Letters from 68 degrees, Kiruna

I’ve said it before: there should be no such thing as a ‘northern lights tour’ – for the simple reason that no tour company has it in their power to provide you with the northern lights.

There are night tours that combine driving snow scooters or sled dogs with the possibility of seeing aurora. These are an opportunity to try out these activities while hoping you might also get lucky and see the lights, and that’s fair enough. A couple of tours might take you for a simple meal round a camp fire and call it a northern lights tour. Again, if sitting in the dark round the camp fire is something that appeals, go for it, but remember no-one is promising you northern lights.

I understand that when you come all this way you want to maximise your chances of seeing them. However, you can’t make sure you see them, and neither can your tour company. It’s impossible to predict the appearance or non-appearance of aurora to 100% – all the technical information does is offer a prediction of how likely it is, but it’s always a game of chance.

A tour company can take you somewhere very dark and give you somewhere warm to sit while you wait a few hours, but that’s all. In fact you don’t need to be anywhere special to see northern lights – we see them in town when they appear. The only advantage in being somewhere much darker is that the aurora appear a bit brighter. Whether this justifies charging you upwards from 1250 SEK per person – when you could easily just wait outside (or better still, inside) your hotel – is a matter for debate and I leave that to your own judgement.

However, when I say it is impossible to predict the appearance of aurora with total or even partial accuracy, I am talking about the arrival of the solar rays into the earth’s atmosphere. I am not talking about weather. Because, believe it or not, you cannot see aurora through thick cloud.

When a tour company takes you out to ‘chase the northern lights’ – at a high cost, and taking up many hours of your night, just you and a vehicle and no other activities to focus on – they have two sources of information to hand, the aurora forecast and the weather forecast.

They can always claim that it’s worth going if the aurora forecast is only 5%. But if the weather forecast shows thick cloud everywhere in a driving radius of two hours, then they know you will not see northern lights. Be warned: in these circumstances most companies will not admit there is no chance of seeing aurora and they will not cancel and refund your money.

Until tourists routinely ask if the tour will be cancelled if the weather will prevent them seeing aurora, this unfair practice will continue. So we encourage you to ask your tour company, and we encourage you not to book if they say no.

Shops in Kiruna’s ‘old’ town centre are on their last legs. They’ve done a deal with the mine and know they have to move. Some businesses have already gone to another part of Kiruna, though not to the new town centre. Some took the money and ran. Others are still here, waiting for premises to be built in the new town centre, and hoping there will be customers there for them when they’ve moved. It’s a waiting game.

It’s surprisingly resilient, though, the old town. Generous deals on rents have encouraged organisations and small businesses to camp out in unused premises for a year or two. It makes for an interesting walk around town since there’s usually some odd new organisation or business somewhere. There are town planning organisations, there to ‘involve the community’ (empty, whenever I look in), and there are local groups looking for a higher profile – a women’s rights group, a local political party.

These ‘pop-up’ concerns are side by side with shops that seem to have been in Kiruna forever, such as a Sami craft and souvenir shop, still showing an old ‘Lapp craft’ sign, and a specialist outdoor shop selling fishing flies, boots, and guns (I saw Father Christmas in here one year, in full gear, buying a gun). These shops seem indestructible, a part of the town’s core.

Another of these is ‘Centrum’, or J. W Lindgren’s, a family business selling men’s and women’s clothing. It’s been in Kiruna since 1925. I went into it for the first time this week, not knowing quite what to expect. You almost expect to find the sales assistants in period costume given the feel of the shop. It’s a calm oasis of polished wood cabinets and homely furniture, with long rows of men’s and women’s clothing on display and piled up packages of alternative sizes stored neatly behind glass and wood. It wouldn’t feel out of place for someone to come out and offer you a cup of coffee and a cake while you made myself at home among the women’s jackets.

The family who own the business have said they will be moving to the new centre, when a shop becomes available. They said this a few years ago, and it wasn’t clear then, nor is it even clear now, when this is likely to be – but in the meantime the show must go on, and the shop looks welcoming, Christmas music playing from a speaker over the entrance and people coming and going.

