Letters from 68 degrees, Kiruna

We’d been away for a while and were returning to Kiruna from Stockholm. Stockholm’s imaginative Christmas decorations of giant moose and pine trees made out in thousands of sparkling lights, both impressed and depressed me. The decorations were sparkling, original, and beautiful, but as fake as the photographs of northern mountains selling northern-style bread in the nearby station concourse.

It was the sparkling joy of winter artificially preserved in a concrete environment, to entice the public to spend money in shops in the run-up to Christmas. An urban environment reassuringly provides us with experiences which are predictable and stable, though controlled by people and organisations with particular goals in mind. It is a kind of virtual reality.

So it was a relief to land in Kiruna airport and see the low setting sun send real shards of ice and sparkling light spinning across a real, white landscape.

There were a lot of tourist visitors on the flight, and most had their Nikon cameras round their necks before they got off the plane. On the runway they posed in front of the landscape, looking for different angles on the winter scene and snapping the temperature displayed on the wall of the airport building.

Their eagerness to record the unlikely environment of a runway made me think that perhaps they were afraid that all this would suddenly disappear. Those of us who live here can relax, knowing just how long the real winter lasts.

We’d ordered a taxi from the airport. We complimented the driver on his vehicle, and he admitted he’d bought it only a week ago. We waited for him to talk more about his purchase, expecting some brand new car enthusiasm, though we weren’t really interested. But he said no more and drove on in silence.

Wondering what we should say next, we commented on there being a ‘reasonable amount’ of snow in Kiruna – not too much, not too little, and conveniently crisp and dry compared with the slush we’d experienced in Stockholm. The driver agreed and told us that until a few days ago there hadn’t been much snow but it had been very cold so the ice on the lakes was perfectly smooth. ‘You could see what lay far beneath the lake surface – the ice was crystal clear – it was the best ice we’ve had in Kiruna for years,’ he enthused.

Kiruna, where the winter is real and even the taxi driver finds it exciting.

It’s grim up north. At least in August. It’s been hovering below ten degrees for a couple of weeks, the sky is grey and the air is wet.

Meanwhile, in town, pigeon grey is still the theme. It isn’t very inspiring, and sometimes we wonder what we’re doing here. Fixing the house, chopping wood for the winter, scything the meadow. I was covered in insect bites last week. They’re the insects that lurk in the grass, and when my scythe hits their lair they fly up in a rage and attack.

Then a couple of days ago the temperature dropped even further. 3 degrees at night and snow in the fjäll, so we gave up all hope of a return of summer. The garden was strangely empty of biting insects. It wasn’t just too cold for us – it had killed off most of our resident insects, so things looked up a little.

Cheered by the death of so many insects and with a slightly drier forecast for that day we set off for a bit of berry picking, in between showers. We took the car and had a place in mind, just off the road by Lake Torneträsk on the way to Abisko. It would enable us to retreat to the car whenever there was a sudden downpour.

As we got out the car we pulled our clothing tight against the biting wind. We wandered down to the lake over the boggy undergrowth, scouring the rough ground for signs of berries. I’d brought a plastic container so we could bring the berries home rather than just eat them (as we tend to do). It was peaceful, even if it was far from a warm summer idyll.

Trying to stay positive we hoped we would find cloudberries, so we passed by areas of small blueberries that we normally have picked instead. The cloudberry is the holy grail of the northern berry hunter. Hard to find, hard to pick at the right moment of ripeness, and usually a berry you have to trade for quite a lot of mosquito bites.

We’d spread out across the bog, sinking into the spongy moss and searching among the insignificant foliage. I could see Rolf in the distance, pausing only briefly to bend down and look before moving on again. It appeared we were too late – some pickers had already been and picked the lot.

Then, I saw it, hidden under a hanging green leaf; the most perfectly formed cloudberry, a vision of orange and pink loveliness, plump and wet. The scrubby cold landscape was in that instant transformed into a kind of Eden, where finding a single berry – ripened exactly for that moment, the moment I was there to pick it – signified to me that the world was a kind and good place.

