Letters from 68 degrees, Kiruna

We’ve been away a while. The grass at the back of the house is so high it’s impenetrable, so there’s no way a lawnmower will deal with it. If we had one, that is, which we don’t. So we went in search of a ‘lie’ (pronounced ‘lee-ah’).

A ‘lie’ is a good old fashioned scythe – the kind you have to be careful not to chop other people’s legs off with, and the kind featured in Bergman’s films on the shoulder of the angel of death. I didn’t like the idea, but having been brought up in farmland, where attacking a meadow with a ‘lie’ is child’s play, Rolf reassured me that he would have no trouble using one without endangering my legs or summoning the angel of death.

To our great surprise the local hardware shop in Kiruna didn’t have one. The owner was sympathetic but his face said ‘we don’t get much call for them these days’. We went to the DIY supermarket and all they had was a ‘lie’ handle – the blade would have to be ordered. When they told us the price we wondered if we could just get to like the grass wilderness instead. That had originally been our plan when we moved here, suspecting the grass would be a problem while we were away, but we’d soon realised that a wildflower meadow becomes a birch scrub and in town that’s all that separates you from the encroaching wilderness. Buying an all-singing, all-dancing lawnmower is the favoured option, but if you’re away, as we were, at the key growing time – when the snow melts away and the sun shines longer and then shines all night – then you’ve missed any chance of using a lawnmower. A ‘lie’ it would have to be.

We asked our neighbour. Anyone she knew who needed a ‘lie’ already had one, handed down from their father or their father’s father, so it wasn’t immediately obvious to her where you would go to buy one. But she suggested Vittangi, a small village about an hour’s drive east of Kiruna, where a degree of isolation has kept people feisty and independent and no doubt fond of their ‘lie’.

We like Vittangi, so it seemed an ideal outing for a sunny day. It was 24 degrees of heat in fact. The landscape glowed with colour – the stimulation of 24 hours of daylight accelerates growing and gives a once frozen landscape real green energy. The drive there was on the main road out of Kiruna (there are only two roads out) and although on some parts you encounter the occasional mine lorry, there’s lots of empty road stretching ahead of you into forest, so it’s pleasant drive.

Arriving in Vittangi we suddenly remembered ‘closed for the summer holidays’. In a small community that’s the normal practice in July, and most of the shops there were closed. But we were in luck – the hardware store was only ‘closed for lunch’. So we drove down towards the river to wait somewhere.

The Torne river is very wide in Vittangi. The skyscape is grand and expansive, water below in all directions, sky above. We found a small spit of land reaching out into the river (water on all sides) where we parked ourselves on some fold-up chairs for our lunch. It was blissfully warm, and silent. The water was almost millpond still; quite recently it had been ice. Pike snapped at the surface among the reeds, making us turn our heads, surprising us with a sudden break in the silence. It was enough to help dismiss thoughts of blue water being good for swimming.

We were in a good mood by the time we returned to the hardware store. There were no other customers there. It was a cavern of a place, stacked with several models of the vehicle of choice for this time of year (a quad bike) and spare parts for the vehicle of choice another time of year (a snowscooter). A man rose to greet us, and we asked about a ‘lie’. No, he hadn’t had one of those in stock for a couple of years, sorry. No explanation, no suggested alternative, no offer to order one. Pity we weren’t after a quad bike. It was disappointing to say the least. With nothing else to do, we drove out of town looking for adventure and, failing that, for somewhere to stop and have some coffee out of our thermos flask.

Our first stop was scenic enough – right by a lake in a clearing in a forest. The natural world at our feet. But the ants there had a mission to find and destroy, and were crawling determinedly up our legs within twenty seconds. Time to move on.

Our next stop we’d rejected earlier because it looked like it might have been private summer houses, but on closer inspection it was a public area, with pontoons out into the water and no-one in sight. The pontoons were on the edge of a wide lake surrounded on all sides by low forest. There were small benches of soft pine to stretch out on and we wondered if these were primarily for fishing. The water lapped invitingly against the rocks. I was resistant to swimming, as I have been ever since 1997, when I jumped in one summer’s day and leapt out again five seconds later. I hadn’t had a dip in the arctic chill since that day.

I went in. It was cold, but not painfully so. The water was clear and clean, and yet it had a strong primeval fishy aroma which reminded me I was not in my element. It always feels a bit threatening, being the only person in a large body of water, and in particular arctic water has always felt off limits, so I was nervous. I wondered if the fish were ravenous and might mistake me for giant bait. After all, they’d had a rough winter. What monsters might lurk in this deep? Pushing the thought aside I swam out a bit more, and then, sensing the degree of cold, I got out and dried myself in the sun. It was hard to believe we were in the arctic. We drank our coffee and felt happy.

