Letters from 68 degrees, Kiruna

I’m fairly new to this cross country skiing lark. This winter Rolf and I determined we’d give it a go, so for a few weeks now we’ve been stumbling round the nearest ski track. In my case this usually involves trying not to fall over (not because I’m afraid of falling but because I’m afraid of not being able to get up). Fortunately the tracks are many around Kiruna, one rarely sees another skier, so my humiliation is a secret. Until today, January 6th, when the ski track was like a super highway.

Where I come from (originally) the 6th is the day everyone goes back to work, but in Sweden it’s (yet another) public holiday. Don’t ask me why, it just is. There’s the New Year’s Day holiday, and then four working days, and then another day’s holiday. Naturally for most people this means the Christmas holidays extend all the way to 6th January, and the first day back at work is 7th January.

Bear with me, this does have something to do with me skiing.

Over the Christmas period the population of Kiruna swells with what are known as ‘hemvändare’ – or, ‘homecomers’. These are people who have left Kiruna for cities further south, usually Stockholm. They come back at Christmas to stay with their families. The airport puts up a banner to welcome them home, and special events are arranged – evenings trying to encourage them to set up businesses here instead of there, and ‘friendly’ sports matches (locals v. hemvändare).

If you are going to be knocked over on the roads in Kiruna this is the time. The rest of the year, with Kiruna drivers on the roads, it’s unheard of for a car not to come to a slow halt if someone looks like they might possibly want to cross the road. This can be a bit of a pressure if all you’re doing is admiring the view or waiting for a friend, but it’s reassuring, and very safe for pedestrians. Hemvändare, on the other hand, are used to Stockholm city ways and wouldn’t dream of stopping for a pedestrian, and after 11 months here one has been lulled into a false sense of security about crossing the road. The same can be said of the swimming pool. The normal accommodating approach of swimmers in the pool (they look where they’re going and swim out of your way) is replaced with individuals ploughing up and down the lanes without a pause. It’s suddenly all a lot more intense.

Anyway, I digress slightly. So it was rush hour today in the prepared skiing track, and I was repeatedly in the way of much faster skiers, heads down, not stopping, intent on skiing as if fleeing for their lives. I couldn’t understand why, when before we’d only seen a couple of people there at the most. The 6th is a holiday of course, but it isn’t usually this busy on a normal weekend day.

Then I realised. Hemvändare had returned home. The ski track was buzzing with the pent-up frustration of people who’d been hosting Christmas for two weeks and had now been let off the hook. At last they were free to get out on their own, no longer responsible for entertaining and feeding. With every whizz of a skier past me I felt their sense of relief. Back on track – at last!

New Year, and a time for thinking about the future, hopes and dreams. There was a lot of that going on outside the Ice Hotel this year.

Before midnight hotel residents are lured away from the ice bar by some form of entertainment which usually involves men in dinner jackets, reindeer antlers, a snow queen, and at least one tractor. There’s a lot of hammy acting, and dramatic action which represents the ousting of the year (represented by the snow queen) by the next year (another snow queen). The year 2013, in ice of course, is smashed, and a 2014 ice block appears. There are annual variations but it usually follows this pattern.

Standing on the river were an international mix of people of all ages, most of them trying to capture the moment with their i-phones. At a distance in the dark were a few breakaway groups, drunk more on the experience than the vodka (which at 130 SEK a shot was understandable).

I suppose we were gate crashers, but the Torne river is a public place so we felt we had the right to be there. The entertainment was pretty mad. A kind of Mr Bean meets Hans Christian Andersen, with a shot of Christmas pantomime (‘look behind you!’) and a sprinkling of Monty Python (a Swedish favourite). Half of it was spent watching a man in a dinner jacket trying to light a flame that kept going out. Still, we all watched, and a few of us cheered, perhaps feeling sorry for the performers. When it finished there was a brief explosion of fireworks, and then we were invited to send off a paper lantern with a wish.

A paper lantern rising into the sky is a pretty sight but we know it’s not very environmentally friendly (even if it’s ‘biodegradable’), and may even be a fire risk. I didn’t want to be a party pooper and so suppressed thoughts of the Ice Hotel’s claims (‘we care about how the environment is affected by Ice Hotel’) and concentrated instead on the uplifting sight of the orange lanterns floating over the ice into the darkness.

It was uplifting when they were (uplifting), but sadly only half the lanterns got off the ground. When they sank instead of rising, or crashed, burning holes in their shell and petering out, I felt for those people.

We watched one woman chase her lantern over the ice, failing to send it into the air. She abandoned it, turning her back on her wish. When she wasn’t looking, someone else took hold of the lantern, and released it. When her wish comes true she’ll never know she has someone else to thank for it.

We danced in the snow and remembered that the laughs come hard in Auld Lang Syne. People were standing in groups outside, reluctant, perhaps, to face minus 5 in their hotel bedroom. Or perhaps I’m wrong and they couldn’t wait to hunker down on that damp reindeer skin for the night. In any case, we were glad to be able to drive back to a warm home.