There were more cloudberries, but so well hidden. Finding the berries’ secret places, and then choosing to pick only the moist, luscious, fully ripe ones – this was a meditative experience. The day may not be warm, the sun not bright, and the summer almost gone, but in those moments it was hard to imagine there could much better than this.

We both worked silently, stooping to release each berry, as they revealed themselves leaning into trickling streams, hidden under grasses, lying in the shelter of small pieces of bark or stone. In the distance Torneträsk seemed bluer than ever. After an hour or so we made our way home, flushed with success and a container packed full of cloudberries.

Driving back into Kiruna, though, our mood sank a little. It was pigeon grey, no doubt about that. It’s a mining town and it doesn’t do pretty, least of all at this time of year.

We drove past piles of mud and stacks of building materials at the foot of Luossavaara, under the concrete bridge and advertising banners for the local burger bar, hanging broken from their strings above, past the sprawl that is now the mine’s industrial back yard, and up into the main part of town. Tower blocks of flats that could look impressive in the white light of winter just looked grey and flat at the end of a cold summer day in August. New graffiti had appeared on a bus shelter, and a digger and a pile of rubble decorated the street. Our car bumped over the rough unfinished surface.

Then I saw it. Among the rubble and the grey high-rise, among all that dull ordinariness, a sudden, vivid impression of something else, something bright and red and green. It wasn’t easy to see, set back a little from the road, its small neat shape nestled between high buildings. Flowers fell in swinging garlands from its window boxes, and on a small wooden veranda a man leaned out invitingly from a serving counter. A giant coca-cola bottle balanced at a cheeky angle on the roof signalled its presence to passers-by who cared to notice. This is ‘Empes’, the town’s best ‘korv grill’ kiosk. It isn’t so easy to find, you have to know where to go. Since 1945 Empes has smiled out on the town, through many summers and winters, witness to the changing faces of Kiruna.

Seeing it there gave me a warm glow – and I speak as a vegetarian who’s never been tempted by a ‘korv’. Just knowing it’s there, so small scale, so under-stated, so modest, so local. Another rich ripe cloudberry to pick.

We’ve been away, travelling, but it’s hard to miss the season of light in Kiruna. Elsewhere there may be warm weather, water to swim in, beaches to walk on, buildings to admire, but there is never enough light. All too early the switch to darkness comes. It never truly feels like summer.

Here we returned to rain clouds, cool temperatures, biting flies and midges, but there was the magic light, the day continuing for as long as you want. A minute can extend to hours, with no shifting daylight pattern to demand some change of activity. As in the darkness of winter, there is much time spent just wondering, and looking.

Unfortunately this has given us a lot of time to observe the behaviour of a group of pigeons that have recently arrived in the area. In our absence they made home on our roof, relieving themselves with abandon on our balcony below. Our roof was the perfect pitch for observing their food source, our elderly neighbour. Her reply when we suggested there might be a problem was, ‘well, they have to eat’.

So we were driven to more desperate measures. I drew large circular eyes on paper and hung them on the fence. I fixed some on the end of a pole and waved them furiously at the pigeons. At first they flew off in a panic but slowly they adapted to the eyes, saw they were no threat.

I didn’t remember seeing any pigeons here before. Surely they wouldn’t cope with the winter, I thought, hopefully. But they do, apparently. All they need is a dry home – they live as well in the arctic as they do in Trafalgar Square in London.

So we needed to revert to a more appropriate local reaction to the problem, and that is, live and let live. We persuaded our neighbour to move the food further away, so now the growing flock of pigeons are less likely to be on our roof. Still, it bothers me just to see them. The pigeon is such an urban, uninteresting bird.. why should it flourish here? Because it’s clever and easily trained. It remembers someone who puts out food, and it’s patient enough to wait for it. And it isn’t easily fooled by a fake pair of bird eyes.