Then at the distant clearing a car drew up and two men got out. Would this be paradise lost? When they saw us they walked to the other pontoon. At the bench and table there they silently ate lunch and read newspapers for ten minutes or so. And then they left. Some people are lucky enough to work where they can come to places like this for a bit of lunch, and don’t even feel the need to look up from their papers.

Another hour or so passed, in almost total silence. It had been a day we meant to get a ‘lie’, anxious to regain control over the growing wilderness in our garden. Lying on the pontoon looking out at the lake, the untamed marshlands and the low spreading birch forest, a ‘lie’ seemed rather irrelevant.

Most days are clear and sunny. The prevailing wind direction brings cloud in from Norway and leaves it hanging over the mountains to the west, discharging yet more layers of snow over the peaks. The cloud rarely reaches Kiruna, so days are not only light but sparkling, since there’s no softening layer of humidity to dull down the sun’s rays. The sunlight is what Swedes would call ‘strålande’ – streaming light that is impossible to ignore. The impact is physical as well as psychological – the longer days of bright light are quite exhausting after the months of darkness.

When I poke my head out the door in the morning I can hear a variety of birdsong. The temperature is still mostly below freezing, and can dip down to the minus 20s, but can also come up above freezing in the daytime. Only the very top layers of snow are melting – the piles are massive, especially this winter when the snow arrived in large quantities in November. A photograph would show no sign of spring to someone from more southern countries – there is no green visible.

Although the deep snow may become a little unreliable soon, it’s still ‘good to go’. The ice is thick on the lakes and reliable for many weeks yet. The Ice Hotel has just closed for business, but for the last two weeks you could have stayed in its ice rooms for a fraction of the price it charges the rest of the winter season.

It’s the peak season for walking on the lakes, enjoying the sunshine, doing a bit of ice fishing. This weekend hundreds of keen ice fishers took part in the annual competition to catch the biggest fish. This sport requires them to sit, or preferably lie (on a warm reindeer skin), on the ice, and wait for a fish to bite. It’s peaceful, like cricket in the summer.

As we walk out onto the lake I’m hit by vivid memories of going to the beach on holiday in England. Rolf is carrying what passes as ‘deckchairs’ – small foldeable canvas chairs to keep us off the ice – while I carry a large bag with lunch, suntan cream, bottles of squash and a thermos of coffee. We’re in search of the perfect spot – out of the wind but in the sun. Sometimes our determined pace is slowed by having to wade over sand dunes – well no, snow dunes of course – and sometimes our eyes are drawn to patterns in the water created by its movement against the rocks, in this case frozen patterns. In the distance we see other determined figures on the beach, also in search of that elusive perfect spot. There are family groups, probably arguing over who forgot to pack the sandwiches, but blissfully at this distance we can’t hear them. This beach is big enough to accommodate whoever comes on to it, and it’s always easy to head away from ‘the crowds’. Snowscooters pass, also in the distance, like boats passing by, only noisier. When they have gone we’re returned to the silence, as we stretch back on our chairs squinting into the sun.

It’s light, lighter every day than further south, and the flat earth top lengthens the twilight hours. For aurora watchers the bad news is that it’s only dark for three or four hours. The good news is that the aurora is generally more active in the autumn and in the spring, so your chances of seeing it are higher in those few hours that are available. We drove the car out to Abisko one night last week. The ‘fjäll’ region looks different in the dark, and we were lucky that night the sky was completely clear and I have never seen so many stars – the milky way almost lit up the night. We were parked where we could see the ‘Aurora Sky Station’ on Nuolla, the hill behind the village. The Sky Station is shut now – it closed at the end of March – but the aurora were clear to see from where we were standing, flashing over the whole sky and over the Sky Station’s darkened ski lift.

The end of March and the first half of April really is the best time of year and we never like to miss it. So it’s peak season, right? Well no actually. In fact there are very few visitors here. I guess we have to market it a bit better in future. Or maybe we just keep it to ourselves.

When I was a child the happiest day was when ‘Bunty’ popped through the letterbox. ‘Bunty’, a comic for girls, whose characters were my friends and who always triumphed in the end, beat the bully, and won the affection of all their classmates. Since then, as an adult I haven’t felt the same excitement when hearing a loud thump of something being delivered through the front door.

In Kiruna, of course, nothing is delivered through the front door – it’s delivered to a mailbox on the road. It’s a sad thing to lift the lid and find nothing in it. I wish it had a light on it which flashed when something was inside, to save me the pain and embarrassment of going there to see the inside of an empty box. But there is one day a week when what’s in the mailbox sets my pulse racing – the delivery of Kiruna’s ‘Annonsblad’.

A cross between ‘Exchange and Mart’, a community newsletter and a local parish magazine, ‘Annonsblad’ ought not to be of much interest. It’s mainly advertising – mostly special offers on sausages or woolly underwear – so it ought to be something that goes straight in the bin. But we really treasure it. Hidden in its pages are insights into local life which, when you see them, are like spotting a flash of gold at the bottom of a running stream.