‘Centrum’ is indeed a prominent place in town. It’s on a corner, and an old neon sign above the shop tells us this is ‘Centrum’ (Swedish for ‘the centre’). The sign wraps around a corner of a small ‘square’ (which is actually a triangle) named after one of its famous inhabitants, Borg Mesch. He had his photographic studio in the building next door, and the ground floor of the building was an early cinema called ‘Palladium’. It’s now a pizza restaurant but it still uses the name of the cinema.

After my visit, standing outside, I turn to look more carefully at the shop window. It isn’t anything I usually notice much, since it features displays of grey coats and woollen skirts.

Something’s different about it though. Mm yes – that is a large Dalmatian dog in there – but it’s a dog without a head. The dog, and the other figures in the shop window, appear to have Christmas-wrapped boxes over their heads. That’s novel. Not what I was expecting. What can it mean?

Perhaps it’s suggesting that all I want for Christmas is my head inside a dark box – we do like the polar night up here, after all.

Maybe it’s saying that we’re all walking around blind to the imminent destruction of the town, oblivious to the threat, and lost in the spirit of Christmas.

Or it could be a way for the shop to say it would like not to be kept in the dark about when it’s going to be moving.

On the other hand, maybe heads didn’t arrive with the mannequins, or heads were ‘extra’, and the shop decided they could make do with some cardboard boxes.

It’s Kiruna – one just never quite knows.

I’ve been reading about ‘dopamine fasts’. They’re quite popular these days, apparently. A ‘dopamine fast’ is having a rest for a day or two from artificial and ultimately unrewarding stimulation.

It’s not a big need we have in Kiruna. The shorter hours of daylight in December are already a bit like having a black bag over the head, so we’re generally very calm at this time of year. But as Christmas approaches, and jingly tunes and tinsel appear in town, one can have the urge to be somewhere a bit emptier.

I felt I wanted space, snow surroundings, possible mountain views. Going for a walk or run in Kiruna you have a few choices but you want somewhere the snow is cleared, so you have to follow paths. You can’t just head out into the landscape – it’s a choice between town or just slightly less town.

Now that the new E10 road has carved up one of the best cross-country skiing areas north of town, the best direction to go for a feeling of open landscape is south, counter-intuitively towards the mine, and LKAB’s office. Although this used to be town it’s now an area which has, to use mining terminology, been ‘deconstructed’, ie, knocked down. This has created lots of open space and good views. It still has paths, that are cleared, and no traffic.

I began by running through the town’s old residential area, which is still with us – old wooden housing set out in open courtyards, in view of the distant mine. All this soon comes to an end where the ‘deconstruction’ has begun, and then I was on a path that made its way through a whole lot of  nothing.

The memory of the blocks of flats that were here until a few months ago remains – it isn’t easy to forget them because there’s still a big pile of debris covered in snow where they used to be. Beyond the flats that aren’t there, there’s a long fence enclosing a large piece of land, and that piece of land is full of snow. This is where Lundbohm, the first director of the mine, lived –  where local people once came to tea, and where the great and so-called good of the arts and business worlds came to visit in the early part of the 20th century. It’s where we came at Christmas for a coffee, to watch the children queue up to meet Santa, and it’s where some of Lundbohm’s art collection hung, and where museum attendants who looked after it were desperate to tell you all about ‘poor little Kiruna’ (the first baby born in the town – she had a very sad life, apparently).

Then I ran through an unrecognisable area with views out to the mountains. It became recognisable when I remembered that grand old building that was once there, the mining company’s hotel, where investors, and occasionally Swedish royalty, were entertained at large tables covered in white linen and silver cutlery, imported china tableware, and silver candelabra.

I plodded on alongside ‘the old E10’ (still in use for a few more months) and then under it to an even better view of the sky, the mine, and the mountains. And a fence – LKAB want to keep us away from the collapsing ground. The fence runs alongside the route of the old railway track. I was running along it, like the trains did, to where the station building used to be – an tall brick building that was more like a church. Now that building is gone the views here are wide, but the landscape feels characterless. This used to be a gateway, the first part of town that people saw, from as early as 1902. Crowds of people – women in long black skirts and men in trilby hats – gathered on the platforms before heading off for refreshments to the Railway Hotel next door – also now just another large area of empty snow.