It takes a couple of weeks of being in Kiruna before I feel at home. There’s a calmer, more pragmatic feel about life. With no pressure on land or resources here it’s more natural to live and let live, to accept the way things are.

One could feel annoyed in the summer about all the careless debris spread around. The broken down cars; the hardly-ever-used-but-it-might-one-day-be-handy machinery clogging up front yards; the stores of building materials being kept, just in case; the large tin cans, cables, rusting ironwork lying by the roadside. Add to that the building of Kiruna’s new centre – well, at least, it’s new town hall – and you have a town that resembles a very ugly building site. That’s Kiruna in the summer – an ugly grey pigeon making no effort to be pretty. In the winter it will turn into a beautiful white bird, a ‘giron’, but in the summer, a pigeon it is.

Still, you only have to step a few minutes away to be in an undisturbed landscape. buzzing with new life, sharp green fresh growth, colourful flowers and sweet smells. South of here the summer has brought a dull green pause, but Kiruna summer’s only just getting going and everything is as fresh as a daisy.

The easy route into this paradise is any of the town’s ski paths. Peaceful paths through the landscape, winding and dipping, secret and inviting.

I use them often and should be able to find my way but they’re more like a maze than a route. So many paths and tracks are revealed in the summer – from hunting, cycling, or just plain walking – that it’s hard to know which track you’re on. Maps aren’t much use either. The routes look clear enough but bear little resemblance to reality.

Since you could walk for hours and not see anyone, or any sign, you’d think this would be worrying, but it isn’t. Released from any intention to go from a to b, and freed from the fear of darkness, I’m quite relaxed about getting lost. Whatever happens I can always find my way home by looking at the landscape around. I’m familiar with the hills and valleys, the small lakes in the distance, the landmarks of town on the horizon. This, I realise, is unusual in the days of navigation apps.

Running on these tracks I don’t really know where I am most of the time but I don’t have to worry about finding the path home. I can see Luossavaara and the unfinished hotel building on its peak, and I see I’m behind it and to the right, so I bear left.

I can explore with a feeling of freedom it’s hard to experience in a more populated place. I’m just enjoying being our there, with no particular goal, and then, instinctively, heading for home. Like a homing pigeon. Live and let live.

Outside our window a magpie is removing a long twig from a nest at the top of an old birch tree. It takes some doing – the twig has been wound into the form of the nest in a way that has made it resistant to wind and snow storms all winter. The bird flies off with a twig four times its own width.

I know most things that happen around this particular nest because our sofa is placed so the nest is in full view. A view of an old birch tree and a bird’s nest that has never been used – it doesn’t sound too exciting, but I’m absorbed by it nonetheless.

I wasn’t here when it first was built. Our neighbour says there’s always been a nest there but no bird has ever nested in it. That’s hard to imagine, in the early spring, when the tree is visited by both magpies and crows. Serious building work goes on at that time. The basic shell of the nest is added to with newly plucked twigs and is soon large.

Last spring I noticed there were usually a couple of birds waiting in the top of the tree, next to the nest. It was a place for birds to hang out. Occasionally one of them would nip down to have a quick check, perhaps add a small twig. Then they would fly off, and be replaced by other birds, who would do the same.

They were magpies and crows, but never at the same time. I waited to see which would win. I waited and waited. I felt sure some of these birds were moving in – but they didn’t. Spring came and the birds went somewhere else. The nest was empty.

In the summer the nest was visited by a wider range of birds. A bit like a summer house I suppose. Birds liked to visit, have a look, fly off. The nest was huge, a summer mansion really. Then winter conditions arrived, gusting winds, wet snow, and later snow storms. The nest didn’t move at all, not all winter. Bits of tree fell to the ground – even whole trees went this year – but the bird’s nest was the same size at the end of the winter as it was at the start.

A couple of weeks ago I thought the nest looked smaller, which was odd given how much I’d admired its staying power over winter. Then I saw a magpie with a twig in its beak – it was removing twigs from the nest. I wondered what the next stage of this would be. Is the nest really just a twig store after all?