It would spoil the pleasure if there was no effort involved, so the effort is wading through the commercial advertising, not letting your eye be fooled into thinking that that small box down there is just another advertisement for salami.

This week, skipping through the ads for holidays in Turkey, local potatoes, sports wear, reindeer steaks, leather furniture, and a page of announcements of church services, I came across some small boxes advertising the date and time of various annual meetings of local organisations. There was one for the meeting of an organisation that looks after a museum of local buildings. Another organisation having an AGM seems to have been set up to manage a piece of open land (this meeting would take place in the ‘conference tent’). Advertisements in ‘Annonsblad’ often begin as puzzles – there was an AGM announced for an organisation which had the name of two local hills, something to do with burials. We managed to work out that it’s an organisation set up by mine workers’ unions to help people save to cover funeral costs.

Moving swiftly on to births, marriages and deaths (‘congratulations, hugs and kisses to three year old Ludvig, from Mamma, Pappa and Spiderman’) and what children will get for lunch in local schools this week (meatballs on Monday, fried herring on Friday). The local government is looking for anyone speaking fluent Arabic or Somali, to ‘provide society orientation for our new Swedes’. There’s a box announcing the temporary closure of a snowscooter route (possibly due to exploration by the local mining company, though this is not stated), and an advertisement inviting people to donate their used electric equipment to a recycling workshop. The library advertises itself with the question, ‘Are you looking for poems to express grief or faith?’ (well, I suppose it is Easter) and the financial advice bureau reminds us that ‘Life is the biggest gift, and we are given it for free’. There’s a large advertisement for the next Council meeting and a reminder that if you don’t feel like attending, and would like to find another way to punish yourself (my words not theirs), you can listen to the whole meeting on local radio.

Almost half a page of small black print is headlined ‘Rocket launch from Esrange’. Esrange is a rocket range and research centre north of Kiruna. The advertisement announces their intention to launch a rocket in the next week, and it details the radio frequencies on which, at set times of the day, you can find out if the launch is imminent. If it is, and you have the misfortune to be in the area at the time, it reminds you that there are some shelters. It describes the extent of the area that might be affected by jetsam from the rocket launch – this area includes the village of Vittangi, but they tell people not to worry as they won’t really be affected (really?). Finally they ask the public to ring a special number if someone finds any rocket bits, and there’s a reward for the first person who rings.

Please sir, can I have my rocket back? Pure gold.

Someone staying here had the good fortune to see elk from the roadside, and afterwards said to me, ‘They’re ugly, aren’t they?’ I was a bit taken aback. I think elk are charming, characterful creatures, and I’m puzzled as to what constitutes ‘ugly’ when it comes to animals. It’s true, elk don’t look like babies or kittens. They’re a cross between a donkey, a horse, and ‘Bottom’ (a man with a donkey’s head on in ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’). I feel like Titania and could fall in love with an elk, stroking his long silky nose and ruffling his ears.

Elk are large animals, and sometimes they’re hard to spot out in the forest or on the open landscape because they look like tree trunks. On the road at twilight they can cross suddenly so you don’t see them until they’re lying sprawled on your bonnet. It’s the most common road accident in Sweden and after such a collision your car will look at least as bad as the elk. As a motorist there are a few things that help – ‘Elk Warning’ signs for instance. Elk are obliging creatures and seem to stick to these limits when crossing the roads.

By the way, an elk here is what is known as a ‘moose’ in Canada, where an ‘elk’ is not a moose but is really a reindeer. Hope that’s clear now.

Once a year elk are hunted. There are strict quotas for killing elk, and you have to belong to recognised team of hunters who, as a team, have the right to kill a certain number of elk in a particular area. The hunting season is in September, and whereas the week before elk wander freely along the roadside, you won’t see one during the hunting season. They’re well tuned-in to the annual rhythm of slaughter, and know when to taunt hunters out of season, idling nearby without a care in the world.

An elk close up gives the impression of having a laughing face. Their nose has white marking on it like a smile, so it’s hard for me at least not to see them as very friendly animals. I was admiring a friendly elk head yesterday, after we had screeched to a halt at the roadside, when Rolf informed me that the nose is a Chinese culinary delicacy. Elk nose. It’s beyond me, but then I don’t eat meat so I couldn’t possibly understand the attraction.

I have long had the idea that some elk seen at a distance are really the man from the local tourist office in a zip-up costume. I’m convinced that elk used to be more shy than they are these days. I lived in Sweden for many years before I saw my first elk, whereas now I can direct people to a particular stretch of road and be almost sure they will see them.