Up the hill to my right I saw an empty petrol station. It’s all that remains of the town hall that was knocked down this summer. They preserved its entrance way which on its own looks like a garage forecourt. The town hall was known as Kiruna’s ‘living room’ – sad to think of it as an empty petrol station. To my left, across the collapsed ground between there and the mine office, there was once a tram that took men to work at the mine. I could still see that tram line snaking across the empty land, though the last time it ran was in 1958.

All that open space – it’s not as quiet and peaceful as you would imagine.

Yesterday upon the stair

I met a man who wasn’t there.

He wasn’t there again today:

Oh how I wish he’d go away.

– Hughes Mearns

A tradition still followed by many Swedes is the ritual of ‘adventskaffe’, or having coffee sitting calmly by your advent candles. There are four candles in a row, and on the second Sunday two of them are lit, and so on, until at Christmas four are lit. The result of this ritual, if you follow it correctly, is that your candles burn down in a diagonal line, with the candle of the fourth Sunday still long while the candle lit on the first Sunday has burnt very short. (Those upside down ‘v’ shaped electric lights very popular in windows at Christmas in lots of countries are based on this – though the diagonal lines go in two directions.)

At the base of the candles are decorations of moss, and red-spotted mini-mushrooms. I suppose this is meant to look like the forest floor, though the red-spotted mushrooms are very kitsch-looking and wouldn’t fool anyone. The moss, however, is real. It’s off-white coloured, clumpy and soft, and sits there very well supporting the ridiculous fairy mushrooms.

You can buy this moss in small packets in supermarkets. They’re in small packets because whereas in Sweden there is generally a legal right to pick things in the wild, this kind of moss is restricted. It’s very slow-growing for one thing, and for another, in this part of Sweden, it’s a primary source of food for reindeer. It contains protein (3%), fat (2.7%), fibre (21.8%), and sugars and starch (65%). A complete meal, just waiting there under the snow –  provided there isn’t a layer of ice on top (that’s the problem of warmer temperatures coming after snow).

The truly amazing thing about this moss is, it’s everlasting. Provided the reindeer don’t eat it. When I say ‘everlasting’ I mean, it lasts as long as I can remember where I’ve kept it, which might mean five years so far. Each year I pack away the cut moss, in an airtight bag with a little moisture, and the next year I unpack it and – hey presto! – moss good as new, ready to go. There’s no residual smell in the bag either – just a slight aroma of moss.

When it’s out in the warm air of the house it begins to dry out, and so by the end of Christmas, if you haven’t added water, it’s hard. But just add water and it springs back. You have to remember, this moss is dead. It’s cut moss, no connection to anything to sustain it.

It’s actually called ‘fönstermossa’, which translates as ‘window moss’. I tried to imagine where it had got that name. It’s full of holes, so perhaps it’s because you can see through it? I looked it up and it’s actually because before they learnt to manufacture airtight double glazed windows people put this moss between the panes of glass to soak up the humidity and keep the windows clear of fog.

It is really remarkable, and – I find – rather consoling. You can always rely on last year’s moss.

Today I celebrated the joys of recycling.

Let me be clear, Kiruna is no role model when it comes to caring for the environment. There’s a wildly wasteful use of electric lighting, every street glaring into the night, scaring away the northern lights. Then there’s the favourite local pastime of pointless burning of fossil fuels on leisure snow scooters, just because you can. And let’s not dwell too long on all those very charming husky dogs, and all the meat they consume to be able to provide tourists with their winter sled dog rides.

You can perhaps partly understand a lackadaisical approach to energy use in the winter here. It’s cold, and dark, and to live here you feel the need for home comfort. Lighting is a luxury indulged in by many, and lights left on all night make house look cheerful, occupied, comfortable. But then, lighting up the town ski slope with massive high energy use lamps when there is no-one there exposes a general lack of concern about energy use. In a number of places in town this week I spotted leaking underground hot water pipes, still steaming heat into the cold winter air a week after the local council maintenance company, Tekniska Verken, started to mend them.