I’m also watching them build ‘the new Kiruna’. There’s not a lot to see, but the inner foundations of a new town hall have at last poked up above ground, in a wide open space that is to be the new town. When we visited yesterday we weren’t surprised to see that there’s still not much there. The car dump is still in operation nearby though, and the old golf course is waiting for the snow to clear for the summer season. It remains to be seen whether in the future twigs will continue to be added, or removed.

The thaw began last week, and the snow piles have shrunk by at least half. Our arctic hare (the one that lives in our garden that is – not actually ‘ours’) is no longer white but not yet brown – he’s hedging his bets in an attractive mottled grey-white coat which, in town at least, matches the snow piles around him.

There’s a protective moat of ice at the entrance to our house. Until we get out there with the grit visitors will have to put on their skates in the road to reach us, or maybe get down on their hands and knees and crawl across the ice. It’s not that we don’t want visitors, it’s just that it’s the end of the bed and breakfast season, we’re having a slow morning, there’s no breakfast to prepare and there are no responsibilities – like making sure guests don’t fall over on the spring ice. So it’s midday and the moat is still there.

Some pavements are well gritted, others not. It’s not easy to keep them free of ice – the snow is melting during the day and then freezing overnight, so it’s constant problem.

Approaching a road yesterday I intended to cross it, but first there was a metre of ice to negotiate to reach the kerb. I edged my way forward enough to realise that there could be an accident, with me falling forward onto the road, so I thought better of it and turned round to retrace my steps. Too late. A passing tractor had already stopped to let me cross – a Kiruna habit, even when there is no pedestrian crossing. He was waiting patiently and not the least put off by my turned back. A queue of cars had formed behind him. I gesticulated vaguely in the direction of the ice at the kerb edge. He probably never walked anywhere in town – he was probably attached to his vehicle somewhere at the hip. He no doubt concluded I was ill or drunk and not to be trusted, and certainly way to slow. Eventually he moved on. I felt, somehow, I’d failed.

I’ve noticed that some locals walk surprisingly fast at this time of the year. Do they just feel the joy of spring in their step, or have they learnt from avoiding avalanches in mountain areas that if they just walk fast enough they won’t give the ice time to trip them up?

For me, though, it’s a frustrating and slow way to walk around town, but if there’s no time pressure I can view it as a challenge. To by-pass sheets of ice on the pavements some mountaineering of the banks at the sides may be required. In other places you just have to launch yourself forward onto the ice, stumbling nervously like Bambi, or sliding randomly like Charlie Chaplin, and then recover, proudly, on the other side, looking around to see if anyone saw you.

It’s been several months now, in the quiet. It starts to go quiet in December. That’s the usual time. At first you just notice the colour, a sort of bluey green glow everywhere.

Not that there’s much light out there anyway in December, but when the blue colour comes you notice things become more hushed. It just gets quieter and quieter as the roof of ice comes down on us. It’s almost April now and the surface is so far away you can’t imagine it. There’s no reaching to the surface for a passing titbit. It’s down to the weed for the next few months, and one gets pretty tired of weed I can tell you.

Then comes this time at the end of March when suddenly there’s all these juicy titbits hanging around in the water under the bridge. I see them there as I swim past, and I’m not tempted. Worms, maggots, suddenly, wriggling enticingly, all in the same area. I’ve seen it all before and it never ends well. Fish that go that way, they don’t come back. Me, I stay well clear, stick to the weed.

x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x

There’s a hum of voices around me. We have to be two metres apart, so no-one’s on top of you, but you’re close enough to talk. Not many of us do though. I like to just sit there, or maybe stand, the rod in one hand, my face turned to the sun. All it takes is an occasional flick of the wrist, move the bait up and down, to attract any passing fish. Otherwise there’s nothing to do but wait. It’s a meditative sort of experience.

It’s down to luck in the end, despite what people say. Some people think they have more chance if they can see, lying face down on their reindeer skin with their head in the hole. Not my style that. At least at the end of the day if I don’t catch any fish I get a sun tan – all they get is a face smelling of fish.