This is very convenient for local tour companies who offer ‘wildlife safaris’. These involve driving down a particular road in the hope of seeing elk. If the tourists don’t see elk then they pay one fee, and if they do, they pay more – sort of ‘payment-by-results’ tourism. I wonder what constitutes a sighting? I mean, if your tour guide sees one but you don’t, do you have to pay more anyway? And what if you think it’s really a motionless tree trunk, but your tour guide assures you it’s really an elk, do you pay up?

It’s not just the tour companies that are getting clever about this. A few years ago a very young elk was found wandering at the side of the main road outside Vittangi, a small town an hour or so’s drive from here. There’s a Moose Park in Vittangi where tourists are able to come close to elk and learn about them and how they live. This young abandoned elk was welcomed into the bosom of the Moose Park family, duly christened ‘Mooses’, and has been the main attraction ever since. You can’t help wondering why its mother abandoned him, and why there in particular, in such a convenient spot for rescue and for a lifetime’s protection from the elk hunter. She probably thought it was the very best start in life any mother could give him.

I am a parasite, I admit it. When it comes to walking on snow, there’s only one way to go and that is where someone else has boldly gone the day before (and the day before, and the day before that, since it is repeated use that makes snow harden). I am a leech on other people’s activity – they ski or drive their snowmobile onto the lake or into the forest and I then make use of their smooth compact path.

I know you’re thinking, what about snowshoes? Some people come here believing they can’t walk anywhere without them. Tour companies then encourage them to hire the wretched things, or worse still they sell ‘snowshoe walking tours’. People on these tours have a thoroughly miserable time tramping around in snow, and resolve that their next tour will be one where they’re propelled forward by an engine (snowscooter) or pulled vigorously from in front (husky dogs), all achieved in a seated position far away from contact with snow. Looking at a couple of unfortunates in snowshoes out on the lake the other day I wondered if they wondered why they were the only people around using them.

So I’ve always thought that snowshoes are for cissies, and that parasitical behaviour – walking on other people’s tracks – is much more efficient. Today we had the idea to walk up a near hill (or ‘fjäll’, as it’s called in these parts) where we had been twice before in the summer. We thought it would be interesting to see what it looks like in winter. Very soon, when the snow begins to thaw, it will be a soggy mess impossible to conquer, but now – with a bit of help from the winter passage of snowscooters – we reckoned we should be able to coast fairly easily to the top.

You have to be a bit optimistic when setting out here in the winter or you’d never do anything. The truth is it isn’t really easy to travel anywhere, except fast downhill on skis or your backside. Snow is a hindrance wherever you go and provides resistance and inconvenience, even to hard core cross-country skiers if they’re not on a prepared path. Walking on snow is hard work. Even walking on a compacted path is quite hard work after a while.

First of all you have those boots on that are mainly made for keeping your feet warm, not for walking. You don’t stride along in them, you lumber. Quite successfully, but slowly. Then there’s the angle of the compacted snow path which can make you lean uncomfortably. Then there’s the sudden unexpected small hole your foot slips into where someone before fell through the snow / got their ski pole stuck. As well as these minor obstacles, there is the problem that even a compacted path has its weak points, so if you stray just a few centimetres off the well trodden track your foot may disappear beneath you and you find yourself in snow up to your waist. It can then take a little while to haul yourself out of the pit, sometimes the next step being equally perilous.

So we knew the walk would be quite hard work, but we had plenty of time, took some lunch, and thought we could savour the moment. Savouring the moment was not something that had been possible in the summer. The speed you walk at in this environment is dictated by the season. Winter, it’s slow; summer, it’s fast. That’s because of the mosquitoes. As soon as you stop walking, or walk slowly, they settle and bite so fast walking is the only way to deal with them. Our walk in the summer had been exhaustingly speedy, an illustration of the stage direction, ‘EXIT, pursued by a bear’.

This time we looked forward to a slow but relaxing ascent, free from insects. After just ten minutes the wide comfortable snow scooter track through the snow mysteriously turned into a narrow track that had been forged by cross-country skiers. This was a shame but not a major problem. We just had to adjust our steps to fit within the narrow confines of the track – the snow was piled up on either side so we were walking in a narrow ditch. We continued on the path, drawn forward by the prospect of reaching the summit and the view. But our progress was painfully slow, and it became slower. It was uphill, hard walking, our feet sinking more and more often beneath us. There was nowhere to stop and rest and we were exhausted.

Eventually we had to admit defeat, we were not going to make the summit. Worse still we had to admit to ourselves that snowshoes, at this point, would have been extremely useful. Damn.

A recent guest complained that there weren’t many good cafés in Kiruna, and that there was only one place in town where you could get a cappuccino. That’s always the problem for visitors – they don’t know where those perfect coffee places are, and they don’t have time to look for them. Today it was a warm minus eight degrees so it was obvious we would head out somewhere along the E10 into the ‘fjäll’, the mountains that lie west of Kiruna towards the Norwegian border, to a really good place that I know for coffee.

