Letters from 68 degrees, Kiruna

Even in Kiruna you can’t get away from sentimental music you’ve heard for too many Christmases. The only reason to rush around here at this time of year is when you want to get out of the shop before they play ‘Last Christmas I gave you my heart….this year, to save me from tears I’ll give it to someone special’ for the second time.

Otherwise Kiruna’s leisurely pace continues over the festive season and no-one seems to be making any special effort.

Except, perhaps, ‘hemvändare’ – home for Christmas, the relatives who moved south and are ‘home’ for Christmas, get to hang around on street corners smoking, meeting up with old school friends and filling up the bars and restaurants with determined celebration.

And the tourists. There are many in town, though the town isn’t where their focus is. It’s on the tours, the northern lights, the husky dogs, the snow scooters. Tales around the camp fire, wildlife safaris, make your own igloo, and the Ice Hotel. Their schedules are hectic – a counterpoint in double time to Kiruna’s slow, steady pace.

Our last guests had a fully-packed week, but the aurora had refused to appear through the clouds. But the last night they were here there was a clear sky and a bit of auroral activity visible on the sky camera, so we sent them out in the car to a dark road nearby to try their luck for the last time. They were tired, it was the end of their holiday, and they would have preferred to stay at home and go to bed. But they reluctantly gathered together their warm gear, got in the car and drove off.

A few minutes later the aurora appeared in a spectacular way. When our guests came home they said they’d just got out the car, and the lights appeared. ‘It felt like it was specially for us,’ they said.

The aurora can make you feel like that – as if you’re favoured, as if you’re special. Someone once said you can never feel sorry for yourself when you see the northern lights.

Our guests left and it was the day before Christmas Eve, the day of celebration here in Sweden. We thought we’d got everything in, but the crucial spices for the homemade glögg had already been used last year and you can’t have glögg without spices. And you can’t have an evening at home before the Eve without glögg. So it was an emergency dash to the supermarket. We were in danger of rushing.

Throwing ourselves out the front door Rolf headed off for the car but for a second I looked up, and saw pink and green running across the sky. Everything came to a halt – we just stood and gaped. That aurora puppy was pushing it’s balls of colour around the sky, hiding them out of sight and then launching them from behind us. The shop was forgotten. The glögg was forgotten. The thought entered my head that we lived in the kind of place where a trip to the supermarket could begin with a display of northern lights. We felt very special.

At this time of year it’s tempting to stay in. The darkness encourages a healthy inward-looking approach. It was snowing steadily. There was one thing, though, that I wanted to do before we gave ourselves over to the feasting, I wanted to go and see if Father Christmas was in his usual spot.

Every year he appears on Christmas Eve, sitting on the front porch of a small house in a nearby village, the one where the Ice Hotel is. He just sits there, surveying people passing by, and plenty do. Tourists walk past on their way to meet tame reindeer at the end of the road, to go to the restaurant down the road, or perhaps to visit the local church. He just watches them, quietly, from a distance. They don’t see him.

There’s nothing to make you look that way, no sign telling you this is the way to Santa’s grotto or anything like that. Just an ordinary little house, and ordinary man sitting on the porch – only he has a long white beard and a red coat. We saw him. He is someone special, so this year I gave him my heart.

Postscript:

The day after writing this I learnt that George Michael, the person who wrote and performed this song (‘Last Christmas’), had just died.

Temperatures are fluctuating wildly, and the snowy environment turns from friendly snow pillow to vicious ice rink at a moment’s notice. I’m trying not to complain, not to resist, though I don’t like it.

There are a few benefits. The arctic hare in the garden is having a feast in the driveway – she’s found precious summer grasses poking up through the snow and ice. The street is shining, the shade of Snow White’s dress, a glassy glare of blue-white. Collections of snow around the house are taking on a new appearance; in a part of the world where it’s usually too cold to make a snowman, the temperature is smoothing out animal faces in the snow.

Outside the house our attention has been drawn in the evenings to a round white animal figure with eyes, ears and a long protruding nose. In the morning, when there’s some twilight, the figure is almost gone – at least it is just a small pile of snow. The dark and light contrasts play tricks so it’s common to imagine you see things in the snow. You look and look, not sure if you see what you think you see, wanting to see it. You know it’s not real, but, like Father Christmas, you want to believe in it.