When we got there it was past 1am. It had been fun, out there on the river, but somehow the excitement of the new year hadn’t yet reached me, and now there was only the prospect of a cup of tea and bed. Then I heard (yet another) loud bang. People had been letting off fireworks in Kiruna since early evening, but this was a bit late. I looked at the time – it was 1.23 precisely, so it was the mine’s nightly explosion. Sometimes it’s a muffled bang, barely noticeable, and other times the house shakes. This time it was very noticeable. At last, we’d been blasted into 2014.

These days the sun is always below the horizon (the definition of ‘polar night’) but its reflection above the horizon for half an hour is enough to fool you into thinking it has reappeared. Early arctic explorers trapped in the sea ice celebrated wildly at the beginning of January, convinced the sun had returned, when it was just an optical illusion. We’ll have to wait a while longer to see the sun, but in the meantime this ‘light without shadows’ is intriguing. Uplighting is what it is. There’s no focus, no highlight, just an atmospheric glow.

Either side of the brief appearance of the sun’s reflection is a reflection of a kind of sunrise and sunset, so the sky is a wash of red and violet, fading into pink and blue. It’s the time to be out somewhere, looking at the sky, soaking up the light and colour. The shades can be subtle, so close in hue that there are no outlines, just blurred smudges of colour. When the air is more humid it’s like someone has poured water over a painting and all the colours wash into each other, leaving an impression of only one shade – usually blue.

The blue is the reflection back through clear ice and snow, and the clear air means that, ironically, it’s harder to work out what you are looking at, especially to discern distance. Looking across a frozen river at land on the other side it is impossible to say if it is an hour’s or a day’s trek away, and that black rock poking up through the snow could be just nearby, and half a metre high, or far away and many metres higher. It’s disorienting, but enchanting.

A few days ago at this time we travelled down one of the four roads out of Kiruna. Two of those roads are dead ends, and this was one of those, following the river down the valley to its source at the foot of the ‘fjäll’. The river is frozen, but in places the narrowness of the channel keeps it flowing, creating rising and drifting mists which add to the magic of the twilight. At one point we saw the dark figure of an elk standing in the road in the distance. When our car headlights reached her she lumbered through the snow to join her calf, hidden in the birch scrub. Animals like the poor visibility of the twilight hours.

This time of the day – between 11 and just after noon – is a sharp contrast to the jet black darkness that descends on us for the rest of the 24 hours, but it’s enough for me to feel uplifted – enough to be able to say that I don’t think I am badly affected by the darkness. Stories of people going mad and slashing each others with knives is fortunately an experience of polar night I haven’t witnessed in Kiruna.

Are you dreaming of a White Christmas? If so, this is the place to be.

Snow has fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow, so there’s been no time for gathering round the fire with a cup of warming glögg and a cd of Christmas carols, no time for phone calls to friends and family, no time even for wrapping presents, making the Christmas meal, or having a Christmas drink. There is time only for snow shovelling.

Last night, past midnight, we were taking it in turns to shovel snow down the driveway. If we’d left it any longer the snow would’ve been too heavy to move and our car would’ve been stuck in the garage, possibly for ever, or at least until we paid a Man With A Tractor to come and dig it out. It was blowing snow, wet and heavy snow, because the temperature had shot up to zero, the worst case scenario. That means the snow is hard to move, and later the top layer will melt and then freeze and will be even harder to move. Happy Christmas Kiruna.

I tried to stay in the festive mood. I sang carols. Not so loud to disturb the neighbours I hope, but loud enough. What an opportunity, to sing ‘Old King Wenceslas’, and ‘See Amid the Winter Snow’, or even, ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’ while toiling with the snow under a northern sky. So far so good – I sang, I shovelled, but sadly the spirit of Christmas did not arrive. It was invigorating, it was beautiful, but to my surprise it was not Christmassy.

I have always felt that snow equals Christmas, but coming from England I know more how it feels to long for snow at Christmas than how it feels to get it. On the very rare occasion snow has come at Christmas it’s been white snow on top of rich winter green. It has melted softly on the holly leaves, sliding slowly off bright red berries, leaving a glimmer of shiny wet whiteness. In the distance church bells chime and someone coming out of a pub shouts ‘Merry Christmas Mr Pickwick!’, throws a red striped scarf round their neck to keep out the snow drips, before getting on their bicycle, the sound of them whistling ‘Hark the Herald’ fading slowly into the distance as they cycle away.

It’s nothing like that here. It’s very very white under a dark or dusk sky, and the bushes are bare brown twigs poking up through the snow. The only green is the squat pine tree, but it’s so heavily laden with snow the green is hard to see. There’s no sound of Christmas conviviality – just the sound of tractors revving up to clear the roads of snow, and then silence. The sky is starry, and if we’re lucky, visited by green northern lights, and snow shovelling can feel really magical. But it does not feel like Christmas.