All the above doesn’t mean Kiruna can’t sometimes do the right thing. It has a system for recycling, and this winter a new Swedish law requires food waste to be added to the list. Every household has a food waste bin, collected once a month. To pay for the extra collection and costs, the general waste bin is now also only collected once a month. As in most other countries, we are encouraged to recycle as much as possible, taking plastics, glass, metals, paper and cardboard to local recycling stations.

The local council, though, has had to inhale a very deep breath setting up this new arrangement. This is because here in Kiruna we have a very useful waste-burning plant which provides the energy for local hot water and heating systems (hence the underground pipes with hot water). This method of producing energy is efficient, and relatively environmentally-friendly because it is designed not to be polluting. However, the plant needs waste to burn, and the existing problem is that Kiruna doesn’t produce enough so it has to import waste from other places to keep the plant burning, the heat coming. So, while recycling more in Kiruna is good thing in general, it creates an even bigger refuse deficit here.

Meanwhile we have to bear in mind that the food waste is driven – ah, here’s the rub – to the giant swallowing monster in the town of Boden, 235 kilometres (146 miles) away.

But back to recycling. This morning a full, glowing sun rolled along the horizon and I knew I had to go out and make the most of it. We’re fast approaching ‘polar night’ on 11th December, when there will be no daylight for a few weeks, so the sun is a kind of God right now. You might imagine a walk into the hills, or a trip down by the lake or out on the river would be my choice. What took my fancy, though, was a trip to the recycling station.

I got my kicksled ready, carried it down the steps and tied my bags of plastic and glass onto its front seat. The air was crisp – minus ten degrees – and the sun blinding, very low in the sky. My route was across a road and down a side street – a blissful, slippery, downhill street. The kicksled ( or ‘spark’ as it’s called here) glided effortlessly down, and accelerated alarmingly. You need a lot of flattened snow, and a downhill run, but once those conditions are met a kicksled is the most environmentally-friendly way of transporting things and people I can think of.

The thrill of the run ended rather too soon. I had arrived at a sun-lit, sun-warmed, peaceful sort of spot, next to an empty, white park. I sorted my rubbish in the warmth of the sun’s low rays, pushing each item into the right container. It was rubbish, but in its own frozen way, it was beautiful.

When I walked away from the area I saw a swirl of rising steam on the next street. Another burst hot water pipe, not yet fixed by Tekniska Verken. There were gangs of birds fluttering around it – having a steam bath perhaps or looking for defrosted worms in the ground.

Which reminded me: Tekniska Verken have just signed a contract with the mining company to use the energy that’s lost into the air from the mine’s industrial processes (called ‘spillvärme’ in Swedish). This energy will now be fed into the communal heating system so we who live in Kiruna will reap the benefit. Or will we? There’s no mention of reduced bills for local residents, though Tekniska Verken will be getting energy at a reduced cost.

It’s complicated, the world of recycling – who wins, who loses, where the money goes, and whether it achieves what it sets out to do. I like the idea of ‘spillvärme’ though, and I can always enjoy recycling if I’m allowed to use my ‘spark’.

Our neighbour died yesterday. We’ve lived next to her for seven years, but she’d lived in the building next door most of her adult life. Since we moved here she’s watched over our comings and goings, our snow shovelling, guests arriving and leaving, groups of us out at night watching the northern lights. We’ve noticed her sitting in her kitchen, collecting her post, in the garden with her dog, or standing on the verandah by her front door.

When we first arrived at our new home we told her we loved the snow. She gave us a knowing look, which we later understood meant, just wait until you’ve been shovelling it for a few years. She had a sharp sense of humour and we weren’t spared, but we appreciated her digs and jibes. Sometimes we joined her in her kitchen where she gave us coffee with lumps of fatty cheese. Most of our meetings were out in the snow, talking over the fence.

