Letters from 68 degrees, Kiruna

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..

It caught my eye, a dot of black on the ice, at a distance that was hard to judge. Always further away than you think, when I eventually reached the spot I found it was a hat that must have flown off the head of the driver of a passing snow scooter, the owner more concerned with speed than warmth (and common sense).

When I was a child I spent time on a boat with my aunt and uncle. I never really understood my aunt’s obsession with fishing things out of the water. She was eagle-eyed and could spot something floating in the water when it still just looked like a wave to me. By the time I saw something floating she had already worked out whether it was worth picking up. Broken buckets, old bits of rope, plastic bottles – these were a disappointment, but she made sure she knew what they were before tackling the tricky process of persuading the skipper to manoeuvre the boat within reach of them. For it to be worth her while it would have to be something worth having – a piece of waterproof clothing, a hat, a useful plastic container. She was always triumphant fishing it out of the water. The item would from then on would be known as ‘the hat I fished out of the water off Hayling Island’ or ‘the salad bowl I found off the Needles’ and was valued more highly than anything she might have bought.

So I thought of my aunt, as I picked up the hat – henceforth to be known as ‘the hat I picked up on the ice at Tornehamn’. It was a Biggles-style hat for arctic conditions, had earflaps, was fur lined, and there was a sporty eagle logo on the back. It was just my size – what good fortune. It wasn’t the kind of hat I would buy, which made it all the more desirable. It was mine, and I never even chose it. I liked to think it had some of the youthful enthusiasm of its owner invested in it, and after a wash it would pass that aura on to me.

Running a bed and breakfast, things get left behind. If we can locate the owner we return things, but often we can’t. Usually the owner has deemed them of no value and never asked us about them. So we have a (cheap) watch, a scarf, some gloves. We try very hard to use these items and if I’m honest I’m not sure why, but I think it might be something to do with my aunt. The watch is now an egg timer, the gloves (too big) are a useful outer layer to be put on top of other gloves. I know who left the watch – they wrote and said not to bother to return it – so we remember them when we boil eggs. The gloves could have belonged to one of four groups of people here, but in my mind they are always Paul’s gloves. These are ‘flotsam’ – items that have accidentally fallen into the sea and then into others’ (our) hands.

However, the bulk of items we inherit are ‘jetsam’ – items that people have deliberately thrown overboard, ‘to lighten a ship in distress’. The pizza carton from the night before, the plastic packaging from the supermarket, the cans and bottles. The packaging for items of clothing bought in a hurry in town, indicating an urgent need for warm underwear, an extra fleece, or some sheep’s wool inner soles. Discarded tour itineraries, or plans for a journey – the parts already completed now thrown away. I don’t ferret around in people’s rubbish, but often bits of paper are left lying on tables, the floor, or staring at me from the top of the bin. And then sometimes I’m just curious (goodness! did they really pay that price for their flight?).

German visitors always seem to bring a great many copies of ‘Die Zeit’, and are always the ones most concerned about what to do with their rubbish. (I reassure them that we do recycle paper, tin and plastics). People who have arrived on the overnight train from Stockholm always have an excess of food which they donate to us, though I must confess we usually put it straight in the bin. Larger items are usually declared as jetsam by guests on departure – for instance, boots that are broken and aren’t worth bringing home. We’re a staging post in people’s lives, and items are buried here to mark their passing.

Kiruna sits on top of an iron ore mine, and the jetsam from the mine is a landmark in town. In 1900 it was an open cast mine, the iron ore being taken from the mountain. Over the years, as the ore was extracted, less and less of the mountain remained, and, now that they are working far underground. What you see on the top is, as a visitor pointed out to us, just a ‘slag heap’. Jetsam is our history.

Which is why the Swedish army are just about to begin the clearing of a lake in town. The army was stationed here in the ’60s, and, in that careless manner that typified the period, they jettisoned ammunition into a small unused lake in town. Locals haven’t much cared about it. In the winter the ice is still good for skiing and snow scooters. They don’t need to fish in it – there are plenty of other lakes. And swimming isn’t a very popular sport. But the time has finally come to remove this poisonous jetsam. The mining company – the largest producer of jetsam in town – is beginning to mine in the area underground nearby, so the fear is that the poisonous lake will interfere with the mining activity. We should all remember that flotsam may be a gift, but none of us is entirely safe from jetsam.

Yesterday we walked out onto the lake known as Torneträsk for the first time this year. The air was captivating, the sun shining, the sky a clear blue, the mountains all around us. The ice spread ahead of us in swirling patterns and peaks as we walked out to a group of rocks we call ‘the island’.

‘It’s just like a good bandy match,’ said Rolf. (Bandy is a national obsession – it’s like ice hockey only has many more players and is played on a football-sized pitch, involving skating longer distances at speed). ‘Aha,’ I replied, knowing better than to ask any question about bandy for fear of hearing the equivalent of the off-side rule in reply.

One of the great pleasures of the seasons known as ‘springwinter’ is spending time out on the frozen lakes. The ice is strong enough to support you long before March, but only in March is the sun high enough in the sky that you’re able to savour the experience, taking your time strolling along, or even have a picnic on the lake.

Of course you have to forget all ideas of rolled-up trousers and gingham table cloths. I suppose this is a kind of ‘extreme’ picnicking experience. But it doesn’t require any particular hardiness, only a decent coat and boots, and a willingness to perch on a bit of foam on an icy rock. The only skill involved is working out how long you can take your gloves off to eat before your fingers start to freeze. Tight fitting clean gloves are the solution, with an outer larger glove to warm up the hand every five minutes. But if this sounds just all too difficult, read on.