We have a White Christmas, but today I feel there’s a lot to be said for a wetter, greener, gentler, more southerly kind of Christmas season.

The most frequently used word right now – after, ‘Christmas’ and ‘merry’ – must be ‘busy’.

Everyone is so very busy, and don’t we all know it. If they haven’t had time to ring us to tell us how busy they are, then their Christmas card will have arrived with the newsletter which outlines their busyness over the year, culminating in mega-busyness over Christmas. Or if it comes attached to an e-card we know they’ve been so busy they’ve had no time to buy cards.

Now busyness is all well and good, and I do understand that the responsibilities of parents in particular, with all the pressures and expectations loaded on them at this time of year, results in them being very very busy. However, too often the word ‘busy’ comes with an unspoken ‘and be impressed with my life and all these things I achieve’. And I am impressed, to a point. The point when they start telling me how busy they are.

For a long time I’ve threatened to put ‘busy’ into my spam mail so every email that comes to me with that word in it is automatically junked. Threatened, but of course never done it or I’d never hear from anyone.

Kiruna is a good antidote to busyness. The open landscape stills the mind, makes you slow down a bit. That’s not to say we don’t have lots to do – I’m constantly thinking of things I want to do, or need to do. But most of these activities aren’t what you’d call ‘goal-oriented’. Take the inevitable snow shovelling. You never achieve anything. I’ve spent two hours on it today and I’ve still got a driveway full of snow. It’s no good telling people how busy I am clearing snow, they won’t be impressed. And it’s no good going at it hell for leather, being busy busy busy, because I’ll never get to the finishing line, so what’s the rush?

After a while here you learn to enjoy what you’re doing, and not keep up any particular tempo. Some very good advice I received early in my snow shovelling career was take it easy, don’t work up a sweat and just let it happen. It was our (fairly useless, but amiable) builder who gave me that advice. I don’t know if he knew that Lao Tzu said something similar in the 6th century BC: ‘Practice not-doing and everything will fall into place.’

On the internet I came across someone discussing the idea of ‘not-doing’. At first he couldn’t see what Lao Tzu meant, but then, he writes, ‘I had a Zen epiphany in my Zumba class….’

In his Zumba class???

You see, that’s the trouble with busy people – even while espousing inactivity they’re telling you that they’re filling up every waking hour with something or other.

Just like Bing Crosby, I can be ‘busy doing nothing’, and unlike many busy people, I find that it’s a very good idea not to multi-task while I’m doing it. One bit of nothing at a time. Bing’s tasks included waking the sun up and rehearsing the songbirds but I’m sure he didn’t do them at the same time. ‘Hustle bustle’ he sang, ‘and only an hour for lunch’.

So if you’ll excuse me, I’m just off into the garden with the snow shovel. And while I’m out I really must pick up all those footprints the hare left there last night.

But where to put them all? Hustle bustle.

When we decided to move to Kiruna there were many negative reactions from our friends, but the most negative of all were from people we knew in Stockholm. ‘What do you want to go there for? It’s just dark and there’s nothing there.’ What they also thought, but didn’t say, was, ‘and everyone works getting dirty in a mine and there’s no culture and it’s dead boring’.

It’s disappointing really, because the people who hold these views have generally never been here – usually no further north than Hudiksvall (a sort of ‘Watford gap’ point in Sweden, if you’re familiar with the idea). When we opened the bed and breakfast my English friends assumed our guests would all be Swedes, but Swedes rarely visit. They think it’s dark and there’s nothing of value here.

Unfortunately, prejudices further south in Sweden are frequently re-enforced by the recycling of stereotypes in newspapers and film, so it was with some nervousness last week I went to a showing of ‘Ömheten’ (or, ‘Broken Hill Blues’), a new film set in Kiruna.

The film maker, Alexandra Dahlström, is from Stockholm and lives in France. I heard her interviewed about the film, and I thought she showed an interest in Kiruna as a place, so I had hopes.

But what stereotypes were not present in this film? Let me see – it’s hard to think of any. Girls doing ballet and wearing frilly dresses, tick; boys playing around with cars, not being able to express themselves, tick; men working in the mine not being able to express themselves, except through physical violence, tick.

The stereotypes continue. Kiruna is a town of decaying flats where men with no future sit around drinking and trying to be manly. The youth feel they have no future and don’t want to go and work in the mine, which is the only option open for them. Women don’t appear in the film – obviously too busy cleaning the toilets. The girls work in, or spend their money in, the hairdressers, and look after children. Kiruna itself has a bad case of the shakes (obviously the result of excessive alcohol consumption), making glasses suddenly fall of shelves and smash like the fallout from the ghosts of Christmas past. Frustrated youths take out their anger on empty wooden buildings (setting fire to them) and are all apparently unable to hold a conversation. In the end one of them walks off silently into the ‘fjäll’ (in a singlet, in June – apparently a local who doesn’t know he’ll be eaten alive by mosquitoes) taking with him a shotgun and a very bitter expression. He shoots a reindeer, wallows in the mud, is rescued by girl fairies, and generally mans up a bit, before walking back to town.