Truth is, you don’t really need to fish at all. You buy a ‘starters ticket’ which is entered in a lottery, so the big prize money isn’t really anything to do with who catches the biggest fish – that’s just for the extra prizes. But I like to do the fishing, because it’s an afternoon out, sitting on the ice on the river, hoping you’ll catch something.

OK, not husky dogs then (you read the last entry, ‘Scouting for boys’). You don’t want that kind of tourist activity. You want the genuine item, the Real Deal. Reindeer.

A reindeer outing – now that’s tricky. Reindeer aren’t so tame these days. Modern herding methods have made them more wild so they don’t pull sleds anymore. Sami reindeer herders haven’t used them that way for at least 50 years now. But if you want you can go and see some specially bred reindeer in a small enclosure, and ride behind them on a sled. There’s an entrance fee and at least you get to read some real history about the Sami. But it’s not very thrilling – perhaps not quite what you had in mind.

Ok, you say, we’ll ditch the whole ‘animals in the arctic’ idea. Snow scooters then. These are for real – you’ve seen pictures of Sami reindeer herders speeding over the wide open landscape, so you know this isn’t something just for pubescent thrill seekers.

Sami have been using snow scooters for sometime now, but generally they haven’t been in favour of the rest of the population having the same right. Snow scooters are damaging to the environment, to the landscape itself as well as to wildlife, and if not used responsibly, are even a threat to reindeer herds. Despite this opposition there’s been a huge increase in the recreational use of snow scooters so now almost everyone up here has one.

So, in theory, you can join the club and speed away, snow spraying from your machine as you disappear behind the mountain. Only, being a foreigner, you can’t hire your own snow scooter – you have to go on a ‘tour’.

The tour will, of course, be on a prepared route, and (sound familiar?) probably go round in a circle in a forest, with a short burst of speed in the middle when you cross a frozen lake. Apart from the few minutes on the lake, you’ll be on bumpy tracks between trees, trying not to hit the snow scooter in front or inhale too much of their petrol fumes. Or you’ll be on a ten-lane snow scooter super highway, trying to avoid the groups of snow scooters speeding in the other direction. Sound fun? I thought not.

There will be the obligatory stop in the ‘tepee’ (see, ‘Scouting for boys’). Some people will complain about the clothing provided being too big or uncomfortable, or – having thought it too unfashionable to wear – will be complaining about possible frostbite. But help will be at hand in the form of the traditional camp fire – if your tour guide has managed to get one started. That might take some time. When finally he manages to get it going you’ll be impressed, as he proudly shows you his special flint and magnesium firelighter that he bought last year in Stockholm.

Enough already! Ok ok, I hear you say, we’ll skip the snow scooter tour. And the sled dog tour. And the reindeer ride. But please, please, please – can you arrange for someone to show us the northern lights?

Yes, any one of the tours – sled dogs, snow scooters, and even the reindeer experience – can be ordered in combination with the northern lights. All you have to do is fill in the online form with your request – date, time, and your preference for pink or green aurora, curtains or showering effects – and the tour companies will happily book you on to a tour.

When I read or hear about ‘arctic adventure’ tours on offer here, a slightly disturbing image comes to mind. I don’t want to think about it, I try not to, but I just can’t help myself.

It’s a giant pink plastic tea cup, rotating on a giant plastic saucer, and people are sitting inside, spinning round and round for the ride.

Or, maybe it’s a seaside train ride, pulled along the seafront, stopping on the way so passengers can buy Mr Whippy ice creams before climbing back on board for the ride.

You think I’m just making fun. The tours, after all, offer activities that are traditional here – you don’t want anything made-up. You wouldn’t be on a tour at all if you had the choice, but you’re only here for a few days and so if the tour comes with a bit of ‘call of the wild’ fluff that’s ok with you. At least it’ll get you out there, mushing those husky dogs, and that’s the real thing isn’t it?