It feels very empty here now without her. Staring into the middle distance over breakfast this morning I saw a flash of black in the snow hill opposite. I looked but couldn’t see anything – just the flecked birch trunks deep in the snow. Then there was that black point again, and in front of it a slither of white fur – it was an ermine rampaging around. Perfectly camouflaged in the winter, being perfectly white and just that speck of black at the end of its tail, like the specks on the birch bark. I watched its agile romp around the snow pile.

I hadn’t seen an ermine for 12 years. Once every 12 years then – a rare sighting. I think of royal fur, perfect white trim with black dots, and royal privilege. I think of an animal that’s special. I felt lucky to have seen it. I read, however, that ermine exist in large numbers all over the northern hemisphere – so they aren’t rare at all. I also read that they are regarded as pests. I was horrified to learn that these innocent looking creatures are ruthless hunters and could be eating our local arctic hares. Apparently they bite the much larger hare in the neck to kill them, and the hare dies of shock before it gets eaten. I no longer felt lucky to have seen an ermine.

Our neighbour loved hares, and she cut off old bushes and hung them above the snow for the hares to nibble at over winter. She also fed all the birds with hanging feeders from the tree between our two buildings. She fed small birds, medium sized birds, and many large, unhygienic pigeons. We weren’t so keen on the pigeons. When we challenged her about this she said, ‘well, they’ve got to eat’.

She would have forgiven the ermine for attacking hares, because, after all, it has to eat. And now in her honour, so will I.

The arctic hare changes from brown to pure white in the winter. Hares are all over the place in Kiruna, but it’s hard to see them. Their pure white fur makes them almost invisible in the snow, but we know they’re there from all the tracks. They’re feasting on what’s in the freezer: fallen frozen rowan berries, yum yum, frozen dried birch leaves just ready to pick, mm crunchy, and frozen hops looping around our verandah, whoopee! The hare has no predators in town, food is readily available, life is good.

We’re all a bit hidden at this time of year. We live on a hill and with the heavy snowfall we’ve had the road next to us has disappeared from view – or rather, we’ve disappeared from view. People walking up and down have become hats. Hats moving steadily, fast and smoothly (bike, or kicksled). Hats bobbing up and down (runners). Hats moving side to side (walking and talking on your phone). I recognise neighbours from their hats. The white bobbly, the orange knitted, the black ski hoodie.

Cars are neither seen nor heard, unless they have something added to the roof, like lights or roof boxes. Lorries are more visible, and snow plows. Peering up from below the brow of the snow hill it feels like we’re in a snow cave.

The snow has hidden the trees too. Quite beautifully. Every twig covered, so they are a mass of giant white fingers. The snow mist has frozen layer after layer onto them, pulling every branch down with the weight.

Opposite our house is an area of birch trees on a small hill. Currently a very high snowy hill. The birch trees are typically misshapen but tough. They call them ‘saxophone birch’ here because they’re so bendy and short. They’re hardy, but now and again nature comes at them too hard and they give in. Strong wind, heavy snow, and eventually they’ll break.

There’s one birch just opposite our living room that has been at an angle of 30 degrees for a couple of years now. Some trees either side of it were broken a couple of years ago, but this one has hung on. When the heavy snow clings to it, the angle of leaning becomes more like 20 degrees. It looks stunning, the low tree heavy with snow, but for the last two winters there always come a point where my appreciation of the beauty is overtaken by my fear of the trunk breaking.

I know this tree will, eventually, fall, but I want to help it live for as long as it can. When no-one is looking, I go out onto the street with a broom and push some of the snow off it’s downward curving branches. Snow showers all over me like cherry blossom. The tree bounces back to 30 degrees.

As someone approaches along the street I sneak back inside with my broom, but I fear I have been seen.

The tree is no longer hidden, and neither am I. Someone who uses up energy to go and brush a saxophone birch? My cover is blown: I’m clearly not a local.