I don’t recognise this Kiruna at all, but I recognise the stereotypes. At the end a young man goes to work in the mine by descending in a lift cage. Putting aside that there are no lifts in the mine in Kiruna, the suggestion that life down the mine is one of imprisonment in hard physical labour is a bit wide off the mark, given that for most people getting physical in the mine these days means manipulating a joy stick.

‘Tenderness’ is the translation of the film title. The film’s insight was that in this hard, macho town, some men still have a tender side. Well – who’d have thought it?

You wouldn’t have thought we’d have such trouble finding a Christmas tree…and yet, we’re still searching. We can live without one, but we run a bed and breakfast, people are coming for Christmas, they’ll want a tree, surely?

We think people in Kiruna all know someone who knows someone who owns a bit of forest area. Or they have no qualms about going out into a forest area and getting one for themselves. There was a rumour of trees for sale a week ago, but we never saw any. Yesterday I saw a sign advertising them – we hot footed it round to a house nearby to find the most dismal selection of needle-less excuses for trees you’ve ever seen. The man looked almost relieved when we declined to buy one.

Today’s hope was a Christmas market in the nearby village of Kurravaara. The reason we had hopes is that this is an area where many people have small summer houses and take an interest in growing things, so there is a small ‘garden centre’ there. Surely, I reasoned, Christmas trees will be part of their business?

We set out with high hopes in a chilly minus 17 degrees. You notice instantly when it dips below minus 15 degrees – when you open your mouth it’s like something sharp digs into your lungs (so obviously, you keep your mouth shut).

Driving down the small hill to the main road we looked up at the temperature reading on the shop, and it said minus 19 degrees. This is a common experience – it’s usually a few degrees warmer up the hill. I know it’s a bit counter intuitive, thinking of cold mountains, but warm air rises and the town was built on a hill for a reason.

As we drove down the road the temperature dropped another degree. I was rather regretting my choice of clothing. Knowing Christmas markets, it would be very warm once we got there – a roaring log fire in a crowded old wooden building (the ‘Hembygdsgård’, an old house preserved as a sort of museum for the village) – I had put on my less warm boots and coat. The car was working hard to warm itself and us up (we hadn’t used the engine heater before we set out) and there was still no warm air on my feet.

We turned down the road to Kurravaara. It’s only a five minute drive away, but as you leave Kiruna behind it feel as if you’re driving into a wilderness. It’s a frosty winter scene, a forested area (unlike most areas around Kiruna) with pine trees stretching into the cold pale blue sky. The pale pink outline of the moon was already visible. Rolf was reading off the temperature from the dial in front of him. As the road slowly wound down to the village he started to sound like the captain of a diving submarine.

‘…minus 22’

…minus 28′

‘…minus 32’

Enough already, I knew how cold my toes were. ‘I guess they won’t be holding the market outside then.’

But he continued, ‘….minus 34.’

I was looking forward to getting near that log fire. We drove up to the ‘Hembygdsgård’ but, suspiciously, there wasn’t a car in sight. We saw there was a sign on the door, but even then I couldn’t guess what it was going to say.

I never thought there would be a occasion in this part of the world when the cold stopped play, but there it was. ‘Cancelled due to the cold.’

What’s the matter with these people? It was only minus 38 degrees!

Now it’s Polar Night I sleep a lot, and I sleep very deeply. There’s a warm glow along the horizon late morning and then after that it’s very very dark for a long long time. So many unconscious hours, thinking or dreaming, drifting on an ocean of sleep….

Last night, I drifted on the high seas back to my childhood in Edgware in north London, to the journey to school, in a dark rumbling underground tunnel, rattling from station to station, and in between nothing but empty darkness. The northern line, a dark transport route between times of my life. School in Mill Hill, office work in Barnet, my first proper job in Moorgate, bedsits in Hampstead, my very own flat at the Angel Islington. As I revisited all these periods of my life, the train screeching into each station, my sense of claustrophobia increased, the curving ceiling only a few centimetres bigger than the train itself, pressing down on me like the roof of a monumental tomb. And ahead of us was only the enveloping darkness of the tunnel. I ran out onto the platform, up the escalator and eventually came out blinking onto the bright streets of Kings Cross.

I woke and stumbled into the light of the kitchen to get some water, then returned to bed to sink back into sleep.

I was walking along a long cold corridor, which I noted was surprisingly light, very white in fact, and maybe made of snow and ice. Behind me were some friends, following closely in a tight line, looking anxiously over their shoulders and clutching arms across chests in an attempt to keep warm. From the corner of my eye I noticed red ribbons in my hair, and on my feet were flat black strappy shoes, not my usual choice of footwear at all. I was wearing a child’s blue party dress, with a white apron on top. I made a mental note to get changed at the first opportunity.