Actually no, not here. The traditional way of pulling people and things has been by reindeer, or later by horse, but never by dogs. Some dogs were kept to help the reindeer herders, or as hunting dogs, but they weren’t sled dogs. This image you have, of charging through the snowy landscape behind a team of dogs, that’s Canada or Alaska you’re thinking of.

Oh well – Canada, Sweden, what’s the difference.

Despite this, there are loads of companies offering this experience and many of them have hundreds of dogs. If you go on a sled dog tour – at least if it’s a day tour – you’ll get to see the dogs running and have the experience of being pulled behind them on the snow, and it will be an experience. It’s great to get to see how the dogs behave, and learn their way of working as a team. It’s a pleasure that when it all gets going, the dogs are silent. You’ll see a bit of the landscape and it will be beautiful. But still, it will be a bit like those miniature train rides – I’ll explain why.

For a start, you’ll be taken on a trail specially prepared by a snow scooter because otherwise the dogs couldn’t run on it. They’ve been bred for racing and speed, not to run in deep snow. If snow has only recently fallen you may even have the snow scooter driving ahead of you making the trail. The noise and petrol fumes might not be part of the picture you had in mind.

The trail will be a circular route through the forest, the loops and return routes concealed to give you the impression you’re travelling somewhere.

Because they’ve done it hundreds of times before, the dogs could actually run round it with their eyes shut, and most certainly they don’t need your instructions. Except to stop – you’ll have to learn to put the brake on when the sled dog party in front of you has leaned in the wrong direction and fallen off the trail. It may be like a train ride, but at least you can use your own brake.

Somewhere along the route you’ll stop for the traditional reindeer sandwich in a specially constructed ‘tepee’, and your tour guide will regale you with tales of life in the far north. Your guide will point out, in case you hadn’t noticed, that you’re out in the wilderness and don’t know where you are. You’ll be impressed. Then he (it probably will be a he, though not always) will share with you all his knowledge. Or at least, the knowledge he thinks you want to hear. About his life out here in the wilderness, cooking over an open fire in his tepee, devoting his life to the dogs.

It will be a ‘Bear Grylls’ moment. You’ll be impressed again. You’ll choose not to remember that this is a commercial activity, and he’s doing it, like any other business, for the money. You’ll choose not ask personal questions about where he really lives, or what his lifestyle is from day to day. You’ll just enjoy the moment in the ‘tepee’, the smell of grilling meat, the sparkle of the snow outside.

More likely your tour guide won’t be from the area at all. He’ll be from France or Germany or England and will have moved here a couple of years ago, or maybe a few months ago, and he’ll be making his living here, probably just for the winter season, as a tour guide. He won’t know the area very well at all – he may even get lost on the way – but he’ll still have a tale or two to tell you once you’re there.

He might tell you about the ‘snow snake’, if he thinks you’re taking too long taking photos and wants you to hurry up. You won’t have a clue where you are so you’ll feel you have to trust him. He’ll seem a real wild man, not exactly living out there in his tent in the forest, but, well, almost.

You’ll come home pleased with your day, saying you’ve been dashing through the forest – you don’t know where – having learnt how to ‘mush’ your sled dogs and drive them in the wilderness.

Thinking about it, the whole experience will be very faintly familiar, and deeply nostalgic. An adventure in the woods, with a keen and controlling leader. And then tales around the camp fire.

Scouting for boys anyone?

I was close to buying ‘Robo-Vacuum’, the automatic hoovering system. I’d been impressed by ‘Ellen’, the lawn cutting version, but as we don’t have a lawn my interest was limited. Automatic hovering, though, looked as if it might save some time. You set the physical boundaries for the machine and then it carries on bustling around the floor into all the corners, bashing itself gently against the limits and bouncing back, until it has swept up every bit of dust within its reach.

I never bought one because I thought it might be a health and safety hazard near stairs.

Now there’s a new kid on the block, ‘Robo-Tourist’. It will save you time when you’re visiting Kiruna, and you won’t have to plan anything for yourself.

