it, watching them hurtle through the dark tunnel.

Then she hears music. It’s coming from the phone propped up on the dashboard. Thomas is singing along, ‘Get your motor running – head out on the highway..’

‘It’s Steppenwolf – Sean really likes this one,’ he shouts.

Karin still looks at the camera screen, at the winding road ahead, dark and mysterious, each bend revealing another, steeper road.

Thomas drives a bit faster, then faster. He winds his window down and a rush of warm, recycled air enters the truck. His arm must be out, resting on the side of the truck, because she hears him tapping to the beat of the music on the side of the truck.

He’s singing – even louder now, ‘Looking for adventure, and whatever comes our way.’

She looks up. Thomas’ arm is thrashing from side to side out of the window. She feels the wind in her hair, pulling it behind her, blowing strands of grey into her face. Thomas is thumping out the beat on the steering wheel, turning occasionally to smile at her.

‘Fire all of your guns at once and… explode into space…’

As they approach the bend ahead, Thomas leans back and the truck accelerates forward. She wonders what’s round the corner.

The road ahead is steep. The sides of the tunnel bulge like rows of massive tree trunks, an impenetrable forest of rock, becoming denser as the road goes deeper. Driving into the distance their heads are silhouetted through the back window. The truck follows the line of lights in the tunnel roof, turns to the left, and disappears from sight.

Lynne Woodward

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Lynne and Rolf

If you’ve enjoyed reading ‘Letter from 68 degrees’, I’d be really pleased to hear from you.

lynne.8stap<at>68degrees.se

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