Part One

We’d been tunnelling a while. Almost a week, in shifts. From the prison of the house there was little trace of our activities visible, the snow piles obstinately dominating our driveway. Over days of hard labour we kept each other’s spirits up with rousing cheers for a good day’s tunnelling, and ice cream treats. Our plan was to join up the two escape tunnels, one down the driveway and one up from the garage where the car was trapped, by Sunday evening, when the next snow was due.

The connection between the tunnels was rather wriggly, but calculated on the basis of the car’s reversing position from the garage and subsequent turning circle. Surprisingly this morning we realised we were almost there – the tunnels had connected. The time had come. Escape from Colditz.

Donning the arctic equivalent of motorbike leathers, Rolf strode down to the garage. The car reversed out beautifully, turned in three manoeuvres – and then got stuck up the driveway.

After some urgent adjustments with a spade the car was released. Blinking into the light of freedom, we sped off down the road before the battery died.

Part Two

As we and our car sped away from captivity, a thick snow fog settled over the town providing perfect cover for our escape. Still weak from the ‘flu we just couldn’t resist going to see what it looked like now. Our first sight of the town, since arriving two weeks ago, was going to be disturbing – so many changes since we were last here, so many buildings gone!

We approached the site of the town hall. Snow had covered any trace there might once have been a building there. Your brain can’t quite accept it; mine put the image of the town hall back there anyway. On the other side of the road, a whole row of wooden yellow houses had also gone.

The white mist softened the blow of the loss. We couldn’t see so well what was there, or what wasn’t there. We were grateful for the soft focus. We sped out past LKAB’s main building site where now four, tall blocks of flats disappear into the white sky, like a mirage. Where did they come from?

And then we drove on to the junction with the new main road, now a completely new route across the foot of the ski slope and crossing behind the town. There are views from this road that might have helped us understand where we were – the new route is so disorientating – but these were all obscured by the mist. We were driving on an unknown road in the middle of nowhere.

It was a gentle re-introduction to Kiruna, to be repeated when we feel a bit stronger.

´Flu struck us on arrival, so the necessities of life have become much smaller ones, more close to home. Crossing the room, making a meal, eating a meal, keeping awake, going to sleep. We’re doing OK.

Meanwhile, it snows, and snows. Our first days here are usually spent clearing paths around us, releasing our car from the garage, preparing tracks and storing places for all the snow to come over the next few months. These days are usually full of activity and purpose, but now all we can do is sit indoors and watch nothing happening, just snowing and snowing.

It’s a lesson in patience. It’s also a lesson in faith, that when our time comes we really will manage to deal with it all, we will get that snow cleared. We need patience, and faith, and we need a way to manage the boredom.

We don’t have much to entertain us in our sickened states. We watch snow. We change position, and watch yet more snow. The days seem very very long. I’m on the internet, looking for something, something to help pass the time. I remember that today is the day that Mercury is crossing the Sun in view of the Earth. Now that’s a suitably cosmic subject for us, up here on the top of the world.

We click on a link to the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, and there it is – that lucky old sun, and a tiny tiny tiny black dot, which, we’re reliably informed, by someone there at the Observatory, is, in fact, Mercury. There’s some groovy cosmic music to tune in to as we try to get a feel for what we’re watching.

It’s hard to see that the block dot is moving. It’s hard to believe it’s a planet. It’s hard to believe that is the sun. But we watch. ‘We hope you are enjoying it,’ they say, all the way from LA. We continue to watch. The dot doesn’t appear to move. Then I realise it’s a bit of dirt on my screen and the dot we’re supposed to be watching is a bit more to the left.

OK. We’re watching that dot now.

Meh. I look out the window. It’s snowing.

Did you know that a day on Mercury lasts for (literally) two years?

Our return to Kiruna has been marked by a number of setbacks, not least that the ‘Letters from 68 degrees’ have been put through a jumble machine and all the old posts have reappeared as pseudo-poetry with random line endings. This is because our web hotel moved the pages over to WordPress without the necessary preparation. Current posts will appear normally but old posts are very odd looking. Hopefully these will be restored soon.

11th November, this is now done and normal line breaks have returned!

We’ve just arrived home after a lengthy absence and life isn’t easy. Winter arrived a month earlier that usual and it takes us quite a while to dig a path to our front door.