Basically, the system sets your limits – geographically, and in terms of activities – and then lets you bash around within them for the couple of days you are here. The limits are set by the tourist organisations and include all the usual things – dog sledding, snow scooters, northern lights tours (only in certain places and certain times though), the ice hotel and a short distance away from it. If you sign up you can be absolutely sure you won’t stray off the course they’ve laid out for you. This is also a benefit to local people who will know that they can enjoy the rest of the landscape and all it has to offer without tripping over tourists all the time.

Lingonstigen (‘The lingonberry path’), an unexceptional short street in Kiruna, you might think. If you believe that suburban and town streets are often named after what used to be there, then this should have been dry ground where lingonberries grew.

You wouldn’t easily find yourself in this street unless you intended to go there. It’s a dead end, just below the town hall, facing the mine and hidden by the hill behind and the town hall’s clock tower. Off the beaten track, you might say.

The houses are a terrace, very modern-looking. Clean, functional architecture. Good sized windows, attractive outline, plenty of space around because of the way they’ve been set back from one another. At first glance you’d take them for houses built in the 1990s. At a second glance they could have been built in the 1960s, as examples of bright modern housing.

From its start Kiruna was a ‘model’ town and community, showcasing the best in housing, town planning, working conditions, transport facilities. This small row of houses in Lingonstigen is an unusual example of early ‘modern’ housing that was built in the 1940s.

It’s hard to believe but it shouldn’t be so surprising. If you try and date most of the architecture here you’d guess wrong – it’s always earlier than you think. Kiruna used the most up-to-date designs and ideas. The mining company (LKAB) employed the best architects, wanting good living conditions for people in the town.

Lingonstigen provided modest but very comfortable living in the late 40s and onwards, in a fast-growing community. The terrace looks out to the mine – at the time it was built, still the centre of prosperity in the town. This direction also faces the south western sky, so the most is made of the twilight hours and winter sunshine and warmth. It’s still a very pleasant street to be on, with views out towards the mountains over the mining area.

Except that as you approach it your eyes are drawn to the large crack spreading across the side of the end house. That crack tells us the street has no future – the land beneath it is slowly sliding into a pit.

If Lingonstigen is typical, and I believe it is, it tells us how we’ll experience the slow disappearance of familiar parts of the town.

It’s easy to forget this street exists. One of the reasons is that you can’t really see it anymore. There used to be a road leading over a bridge running next to its entrance, but a couple of years ago the bridge was removed because it was unsafe, and the road was closed. In this way, parts of town slowly disappear from view. Not suddenly, shut up and knocked down, but slowly pushed into a corner, out of sight.

Over the main road running beneath Lingonstigen are other areas, closer to the collapsing ground. You can still walk here. LKAB have put up fences, and gates, but mostly the gates are left open. It gives you a bit of a thrill, to walk through, as if you know you shouldn’t be there but somehow you’ve managed to sneak in. This is probably LKAB’s way of acclimatising us to the gradual disappearance of town. They don’t suddenly prevent access to somewhere, instead, long before it’s necessary, they subtly suggest that we shouldn’t be there. Then after ‘allowing’ us through for a few years, one day they decide to lock the gate but by then we’ve got used to the fact that the land is no longer ‘ours’.

We went for a walk down Lingonstigen in the afternoon sunshine this weekend, more to admire the view than to look at the street. The view was indeed spectacular, but the street was more interesting than we expected. At first it felt like walking down any other Kiruna street, with cars out front and children’s toys leaning against a wall. Until you notice that there’s nothing to see through most of the windows and, in fact, most of the houses are empty. One of the houses is still lived in, but the cars in the street are probably from somewhere else. Until you get close you wouldn’t know.

We pressed on to the end of the street where there is a grand old wooden house. Also completely empty.

Lingonstigen is already on the edge of the pit. It will have been years ago, probably, that the mining company bought up the houses and the story of their disappearance began. People may have carried on renting them until they were ready to move on, or other people may have rented them, and the street would have looked the same. But the mark of catastrophe was already on them. Now they’re empty – it’s easy to see where this is going.