The E10 is a road that was only built in the 1980s. Before then there was no road west of Kiruna, only the single track railway line that is still there today. It must have been devastating when they built the road, but it does mean that it is very easy to have direct access to this wonderful landscape. Because the road was built so late there is very little development – only at places that were served by the railway. Now development is largely not allowed, apart from the occasional discrete extension of a lay-by providing parking for caravans or motor homes. It’s a fantastic drive, the road following the edge of Lake Torneträsk, the mountains on one side of you in Sweden, and on the other side of the lake, in Norway.

Our drive took us about an hour and a half, quicker than usual because we were determined to resist the temptation to keep stopping to take photographs. As we approached the parking area at the start of our walk we joined a small armada of Norwegian motor homes. We remembered that today was a Norwegian bank holiday. The visiting Norwegians had made themselves at home. Some were sat out in their deckchairs on the snow, a vase of tulips placed thoughtfully on the dashboard. We got all our warm gear on and set off down to the frozen lake.

Out on the ice the walking was easier than expected. The snow layer wasn’t too thick, so we didn’t sink too much, and there was enough of it that it wasn’t slippery to walk on. As we came out from behind a wall of rock, the vast expanse of the lake lay before us, white mountains on all sides, and a swirling shifting blue white and grey sky over our heads. We have never been able to walk to the other side because the distances are so huge, but there is a rocky area jutting out into the lake where we like to go, where the main attraction is some amazing natural ice sculptures that form on the rock.

In the distance two cross country skiers were sliding towards us. They were obviously Norwegians – they ski across countries just to have breakfast, their stamina is legendary. They greeted us and remarked on the fact that we were managing perfectly well just walking on the lake in boots. They gave us a report of the state of the ice sculptures we were heading for – a little disappointing this year – and then they went on their way. Far out in the distance three black specs jetted along the lake – snowscooters, and therefore almost certainly (less hardy) Swedes.

At our destination of the rocks, we found that someone had carved a small bench-shaped seat out of the frozen snow, providing a perfect resting place, with a view over the lake, the mountains, the everything. We made ourselves comfortable, leaned back against the snow. Now for the cappuccino. In our thermos was black coffee – oh alright then, it would have to be a black Americano. But we didn’t mind the compromise, given the view, and coffee has never tasted better.

Ice fishing is a popular activity here. That’s because it’s easy to do, doesn’t require expensive equipment (or a boat) and gives you the excuse to sit out on the ice in the glittering sunshine and basically just enjoy life. It’s good to eat the fish too of course – lake fish are delicious – but it’s mainly the activity that appeals. Or rather, the inactivity.

Watching someone ice fishing is a bit like watching a Samuel Beckett play. The cast of characters is limited to one, or at most two. The activity is limited to one arm occasionally lifting up and down. Otherwise, nothing much happens. Sometimes the character is sitting, sometimes standing, sometimes lying, but the activity (or inactivity) is the same. Out on the frozen lakes these characters are dotted around, some more visible than others, depending on the particular shade of the down jacket.

You can ice fish anywhere there’s a frozen lake of river, and there are plenty of those. You can walk to your spot, hand drill a hole, and get fishing. It’s the perfect get-away-from-it-all hobby. You need to buy a licence for a small fee, but after that, at this time of year, you can fish anywhere. Well almost anywhere. There’s a road near here that goes across the river on the ice. The sign there says, ‘Forbidden to drill holes in the road’.

Some ice fishers are lucky enough to have the use of an ‘ark’. That’s a small hut that can be dragged out onto the ice that you can sit inside and open up a hole in the floor to fish through. Some of these huts are very elaborate, with sleeping accommodation and curtains, and – rumour has it – TV. But most of them are just wind shelters, and a wind shelter is worth a lot out here.

Ice fishing is meditative and relaxing but the one thing that can make it a trial is the wind. Especially if you’re fiddling with fish hooks and maggots. So an ‘ark’ is a much sought-after temporary residence.

They aren’t so easy to get hold of. You have to find one being sold secondhand, or make your own. Then you have to have the right kind of trailer to drive it out to the lake. You also have to have a snow scooter, which you also have to take on your trailer to the lake. You then load your ‘ark’ onto some kind of sled behind your snowscooter, and pull it out onto the ice. So that’s quite an effort. If you’re very lucky you have a rented site by the lake to leave your ‘ark’ in over the other seasons, but these spaces are at a premium.