Then begins the lengthy process of warming up the house. During this period the mains gets overloaded and cuts out, so we’re shivering in the fading light, trying to work out which of our complex system of electric circuits needs attention. The lights come back on, thanks to study of the circuits we’ve kept on the laptop, but then the laptop breaks down.

The house is strewn with chopped wood, half-unpacked suitcases and piles of warm clothing, ready to be piled on and off depending on our activity levels. The fire alarms are beeping because the batteries have run down.

We hunker down for the night with a hot water bottle and in the morning brilliant sunlight streams through the dirty windows. Nothing else has magically transformed itself over night, unfortunately. There is still that mountain to climb.

Breakfast would help, but tinned tomato soup doesn’t cut it. We go through the drawer to consider options. Rice. Flour. Cereal. Tomato puree. Noodles. Nehh.

The car, shut away in the garage, remains unreachable, the snow in front of it representing several days hard labour. We’re a short walk from a supermarket, but we both have heavy colds and this morning feel unable to walk even a few metres.

Then we find it, that staple arctic ingredient, tinned coconut milk. Poured over cereal, it’s bliss in a can. It gives us just enough hope to be able to imagine a future.

Tourism grows in Kiruna but is fairly low-key compared with many parts of the world. It’s still possible to come here, do your own thing and feel as if you’re alone in the landscape.

There are plenty of ready prey, though, for the Northern-Lights-Husky-Dogs-Snowmobile-Sami trips. That’s not to say that none of these activities are worth doing, but they’re beginning to blur rather, as people want tours that tick off as many things as possible in one evening.

Meanwhile we’re still enjoying what Kiruna has to offer for free. A day of sparkling sunshine in February sends us out onto Lake Torneträsk, to walk on the ice and marvel at the soft white mountains hanging in a blue sky.

We’re particularly enjoying it right now because for a few days last week we felt we’d lost winter. It was plus 6 degrees for days, the top layers of snow melted and roads and pavements became a mass of gritty grey ice and slush, later turning to slippery ice. It was hard to appreciate the warmth of the spring-like sun, when the result was the loss of so much beauty.

But right now winter has returned. It was minus 30 out on the lake yesterday and feeling too cold to stop, too cold to face the wind, too cold to be long out of the sun.

The conditions are familiar, and appear normal for winter, but there’s hidden damage from the recent warmth. In our driveway a slippery layer of ice lies underneath the snow so we have to be careful not to clear too much snow away or we’ll be driving on an ice rink. More seriously, in the landscape the ice layer under the snow prevents reindeer reaching the moss, their main source of food. They have very agile feet to push away snow, but they can’t break through ice. Their owners have to bring the whole herd together in large fenced areas and provide them with bought feed.

It’s tough on the reindeer, obviously, who can no longer graze where they want, and it’s tough on their owners, who have to work harder to keep their animals alive. But there are pay-offs elsewhere.

For one thing it’s much easier for us to encounter a large herd of reindeer. Yesterday we spotted a herd being fed near the main road to Norway. Reindeer herds look like hundreds of rocks until you come closer and see the antlers. I’ve always thought they were beautiful animals, so it was a treat to be able to observe them there when we stopped the car and wandered over to the fence.

There was another treat, and, apparently, another pay-off nearby. A hawk owl, balanced on the top of a spindly birch tree, also observing the reindeer. The patterned grey head was swivelling 360 degrees and the eyes glinting in the sunshine. At first I thought I was just lucky, to encounter an owl near a herd of a reindeer. Then I thought, owls eat lemmings, and lemmings probably like artificial reindeer feed. The owl got a lemming pay-off from the layer of ice.

So there we were, watching the hawk owl watching the reindeer. Those were our pay-offs. Meanwhile – who was watching us?

A van screeched to a halt in the lay-by and a couple of people climbed out with huge zoom lens cameras dangling from their necks. I guess they’d seen us, looking at the owl. They wanted those pictures too.

And – who was watching them?

A tour company perhaps, wondering if there was now a demand for bird-watching in their tour schedule.