From a distance everything looks normal. The cracks aren’t visible. There are cars in the street, and some signs of people living there. It’s a wonderful row of housing, that will crack some more, and then, eventually, LKAB will put up some fencing, and knock them all down.

Then it will just be a path, with a view. Perhaps the lingonberries will return.

Sometimes the town feels out of step with the rest of the world, and this is one of those times. It’s ‘Rautas Premiere’, a weekend when a kind of fish madness descends on the locals and they all drive off on their snow scooter to a distant river valley to camp out with friends in minus 10 degrees and talk fish. And because everyone’s fishing, everyone needs maggots.

This is a time it doesn’t matter if you earn lots of money, have a super-duper snow scooter, can afford to take lots of holidays and buy a new plasma TV. What matters is, do you have maggots?

Commodity stocks, iron ore and copper, fell to an all-time low this weekend while shares in maggots surged, sending shock waves through the market. Could maggots be the key to economic recovery?

They’re probably out there now, highwaymen, Kiruna-style, holding up vehicles with snow scooter trailers on the E10, the road out to Rautas, waving their fishing rods in their victims’ faces.

‘Your money or your maggots!’ they cry.

‘Nah – on second thoughts, you’re alright, just hand over the maggots…’

I must say it isn’t an issue that affects us particularly, but you can’t miss that there’s a local crisis.

‘Don’t worry!’ screams a local store’s advertisement, ‘we’ve got maggots!’

Well that’s a relief – we can all relax then. The restaurants, usually buzzing on a Friday night, are empty. Attractions for tourists are closed for the weekend. The road nearby is quiet, no-one roaring up the hill on a Saturday night. Generally it’s a good weekend to be in town. Unless you’re a maggot.

I understand how desperate people can feel trying to see the northern lights. It’s hard to accept that it’s down to the weather, and good luck, and nothing else. People are willing to do anything – anything – to see them, and they think that, like believing in fairies, if they just believe enough, they’ll see them.

I have to break it to them gently. Their determination to see them won’t make any difference. They can’t buy them on a Northern Lights tour. And there’s absolutely nothing they can do to increase their chances of success, except staying awake.

People don’t want to hear this. It’s tough love, when I explain. Afterwards I send them off to one of Kiruna’s restaurants with the consoling thought that, after all, unpredictability is what makes the aurora so wonderful. Just relax, I advise them, because there’s nothing you can do.

At least that’s what I thought until yesterday.

There were a couple of people here determined to take good photographs of the lights. They were not casual visitors – they’d been planning this for some while.

They’d invested in boots so they could stand out on the ice in minus 70, waiting for the lights to appear. They’d bought the tripods and the special camera equipment for taking photographs in dark conditions. They’d got the ‘app’ for telling them the current kp prediction, and they’d tuned into the nearest source of detailed local weather information. They’d rented a car so they could ‘chase’ the lights, and they were prepared to drive many hours in the hope of ‘catching’ them.

During the day they’d gone out on a ‘recce’, searching for suitable places to return to later with their equipment. They drove for many hours, looking for the perfect spot. It was a whole day’s work, preparing for the main activity later that night.

They took only a short break back here, resting for an hour or so before going out and buying energy drinks to keep them on their feet during the long night. They packed up all their equipment in a huge rucksack, and then set out again, driving back down the same long road in the snow to their chosen spot, where they would spend the rest of the night, waiting in the darkness and the cold for the clouds to move away and for the lights to appear.

We went to bed, knowing they wouldn’t be back until the following morning.

The next day they were all smiles. ‘We had a really hard time’, they told us, ‘but – we did it!!!’.

Through sheer force of will and a lot of very expensive equipment they’d won through. Fearlessly, they’d gone out and they’d made those tricksy northern lights appear.

And there was I thinking the lights were created by solar activity and geomagnetic forces!