Before the ice arrived – and the town became this season’s show, ‘Kiruna – Dancing on Ice, a Christmas Special’ – I did my usual run out to the mine offices. It’s a good path with good views in both directions. The view on the way out is of the mine, or at least, what you can see of the mine. It’s what remains of the mountain, after the early days of surface mining, and this area is always lit up, so it looks like a cruise ship has come to town. At Christmas the company decorates a Christmas tree shape on the top, and last year they spelled out ‘God Jul’ (‘Happy Christmas’) by lighting up certain windows in the tower of offices.

As I ran towards it this year I was looking out for the Christmas message. You can only see it a bit closer and at certain angles. There was the tree, and the usual lights, but I couldn’t see the message. Then I saw, ’21’. It made no sense so I tried to imagine it actually said something else, but however hard I looked, it still said ’21’.

Somebody’s birthday? A new door code? The current price of iron ore in Venezuelan Bolívar?

Or could it be a countdown to Christmas? It should have said ’23’ then, but perhaps it was counting down to the start of most workers’ holiday. It had to be, and it was a great thought that unlike last year’s message, this year’s message would require complicated arrangements to leave different office window lights on every night. I imagined some bored office worker having worked out a program for it, and offices left instructions for every night of December – or perhaps there was a programmed timer to leave the right lights on.

It cheered me up actually. A silly thing, but its pointlessness was its charm. Only a company as rich as the mine could be bothered with it.

The only doubt left was what hour of the day they did the changeover, and whether they were counting down to the day before Christmas Eve or to the Eve itself. Well when you’re running your mind focuses on some funny things.

A couple of weeks later as I ran closer to the mine I was trying to work out what number I should be looking for. It all depended whether they changed the number at the end of the day’s shift, or maybe at midnight. It could have been a ‘7’, an ‘8’, or even a ‘9’. I couldn’t make it out. It wasn’t a very good number whichever one it was – not very clear. I thought it might be an ‘8’ because of the curvy shape at the bottom, though the top wasn’t curvy at all.

Looking over my shoulder running back I reckoned it was going to be an ‘8’. Soon the people in the top offices would turn their lights on or off and make the rest of the figure. I’d decided – it was an ‘8’. Definitely.

The start of the season is tough because wherever you start to store the snow is where it will be for the next five months. If you store it too close to the paths or driveways, by January there will be no room left to store snow. You have to push it way out to the boundaries and pile it up there, hard to do when there are no paths. A laborious process of pulling a sled of snow backwards up the hill is the only way to do it.

As we slowly cleared a path down towards the garage I peered over the fence at the neighbour’s ‘gård’. Winter is the time he collects his extra vehicles and equipment down there, and there they languish under piles of snow until the spring. I see a 7-Up drinks dispenser machine has been added to the collection this year, looking rather out of place in the snow.

After six days of shovelling and hauling we reached the garage. Our car, nestled inside, has its own engine heater and it seems it didn’t mind resting there at all. It started without complaint, but it needed winter tyres to be legal.

Two tyres were changed but then the jack broke, leaving the car stranded in the air. We needed a new jack, and we needed a car to get to the spare parts shop to buy one. Mm. Kick sled to the rescue.

Rolf described a feeling of amazement, sliding down the path by the main road, that he was off to buy something using a kick sled. He wasn’t brought up in this part of Sweden, and the kick sled is really a form of transport for the far north. It felt a delicious kind of novelty, he told me afterwards, despite the head winds and snow flurries.

Arriving at the shop he realised he really was a novelty. This was two months too late to change to winter tyres (we’d been away for the start of the winter) and in addition Rolf was strangely concerned about the size of the box – it needed to fit on the kick sled, he explained.

‘You came to buy this using your kick sled?’ The sales assistant looked charmed.

A kick sled is a common form of transport here in the winter. For people doing their shopping. For teenagers on a joyride down a hill after an evening’s drinking.

But why use one to buy something heavy from a car spare parts shop? Why not use your second or third car, your old disused car, your classic car, or even your tractor?

We are people living in Kiruna with only one car. Now that’s a novelty.

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.