So it’s understandable that a lot of people who like ice fishing don’t have an ‘ark’. Which brings me back to Samuel Beckett. There’s an advertisement in the local paper this week for a ‘Wind Sack’ for the princely sum of 1,300 SEK (about £130). There’s a picture of a large, person-sized, bright yellow bag. Near the top of the bag are two horizontal slits, and through one of these slits the picture shows somebody’s head. You can go out on the ice, and – as the perfect adjunct to your (in)activity – you can sit inside a plastic bag. Now doesn’t that sound fun?

It should have been a quiet day at home. We have some guests here staying for four days, and this is their third day, so no room cleaning or bed linen to change. I planned to do some writing, a dark load in the washing machine, and a few other things round the house. Over breakfast we were talking with our guests about what they had been doing and where else they might like to visit while they were here. Among other things we were able to recommend a visit to our favourite bus stop…

‘Kirunacomfy’ is a bus stop on a road out of town, and on a route where there are very few buses – actually none at all in the winter, and only a couple a day in the summer. So as the waits for a bus can be long, someone seems to have decided that the answer was to install a comfortable sofa. We first noticed it in 2007, and when we returned to Kiruna in 2012 we were delighted to see that, not only was it still there, but it was in good condition. (We recently created a Facebook page for it, but it has been hard to drum up interest – only 2 likes so far.)

Exposed to arctic weather and covered in snow piles all winter, this is a sofa with staying-power. We think it might be in the IKEA range and is no doubt now a defunct model, which is a shame since it would make a great advertising picture for durable sofas. It’s still comfortable too. Once we saw a cyclist racing by, and when we passed again a few hours later the cyclist appeared to be sleeping on it, presumably before continuing his journey.

We described all this to our guests, and they were amused enough by the idea to add it to their list of possible things to do. As they were walking upstairs Rolf saw our neighbour standing outside and went out to give her a present for her 80th birthday. I joined them and she invited us in for a coffee. While watching our guests prepare to leave, our neighbour poured us out some more coffee. A pleasant half hour passed before we decided we had things to do. We said goodbye to our neighbour and walked back to the house. It wasn’t until we were right up at the front door we realised that neither of us had a key, and our well-behaved guests had of course locked the door before they went out. Apart from not having the house key we also didn’t have the car key, a phone, any money, or a coat. No-one else had our key and we didn’t know when our guests would return. Deep breath.

There was nowhere in town to go (it was Sunday), and in any case we didn’t have any money. We contemplated the prospect of spending the next six hours in the garage, exercising to keep warm. Then we considered breaking into the house. Unfortunately triple glazing is rather good for security, and windows might be very hard to get repaired later.

Our only hope was to try and contact our guests. We knew if we could access the internet we would find their phone number on an email. At least we would then know how long we’d have to wait. So we asked our neighbour (no internet) to call her son and ask if we could use his computer. Fortunately her son was in, and the issue of how to get there in the cold and snow was solved by our neighbour suggesting we take her car… (Car? What car? We didn’t know she had a car. We didn’t even know she had a garage.) So we drove to her son’s flat, where we interrupted his quiet Sunday afternoon (minding three children and two cats while writing a script for a horror film) and found the all-important Swiss mobile phone number.

I tapped in the number and waited for a reply. I had to wait so long for a reply I imagined they’d left the phone in the car and gone on a long hike, or maybe the phone was still in their flat in Switzerland. Then someone replied and I began my long explanation of why I was calling. I discovered that they were, at that moment, at the bus stop. ‘Don’t move,’ I cried, ‘we’re on our way!’

The bus stop is on an empty road where there’s a lot of snow and birch scrub and views of distant mountains. After ten minutes’ driving we saw the stop in the distance, looking as if it had just dropped from the sky. Our guests’ car was parked in the lay-by opposite, and a camera on a tripod had been set up, pointing at the bus stop’s sofa. They were filming there, and this apparently involved beer cans, an alarm clock, and two of them wearing shorts and a tank top (well, it was a warm minus 5 degrees). This, we decided, was none one of our business, so we just collected the key, thankfully, and drove back to Kiruna.

Now, what was it I’d planned to do today?

We were lucky a couple of days ago. It was dark, we were awake, the sky was clear, and I happened to notice on the sky camera that the northern lights were active. The activity was quite low, but it can build very quickly so it’s good to catch it early, giving us time to put on warm clothes and drive a few minutes away from street lights.

Unusually we even had time to remember to take our camera. We like to take photos in the daytime, but night time photography has always felt like too much trouble. We’ve had so many people staying here who’ve been really keen to photograph the northern lights and were envious of our opportunities, so we thought we would make a bit more of an effort with photography. In preparation for this we had bought a tripod, but three months later we still hadn’t used it.