This year we got out onto the lake earlier than usual. We’d heard warnings about the ice having been covered in too thick a layer of snow early in the winter, so not forming the ice layer as thickly as usual – although our neighbours had assured us that Torneträsk would not have the same problem because being deeper it freezes later in the winter. However, we were cautious. Walking rather tentatively out onto the lake, we came across the remains of burnt wood. The picture it conjured up of someone lighting a fire on the ice was enough to reassure us.

The ice had a thin layer of driven snow on its surface, and the wind blows it into patterns and peaks. Looked at from certain angles it could have been a huge desert we were looking at, only with a blue tinge. Sometimes the wind had blown the snow into circles, sometimes into mini-mountains, sometimes it had spread it out thinly like the sand when the tide draws out. The snow crunch was clean and crisp, and occasionally our boots hit a part which reverberated – as if the ice below was an empty cavern. That would be because it is – best not to think too much about that one, and keep walking.

We reached the rocks, got out the foam seat, and spread our picnic out on the snow. Among the distant mountains it was easy to see the settlement of Abisko which looked like a toy town, with the railway trundling through it carrying iron ore in open trucks. Some people in the distance were going to fish, and with a hand drill began to make a hole in the ice. Watching how long the man was turning the drill, and how low he bent down before he stopped, we estimated the ice thickness to be a metre and a half.

Elsewhere someone had towed their ‘ark’ onto the ice (an ‘ark’ is a small hut that you can sit in protected from the wind, with a trapdoor to a hole in the ice in the middle.) It was early for the ‘ark’ season – most of them were still parked on the lake’s shores, but in a week’s time they would be spread out over the lake peppering its surface with different colours and shapes.

A snow scooter spun by, towing a sled with a child and some belongings. The sun was on our faces, but my heavily socked and booted feet were beginning to chill in the shade, sitting in a snow hollow. We guessed the temperature – probably minus 14. As the snow scooter went by Rolf said, ‘- and with the chill factor on that, minus 35’. We were glad to be staying put on an icy rock.

Reluctantly we packed up our things and began the walk back. The 360 degree panorama of the snow-covered mountains around us made me spin on my heel, trying to take it all in. I felt the deep calm of being in a magnificent natural environment.

I felt maybe I could cope now, with the off-side rule. I asked Rolf what he meant, about this scene being like a good bandy match. ‘It’s the scale of the beauty,’ he replied, ‘you just can’t capture it on film’.

Not seeing things in the natural world is, after all, the norm – knowing that animals, birds, northern lights, are there somewhere, but out of reach, hidden. Still, there is such a pressure on people to go home having ‘ticked all the boxes’ that they may choose to sacrifice a real experience for an artificial one – a trip to a ‘reindeer farm’ for instance, rather than their own version of a walk on the wild side. They get to see the reindeer, but may have short-changed themselves in terms of an experience. The organised experience may be educational, and fun, but the real thing – which may involve not seeing the object of your desire, just waiting, or looking – is the one I think would stay in the imagination, and heart.

One of the things I enjoy not seeing is the arctic hare that visits our garden in the late evening. I’ve seen him a few times – a pure white animal that sits calmly, almost disappearing into a pile of snow. In the summer he turns brown to blend in with our bare unkempt back yard. But weeks or even months can pass and I don’t see him at all. What I do see, very clearly, as I look out the kitchen window in the morning, is his paw prints in the snow, creating a trail down one side of the house to the garage and back and up the other side. I know which parts of the garden he sniffs most (though I don’t yet know why) and I know how long a distance he can leap. It always makes me smile.

A hare’s trail is very easy to see because it looks like three paw prints but is really four – a triangular shape made by the two back paws pushing off and landing together ahead of the front paws that have left prints one just ahead of the other. Almost daily the trail is erased by a layer of falling snow, and every morning it reappears.

Sometimes there is a second trail next to the hare’s – smaller paw prints, clearly belonging to a small dog. We don’t have a dog, and our neighbour’s dog doesn’t wander – it’s very uncommon for dogs to be off a lead in Sweden. We have seen this dog now and again – whether it is just allowed to roam, or whether it sometimes escapes, we don’t know.

Snow tells stories. When I look out the window in the morning and see human footprints around the house, I don’t think ‘burglars’. These footprints are totally erratic – don’t lead in a clear line from one object to another but waver to and fro and double back on themselves, sometimes appearing to go round in ever decreasing circles, then leading to a final unseemly shuffle in the middle and a determined stride out in another direction. I know the story these tell; it’s the story of guests getting excited seeing the northern lights….

There are footprints inside the house too – boots at the front door. These boots, and their absence, can tell me where people are, sometimes even where they have been. Waking up in the night, I’ve sometimes peered into the hallway to see if people who went out in search of the northern lights have come home. Knowing their rather inadequate clothing, and that the temperature is below minus 15, it’s reassuring to see their boots. At seven in the morning I’m also reassured to see the boots missing of the people who were catching an early flight.

Empty vehicles by the roadside are people’s cast-off shells. Often there’s a snow scooter track nearby, trailing off into the birch scrub, or over the near horizon. There may be a single vehicle, on a part of the road where there appears to be nothing at all within sight – no apparent reason for anyone to park there, leave their car, and go off. At first I used to imagine there had been accidents, or even robbery and kidnapping. Now that I’m more used to seeing these empty shells I know, and am glad, to think that their owners have just happily disappeared into the landscape.