There were many long white tunnels, and at the end of one of them was a large block of ice, looking like some kind of bar. Resting on this ice bar were several small blocks of ice, each of them containing a bright coloured liquid. My friends and I looked at each other, and then at the drinks, and then at one another again. Each of the drinks had a label with a name, and the words, ‘Drink Me’. I picked up a bright purple one called ‘Death in the Arctic’. Someone else picked up an orange one, ‘Sami Dreams’. We raised our ice glasses and took several sips. The next time I looked the glasses were all empty, and melting slowly on top of the bar. We continued down the corridor, single file. Hurrying down the other side of the tunnel we met a man dressed from head to toe in red.

‘Are you having a wonderful time?’ he asked, with a smile so broad it seemed to reach right round his head.

A little taken aback by his direct line in questioning, I replied ‘well yes, thankyou sir.’

Then, wondering who he was, I continued, ‘- only, I’ve just arrived here, you see, and they told me I couldn’t go any further along this corridor, and I do so want to see what is at the end of it!’

He cocked his head to one side, opened his eyes very wide, and said, ‘Follow me!’ Then he disappeared, scarlet coat tails flying up behind him, as he went around the corner. I followed as fast as I could and became quite out of breath. Finally he stopped next to a wide doorway with a small black curtain and no door. I panted a bit, trying to catch my breath.

Thinking about that drink I’d had earlier, I wondered if I was going to start getting very very small, or maybe become very very big, and if I became very very big I wouldn’t be able to fit through the doorway and I did so want to see what was through the doorway.

‘Now,’ said the man, ‘catch your breath. You’ll have to catch your breath or you’ll never catch your train.’

‘If I’d wanted to catch a train,’ I replied, ‘ I would have set a trap and looked up to see what its daily habits were so I could take it by surprise.’

The man frowned. ‘Now listen carefully,’ he said. ‘If you want to catch this train you’ll have to stand very still indeed.’

‘Well that’s a strange kind of train,’ I said, ‘usually they move rather fast.’

‘Well you’re right there,’ said the man, ‘it’s a very special kind of train. You won’t see it moving because it moves so fast you can’t see it, you see?’ I wasn’t sure I did see, but I nodded anyway.

‘You think that living here in the north of Sweden you’re a thousand miles from your home in London, but this train can take you there, in an instant!’ And he beamed. That smile again, spreading into his ears. He pointed at the sign next to the doorway.

I read it: it said, ‘Mind the Gap’.

‘Now follow me!’ he called urgently, pulling aside a black curtain and disappearing through the doorway.

I took a step behind him, and peered behind the curtain. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

The northern line had come to Kiruna!

The underground attendant was hurrying people onto the train. I pushed past him into the carriage. Remembering what the man in red had said, once I got in I stood very still. It wasn’t like the northern line of my childhood at all, it was so silent. My friends had settled themselves onto the reindeer skin-covered bed on one side of the carriage. Next time I looked, we were in Leicester Square, and then, in an instant we were back in Kiruna! The man in red was there to greet us on the platform.

‘You didn’t expect that did you?’ he said. ‘You see, you’ve got to learn to look at the spaces between things…..you’ve got to learn to……’

(Here his voice trailed off. On the platform he seemed to be dematerialising before our eyes. His legs and body had mostly disappeared, just leaving his shoulders and head……)

‘……MIND THE GAP’ we shouted at him in unison from inside the carriage.

All that was left of the man in red was his broad smile, now floating over the underground train like a red crescent moon.

No no, come back, we’re not finished yet, I thought. But he’d gone.

We stumbled on down the white corridor, not looking to right or left. As we passed one of the many doorways covered only by a curtain, a hand reached out and pulled me through. I landed inside on the ice floor, and my friends all piled in on top of me. When we’d sorted out all our arms and legs, I looked around for the hand that was responsible. It was smoothing down a piece of ice on a column, attached to an arm attached to a person who looked over his shoulder at me and said, ‘Mind how you go, it’s very slippy in here you know..’. Then he turned back to concentrate on his work.

‘Excuse me, sir,’ I said, ‘but can you tell us the way out of here? Only, we’ve been walking down very many ice corridors so we’re really quite tired now and all in need of some tea.’ It was only then that I noticed that the man was sitting in a wooden rowing boat. Occasionally he would move an oar forward and backwards, before leaning over the side to concentrate on smoothing down another piece of ice.

‘You’ll not find any tea round here,’ he said gently, ‘just lots of water.’

‘I can’t see any water,’ I said, ‘and I don’t know how you came here in that boat without it.’

‘Please,’ said the gentle man, ‘do hop in and join me. Yes all of you, come on now, careful not to rock the boat too much as you step in.’ When we had all found somewhere to sit, he continued. ‘Now, observe the room around you and tell me what you see.’

‘That’s an easy game,’ I said enthusiastically, ‘I’ll go first….Now, let me see…..Well, there are lots of ice columns reaching up to the ceiling, and the columns are all carved and very beautiful, and on some of them there’s another piece of ice sticking out at right angles to it, into the air. And over there is a bed made of ice with a reindeer skin on top.’