With high hopes we drove to the edge of town, to a layby on a hill where you can look down on Kiruna, the mine to one side of you and the northern sky ahead. The town is lit up like a Christmas tree, but at this distance it doesn’t seem to disturb the darkness too much. There was a pale bow of green over the town as we turned the engine off, and the car lights slowly dimmed down and then off. A cold wind and minus 14 degrees meant that setting up the tripod was a bit of a trial, and while this was going on the green bow started shooting light up and down and waving in the ‘curtain’ effect. Rolf’s hands were freezing (ungloved so as to be able to fiddle with the controls) and the camera was not cooperating, turning on the flash function every time he tried to take a picture. We are camera ignoramuses, and knowing this we really should have worked out how to use the camera at night on an earlier occasion, before the northern lights actually appeared. But we hadn’t. In the end it wasn’t a difficult decision to abandon the camera, lean back against the car and just watch instead.

The green and later pink spread in all directions so we were spinning around, wondering where it was going to appear next. As you watch it you’re also trying to do what a photographer tries to do – imprint it on your brain so you don’t forget it. Yet afterwards the brain doesn’t seem to be able to recreate the impression. It isn’t just bright colour splashed across the dark (an effect exaggerated in photography, the lens taking in more light than the naked eye ever sees, so creating photographs which greatly increase people’s expectations), or a crescendo of green lighting up the sky. The reason it’s hard to remember is that seeing the northern lights is first and foremost an experience of watching an extraordinary movement.

This movement doesn’t seem to match your expectation of anything either natural, or even anything man made. It comes and goes, but it doesn’t ‘ebb and flow’ in the way we expect. It doesn’t begin as a small line and then the line expand proportionately until it is spread across the sky – one minute it is a small line, and the next minute it is spread across the sky, but the movement from one to the other doesn’t match what the eye is expecting. The nearest movement I can think of is that of a ‘slinky’ – the helical spring toy – because the energy seems to come from within it, and is spread along a wave. The lights can move in any direction at any time (whereas a slinky can only go forward or back) and the movement is always a surprise, the eye never seeing any of the usual signs that would alert you to movement.

In trying to describe the movement I’ve described it as something mechanical, but it feels the opposite – it feels strangely human and personal. The first time we saw it Rolf and I were whispering to each other, as if our voices could frighten it away. The movement is so unusual that your brain invests it with human characteristics, or at least, the characteristics of a human ghost. It isn’t easy to catch that in a photograph.

This week we arrived at the spring equinox, the day when, officially, we have the same amount of light here as everywhere else in the world. If you have no interest in this fact (and why should you?), or if you already have a degree in geodesy, you may stop reading now.

For the rest of you we will enlist the help of my able assistant, Rolf. If you are listening to this on the radio, Rolf is holding an apple in his left hand, and an orange in his right. This is the sun (Rolf holds up the apple). This is the earth (Rolf holds up the orange), and you will see it has a flat top and bottom, and is leaning slightly to one side as if someone has just knocked it off balance. Over a year the earth rotates around the sun, but keeps the same angle as it moves. It’s also spinning on its axis every day, which gives us day and night.

Now (pay attention at the back) if the sun (apple) is in the middle, say, and the earth (orange) is at 12 noon, and the lean of the earth is towards the sun, then the sun is shining directly (is ‘in zenith’) at the tropic of cancer (the circle of latitude north of the equator). Then we are at midsummer in the northern hemisphere – it’s light all the time in Kiruna, light more than usual in the UK, and light as it always is (half the day) down at the equator. At the other pole it’s dark all the time.

Rolf moves the orange anti-clockwise to 9, keeping the same angle. Now it is the autumn equinox – because the earth is leaning at the same angle the sun is now ‘in zenith’ over the equator and so is shining equally up and down the whole earth, with equal length night and day all over the globe.

Rolf moves the orange on to 6, and now the sun is shining at the tropic of capricorn in the south. The northern part of the globe is leaning away from the sun. It’s midwinter here in Kiruna and very dark, in the UK it’s darker than usual, it’s light as it always is (half the day) at the equator, and it’s light all the time at the southern pole.

Rolf moves the orange to 3, and it’s the spring equinox, where we are this week – the sun is ‘in zenith’ over the equator and light is shining equally up and down the earth again.

It wasn’t until I moved so far north that I was aware of the movement of the earth – it isn’t something one gets to think about so often. But because light conditions are rather extreme up here, it makes you think about it. The further north you go in the globe the more extreme these effects will be, and because of the flat top of the earth the differences are very marked north of the arctic circle. At the arctic circle, which is only about three hours’ drive south of here, there is only one day a year when the sun never rises, and one day a year when it never sets, and south of there this never happens. In Kiruna there are about four weeks when the sun doesn’t rise at all, and about six weeks when it never sets.

But this week we are all experiencing the same amount of night and day, just like it is at the equator all year round. Before long I will be desperately fixing up the blackout blinds to keep the sun out of my eyes at midnight, but for now the equinox means in Kiruna we have long enough days to enjoy the winter sunshine and long enough nights to have a good night’s sleep.