‘Is that all?’ said the gentle man.

‘Well yes, I think so….’

‘You think so! I think not! Can’t you see all the WATER???’

He waved his arm around a lot, as if pointing at the water. I looked rather desperately at my friends, wondering what to say next. ‘Can’t you see the wide river flowing down from the ceiling to the floor? The waterfall over the side of the bed, and the deep pool of water over there by the entrance?’

I looked around me but sadly could see none of these things. I didn’t want to disappoint him though. ‘Well it is maybe a bit drippy over there.’ I pointed at where he’d been smoothing down the ice.

‘No,’ he said. ‘No no no, you just don’t get it do you? Let me explain….. See this column here? This column is water. It looks like ice, but really it’s moving water. And what’s more, it’s moving very very slowly. In fact it’s moving so slowly that we can’t see it move at all. All the time we’re standing here the ceiling is becoming fractionally lower, the columns are becoming fractionally thinner, the beams are sinking fractionally lower. It’s an illusion you see. It looks static, but it isn’t. But over time, you will see what it really is because everything here will change shape. I call it, SOLID FLOW.’

The gentle man pointed out the slight bend in the column. ‘And soon,’ he said,’ you will see it begin to collapse, and then we will all have seen The Flow…’.

‘Well I hope very much it doesn’t collapse when we’re in here,’ I said, rather alarmed.

‘No need to worry, it won’t really collapse you know, just move a bit, sideways, inwards, outwards, any which ways….’ and the gentle man began to twirl round on one foot, dancing between his moving columns, and jumping out at us from unexpected directions until it made my head quite dizzy.

Then the gentle man put my hands round his waist and indicated for my friends to join the tail, and we danced around the columns like a snake, singing,

‘We’re all just going with the flow….’ to the tune of ‘Auld Lang Syne’. The snake slithered around the room and out the doorway, down the corridor, round the bend and

. . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . all

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . way

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . down

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . to

. . . . . . . . . . . . the

. . . . . . river

where

. . . . . . it

. . . . . .. . . . . . swam away

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . downstream.

THE END.

New art suites at Ice Hotel 2013

The Ice Hotel opened its doors to the world yesterday (although some of it is not yet finished…) A few of the art suites were open for viewing, and we were lucky enough to be given a guided tour of two of them by the artists who had made them. As someone who was born next to the northern line in London and has lived near it most of my life, I was particularly pleased to find there is now a northern line station in Kiruna.

The northern line underground train is called ‘Mind the Gap’, and was designed and made by Marcus Dillistone and Magdalena Åkers. Marcus kindly talked with us about the work involved, describing the technically difficulties in building this shape for use as an ice room. He had had to use more ice than snow in the design to make it stable. In choosing this subject for his design he wanted to draw attention to contrasting objects in a city and in a natural landscape that can also have things in common (a tube train, and an igloo).

Marcus Dillistone (right) explains how he made the ice tube train.

The bending columns room is called ‘Solid Flow’, and was designed and made by Jens Dyvik, and Yoad David Luxembourg. David was there to share his vision for the room with us. After several years of making ice art suites he wanted to show how the ice moves, how it is as much in control as the artist. He asks people to take photos of it during the coming months and share them as ‘#capture 317’.

Yoad David Luxembourg (below, second from left) described how the ice moves.

The days really are short now – today, two hours and forty four minutes to be precise. No danger of missing the sunrise anymore, since it’s so slow in coming. Then there’s a huge push to get out before it’s dark again.

I know I should feel a bit deprived and depressed about all this, but it’s a funny thing, you really appreciate the few daylight hours you have. It doesn’t even matter if it’s a gloomy day. Besides with the sunrise and sunset so close together there’s always something wonderful happening in the sky.

We also have several hours of twilight, so it isn’t dark immediately. But then it really is dark – pitch black and it’s only 2pm. The body has to realise that this is the middle of the day, not the night, and keep going. I’ve been trying to train it not to go to sleep by taking it off to the swimming pool. It objects, but we get through, and afterwards we’re ready to face the rest of the day – or night, rather.

The darkness is the time to do things like shopping, DIY, snow shovelling, anything practical. You can do most things in Kiruna in the dark because it has an enormous amount of electric light. Even more now, in the run up to Christmas. It was ahead of the game in 1910, having electric lighting when it was still only something for the very rich. I don’t think the town ever got over the feeling that more electric light is luxurious – even these days when there are so many visitors squinting around it trying to see the northern lights.

Those elusive northern lights – they’re more luxurious than anything. They appeared last night. We were very tired and didn’t feel like rushing out somewhere darker, so kept an eye on the ‘Kiruna All Sky Camera’ shot on the computer screen. At first they were only faintly visible in the northern sky, and we knew we wouldn’t see that from our house. (The northern sky is behind the town where there’s too much light pollution.) Then they obligingly moved east, and then south – perfect for viewing in the back yard. On went all the clothes and boots and we threw ourselves outside as fast as we could.