If you live here you have to like snow, and when the sun’s out there’s nothing we like better than to enjoy a snow chute. I had great fun with this today, since the sun was shining and the snow in the garden looked so inviting.

You’ve probably heard of a water chute – well a snow chute is something you can make yourself in the garden (or what passes as a ‘garden’ when it is under a metre of snow) and snow falls down it. We buy a chute-maker from the local hardware shop, which is made of light steel. Making the chute is a lot of the pleasure, as it involves travelling behind the steel chute-maker on the slippery path it creates as you push it down your garden. Instead of falling into deep snow as you trudge your way down, the chute-maker makes the snow part before you like a wave. The action of leaning the body into the chute-maker is one of giving yourself to the snow, as the snow acts as a gentle buffer but also gives way to pressure in a way that feels entirely natural – rather like riding a steam train.

In spring winter, snow crystals sparkle and change shape and form in the warmth of the sun, and they cling together and make icebergs. Once your chute is made (a long path through the snow) you take the other tool – let’s call it a ‘snow explorer’ – and gently edge it under the icebergs either side of the chute. As you lift them you can see the form of the snow – the tiny footprints from birds, the path of the arctic hare – and then as the snow falls it’s like watching an iceberg fall into the sea. It’s a small scale activity which – like the desert feeling of snow drifting on open ice – mimics nature at its grandest. The snow falls and is pushed down the path, a white torrent of sparkling snowflakes. You are surrounded by cascading piles of snow, the sun shines in your face, and you are moving with nature as the snow flows ahead of you down the chute.

After a while you lean on your tools and enjoy a cup of coffee, listening to the sparrows and great tits in the trees. It is a hugely satisfying activity. Not many visitors experience it and I was wondering if I might offer them the chance, since it’s right on our doorstep. I think 800 SEK for two hours would be a reasonable price to charge, and we can offer a picnic lunch with chairs out on the snow afterwards. This would appeal in particular to families from England, since children there aren’t allowed to play in snow anymore, due to health and safety regulations.

On the other hand, we could just call this activity ‘shovelling snow’, but I don’t think we would get any takers, even if it was free. Funny that.

I’ve written before about the appeal of the graphs and diagrams plotting northern lights activity. A diagram I often refer to is the ‘Magnetometer’, which in its simplicity reminds me of the kind of graph that might be used to indicate the scale of an exaggeration told by someone on a TV show, as measured by a relative listening behind the screen. A green line (honesty), a red line (fairness), and a black line (embarrassment) can go off the scale when someone tells a tall tale. So it is with the northern lights. I don’t know what the lines really represent, only that when they wriggle and leap away from a straight line (‘solar quiet’), there may be aurora.

Last night there were two separate groups of people here desperate to see the northern lights. They had postponed all other activity so as to be well placed to catch a glimpse, however slight, whenever those tricky devils might appear. They had their hopes set higher than normal (and normal is, it seems, very high) because I’d received a special message from the heavens that this night would be a very good night for aurora. I was told by a special messenger that a filament had erupted on the sun, resulting in a coronal mass ejection, a proportion of which was heading to the earth. My special messenger is based in Holland, and I don’t know who he is, but I’m on his mailing list and that makes me feel very special indeed.

So there we all were, alcohol avoided – so that if the chance came, and it warranted driving out somewhere to get a better look, we could do so. Rolf and I downstairs, one set of guests upstairs, and in another room, another guest. We all had an early meal, and were at home, waiting. The computer screen/I-pad/I-phones were set to the local sky camera so we could watch developments. All we could see was a giant cheese, the sky covered in lumpy white cloud. And so it was all night.

At breakfast I asked about the previous night, how they’d all got on. Rolf and I had given up and gone to bed, but our guests had gone out, hoping to find a cloud free place and a bit of luck. They hadn’t found a cloud free place, or a bit of luck, but they had driven around in the dark for a few hours, getting out the car now and again to examine the sky. The excitement of waiting. ‘Ah well,’ I said, ‘the northern lights are a journey, not a destination’. They shot me ‘a look’. Not so sure how well that comment went down. I checked the magnetometer again to see what developments there’d been. None it seemed – predictions are notoriously unreliable, especially when it comes to estimating the time a ‘coronal mass ejection’ might hit the earth.

But at 7am this morning, according to the magnotometer, the lines began to wriggle, then leap, and now one of them has even exited the scale. This is a challenge. The fact is they are there, those northern lights, making fantastic electrical shapes in the sky, and shooting out and flowing in all directions. It’s just that we can’t see them because it’s daylight. I look up and try to imagine – not easy. Someone ought to invent a northern light viewer – like a kaleidoscope that you can hold up to the sky and that detects northern light activity in the daytime. That’s a business opportunity – I’m throwing it out here hoping someone will follow it up..