I always say, it isn’t what it looks like, it’s how it moves that’s so intoxicating. There was a wide green rainbow stretching from south to north and falling behind the house. A slightly waving, wafting, floating sort of rainbow. I thought I’d try the camera, since the bow of light seemed fairly stable in the sky, and we’ve still not cracked how to take photos of aurora. Everyone else goes away with photos in their little cameras, and we who live here never have anything to show for it. I took a few snaps.

When it had all died down (after about ten minutes) we came in, took off all the clothing, and had a look at what I’d photographed. You could just about make out the green in the picture, but it wasn’t very impressive, and it didn’t move.

Within ten minutes it had reappeared, but in a different form. On went the clothes and boots again. This time the aurora was definitely in the south, much stronger, and moving much more noticeably. Normally I’m too focussed watching to think about the camera, but this time I was determined to see if I could learn how to use it, so in between ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ I took quick snaps.

Then I started to laugh. I can’t easily explain this. The northern lights can come across as having a character, a playful will, that’s human, but at the same time, not. Tonight there was a ghostly, playful puppy up there, pushing light balls ahead of it with its soft nose, then watching the balls explode, like in a cartoon, then nudging one more. While we were watching a ball would appear in another part of the sky where we weren’t looking. This puppy was playing with us.

Then the cloud cover rolled in and that was the end of the show. Back inside, off with the clothes and boots, and put the memory card in the computer to see what images there were.

Memory card – ah yes, the little black plasticky thing, the squarish thin thingy with small writing on the front, that thingy lying on the table. Somehow it never got put back in the camera. The playful puppy had gone too far this time.

I’m learning a lot about Kiruna’s history at the moment. Pouring over library books, I’m beginning to piece together a clear picture of the town, and I wish it hadn’t been so difficult. There’s nowhere in Kiruna you can go to learn about the history of the town – no museum. It’s as if the town is somehow ashamed of its history. I’m sure no-one would say they were though, that’s the funny thing.

All the history you can stumble over, if you’re lucky and it happens to be open, is what’s at ‘Hjalmar Lundbohms gård’, the building where the first director of the mine lived. There, and in the new ‘Gruvstadsparken’ (the newly created ‘buffer zone’ between the town and the mine) there are some photos of Kiruna’s first inhabitants, the first baby born, christened ‘Kiruna’, a few more photos of Lundbohm and his associates in those early mining days, and some photos of the workers building the railway to Narvik. That’s it. The guide at the Lundbohm’s old home said, ‘poor little Kiruna, she had such a terrible life…’

(Above: ‘Poor little Kiruna’…..)

The history of the town is a lot more interesting than that though. In 1900 there were already three distinct areas marked out, one for the mining company and its workers, one for the railway company and its workers, and one for the rest of the town. In just a couple of years Kiruna saw an explosion of incomers – both people visiting (the state had an interest in the mine so ‘the great and the good’ made the journey up here in open rail trucks to see what was going on). There was a gold rush feeling for a while, a scrabbling for land and resources. A worker here could earn four to six times as much as they could further south, and the new town offered huge opportunities for new businesses. A town plan was drawn up in 1900, and we can see that the street we live in now – not built on until around 1920 – was already laid out in that plan.

If you’ve been paying attention to my blog entries (and why would you?) then you’ll remember we glory in the street name ‘Tvärgatan’, which means ‘contrary street’ – and we feel a bit contrary, don’t mind being different, so it suits us rather well. The angle of the street is different to the streets around it (as shown even in the 1900 plan) so we assumed that was the reason for the name. A few months ago we complained to the council that there was no street sign.

Well, glory be! After waiting four months, our street now has a sign with its name. And the name, we now find out, means…. ‘one of the many streets going in another direction to the main street’. It turns out that from 1900, all the streets off the main drag were called ‘Tvärgatan’. It was what they were called before they got a real name. So we’ve been fighting to get a sign put up which really says, ‘the street which never really got a name’. Great.

I’ve also been reading a ‘who’s who’ guide to street names here. Significant characters in Kiruna’s past have had streets named after them. It was 1988 when people noticed that not one street was named after a woman, and the first (and only) woman to be so honoured was ‘Syster Mia’, who was a thoroughly resourceful district nurse who was by all accounts unstoppable, obeyed without question by the staff who worked with her and the patients who crossed her path.

There were plenty of women involved with the founding of the town, who have disappeared in the history books. One such woman must be Anna Mesch, wife of the famous photographer Borg Mesch, who was here from Kiruna’s first days, photographed most of its inhabitants and events, and was involved in setting up almost every local organisation. His wife was dragged up here to the frozen north, where he fancied a bit of adventure and mountain climbing. She worked in his photography studio and raised five children while he was out gallivanting around the ‘fjäll’ or enjoying trips to Stockholm for dinners out with his mates.

So, let’s rename our street, the street that doesn’t really have a name, ‘Anna Mesch street’.

In these parts the Ice Hotel wields considerable power and influence, which is understandable given what a large and successful tourist business it is. So it shouldn’t be a surprise that its influence strays into less obvious areas – the weather, for instance.

I exaggerate a little maybe – its influence has probably not reached us here in Kiruna – but out in the village of Jukkasjärvi people are living in a low-lying, cold mist, as if blown in from some distant sea, and it’s the Ice Hotel that’s to blame.

Lots of ‘snice’ (snow and ice) is needed to bind together the ice blocks, and to create this just add water to snow. Huge machines shoot water into the air, falling as soft ‘snice’, which must be like play-doh for the builders. The humidity spreads all over the surrounding areas, creating cold damp conditions and soft luminous skies. Snice. Thirty thousand tons of it.

There’s an excitement around this time at the site of the Ice Hotel. You watch it take shape, the tractors moving the blocks into place, the walls of ‘snice’ appearing around huge metal arches. I get the feeling that people involved in its creation see it as a performance. Will it be ‘alright on the night’?

Perhaps it’s because it’s different every year that it keeps its buzz. You could easily be cynical about it – the money that pours into it, and the inevitable marketing ‘hype’ that pours out – but it’s always got an element of freshness about it. The beauty of the ice, the setting, the weirdness of it all never fails to win us over.

We were showing some people around the village this morning, and after watching the building works at the Ice Hotel, we recommended a visit to the local church up the road. It’s a sharp contrast, moving from the ice hotel to the old church. For one thing, it’s a lot warmer (Swedish churches are great places to get warm).

Mainly though, it’s a building which has existed for five centuries, rather than five months. The ice church (which is built every year as part of the ice hotel) officially belongs to this old church – it is consecrated each year, and is used for (short) services and weddings. The local priest moves between the two, changing into suitable clothing for the indoor climate she meets. Very old, very warm; very new, very cold.

So let the show begin – in a week’s time the Ice Hotel (and ice church) opens its reindeer skin-covered doors to the public. In the meantime, at this time of year, I’m very glad I’m living in Kiruna, and not in the cold, sea mist that is Jukkasjärvi.

Patience is a virtue in Kiruna. It’s very widely known that the town will have to move over the coming years because of growing subsidence from the mining activities. As you approach Kiruna from the east there’s a big sign by the road showing a woman and a man in hard hats, with the slogan, ‘This is where we are building the New Kiruna’. So far, no sign of any building, but I’ll keep you posted.

I must be fair. There are some new flats being built to help deal with the problem of the blocks of flats soon to be demolished. Some of these are being built by the mine company, and some by the local council. That’s 500 new flats that are really needed, and we’re all hoping they’ll be built in time.

One of the areas where flats are being built is called ‘Terassen’. Here they’re building two tower blocks of flats. Strangely, these are being built on the exact site of two tower blocks of flats that were knocked down five years ago because they’d stood empty for too long. It’s a confusing picture – we’re all trying to keep up.

There has been much razzmatazz over competitions – to design the new Kiruna, and for the design of the new town hall building.

The town hall design that won the competition is ‘Kristallen’. On the architect’s illustration it looks like a spaceship, so was no doubt strongly influenced by Richard Branson’s plans to launch space flights from the town. The illustration shows Kiruna’s residents looking at this building in amazement, as if a UFO just landed. It’s a large round white building with a central rocket sticking out the top (ok, I made that up about the rocket). It would be good if the real thing arrived that way too.

‘Kiruna-4-ever’ is the name of the winning entry for the new town design. It sounds like a club for 13 year-olds, but maybe that’s just my prejudice. I fear we’ll all have to wear ‘I love Kiruna’ badges and sit on pink fluffy sofas to live there. There are sci-fi type cable cars and lots of white buildings which will disappear in the snow. (This could be useful if any of them feel the need to hide.) Anyway, so far so good, there’s some kind of plan.

The local council is very excited by the plan and is telling us it’s ‘all systems go’. So far it’s been a slow start, but I suspect they’ve been in training, carefully deciding on the right approach, knowing that psychology is so important when it comes to getting the public on your side. I think (and it’s just my point of view this) there’s a distinctly ‘Gestalt’ aspect to the way they’re going about things – an awareness of ‘figure’ and ‘background’, if you know what I mean.

If you don’t, let me explain. It’s the idea (in ‘Gestalt’ theory) that when we look at something we see an object – the ‘figure’ – rather than what’s around it – ‘the background’. It’s possible for people to help us see the background instead of the figure by the way it’s presented, and so that must be what Kiruna council are trying to do. To illustrate, here’s a picture of a fancy vase, which might also be two people talking…

So you see, maybe we’re all focussing on the wrong thing. Stupidly, we’ve been looking for some sign of them building the new town, when really we should have been looking at all the lovely space they’ve been busy planning in and around it.

Of course, as shown in the picture above, it isn’t easy to see this negative space (‘background’) if you can’t yet see the buildings (‘the figure’). So I guess we’ll just have to imagine where the buildings will be. That’s where the patience bit comes in.