Letters from 68 degrees, Kiruna

It’s the time of year when there is much talk of ice.

This isn’t talk of icy roads and the local council not sanding them properly (there isn’t usually ice on the roads here because the snow doesn’t melt during winter). No, this talk of ice is to do with snow scooters, and fish.

We are just coming into the season of ‘spring winter’. There are eight seasons here, and ‘spring winter’ begins in March and is generally thought by the locals to be the very best season. It is a time of year when temperatures – while still way below freezing – are higher, and there are plenty of hours when the sun’s rays are warm. This is the time of year to take the snow scooter for a spin over the frozen lake, or pull up a chair on the ice, bore a hole down to the water, and wait for the fish to bite. It’s hard to beat the pleasure of a picnic on the ice – the brightness and the warmth, the colour of the blue sky and blue-tinged hills, and the fresh clean air. Don’t bring swimming costume, shorts, and sun top; do bring sun lotion, sunglasses, and very warm coat and boots.

Snow scooters are a local obsession. They are noisy and dirty, but they come with a built-in thrill factor, and aspiring to the latest model is a common form of status envy. Ice fishing, on the other hand, lacks the thrill factor, is completely sedentary, and doesn’t increase one’s status in any noticeable way (unless you succeed in winning one of the big ice fishing competitions where the first prize might be a snow scooter).

Both these activities require a frozen lake, something which is usually easy to come across at this time of year. But this year there may be a problem. This is not because we recently had a heatwave for a few days and the temperature went above zero. It’s because there has been much more snow than usual, and a good deal of it fell early in the winter, in November and December when the ice was still forming. This means that the top layer became a mixture of snow and ice which never really froze properly. Beneath that is a layer of proper ice but, because of the thick blanket of snow, the ice will not have extended as deeply as it would have done otherwise.

This doesn’t necessarily mean the ice will be dangerous to walk on, but it means that in some places the top layer, being a mixture of snow and ice, may easily collapse, giving one the uneasy sensation of sinking, causing possible leakage of water into your boots, or causing your snow scooter to sink into a slushy mess, which will not do much for your boy racer image. Fishing on the lake may be a wetter and colder activity than one would have liked, and fishing lying on one’s back on the ice may no longer seem such an attractive option.

I am told these problems with the ice do not apply to the larger lakes, where the freezing process will have happened after the snowfalls at the end of last year. This is good news for Kiruna’s ‘ark’ community who generally gather out on Torneträsk, a large local lake. (An ‘ark’ is a mobile fishing hut which provides shelter from the winds, a trapdoor through which you can drill a hole in the ice, and a stove nearby so the fish can leap straight out of the ice and into the frying pan.) Torneträsk is also where we will be heading for our traditional spring picnics, so that’s good news for us too.

The snow and ice combination isn’t all bad though. While not providing a good foundation to create a solid ice floor, it has other qualities, used to great effect nearby. The Ice Hotel isn’t actually made of ice at all. It has ice sculptures in it, and there are ice blocks around, but its main structural walls are made from a kind of arctic version of wattle and daub – snow and ice. These components mixed together form a very strong substance which can be shaped into moulds, and will then stay solid and frozen. They call this substance ‘snice’…..

It’s already happening, that ghastly melting feeling. It’s mostly below freezing, but the sunshine is warm, so the snow is melting off the balcony, dripping down by the window as I write this. It’s way way too early – and we know for sure there will be more snow and ice and cold to come so this is a very temporary blip – but just at the moment there are a few days of warmer temperatures and it feels like we’re slowly sliding off a cliff. You can’t stop the slide. You know it will take you somewhere you don’t want to go, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.

At some point in the spring we have to let go of winter and enjoy the returning warmth. But this time of year we just have to dig in our heels and try not to notice the snow falling off the roof, the compacting of the snow piles, and the drip drip drip outside the window. I’m already receiving excited phone calls from England, telling me of the arrival of the spring there, the primroses, daffodils, and the warm green days. I’m not at all envious. I’m in love with the snow queen and I don’t want winter to go away.

The landscape here belongs to winter. That’s when it has its own places, places people can’t reach. With skis and snowmobiles and determination, people can only make small tracks across it, scraping the surface and then disappearing into the distance, while vast areas are held frozen and totally inaccessible. I love that feeling. But when the thaw begins and winter lets go, all that mystery begins to slip away. That’s not to say the landscape in the summer isn’t beautiful, but it is beautiful in a predictable, unthreatening sort of way. All summer I have the feeling that the landscape is just waiting to be returned to its true self.

But I am getting ahead of myself. It is still only February. We are having a warm spell now for a few days and I will just have to look the other way, find something absorbing to take my mind off it.

The day did not start off well. At 10.30 there was no hot water. I know I like the cold, but we all like a bit of hot water, and running a bed and breakfast it’s a bit necessary.

The water heater dates from the 1960s and was clearly designed in the 1940s. I think it’s a work of art, a magic hot water machine, like something out of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (a story that comes to mind because we recently had a Violet Beauregarde at the breakfast table). It’s got lots of large round knobs, a red dial on the side that looks like a smiling face, and a bulging wooden barrel-shaped tank with a milk chocolate coloured lid. Very nice, but we haven’t a clue how it works.

So we tried to call for an emergency plumber. We knew this is a bit like calling for Tinkerbell to come back to life. You can wish, and wish, but….This is a town where people who can mend things are doing one of two things: either they’re working for the mining company and being paid a stack of money which means they never have to do any other work for anyone else, or they’re working for themselves building their own summer or winter house/ ice fishing hut/ sauna in the back garden etc. People who can mend things are not sitting at the end of the phone waiting for a call. Indeed, they were not.

We could have panicked. We didn’t – instead we decided to take advantage of the sunny day and go out, and hope that, maybe, it might fix itself while we were out (stranger things have happened). So while we were out we planned how we would manage things: there would be morning drives to the local swimming pool, which we convinced ourselves would be an extra facility that people would appreciate.

But when we got home we found there was hot water. The simple explanation was the one we’d overlooked; the morning’s guests had simply used it all up. It wasn’t an explanation that had readily come to mind as we’d had a full house many times before and this hadn’t happened, so we’d thought the system replaced the hot water as it went along.

The trouble was that our shower was just too enjoyable. Delivering a massive amount of hot water per minute, after a cold day out with the husky dogs what could be nicer than to stand under a hot shower for 30 minutes? We can understand the wish to stand under the shower, so we’ve reduced the water flow, reckoning that a smaller amount of hot water than can be relied on is preferable to a massive amount that might run out. It’s still a decent shower, but no longer is it a hot, monsoon-like deluge.

We had got nervous, though, that our boiler might one day soon make hot chocolate instead of water. We decided to go to the local plumbers’ parts shop (because although you can’t get a plumber, you can get the parts). Rolf asked the man in the shop how we could arrange for our old boiler to be serviced, and how often we ought to have it done.

‘That’s shit,’ he replied, ‘boilers don’t need to be serviced.’

So now we’ve got the hot chocolate machine back on track, all we need to do is connect the blueberry juicer….

I promise I haven’t made this up – someone somewhere in the world is charging people to spend 30 minutes inside a fridge. The idea is like a sauna, only colder. Your body comes out renewed and invigorated, and no expensive shower gel is involved. They charge a lot of money for this, and, apparently, celebrities will pay. But here in Kiruna it’s yet one more thing that’s free. Stepping out the door into anything below minus 15 is a tonic.

You’re looking doubtful, but, believe me, it is. That’s not to say you can’t overdo it – there is a limit, depending on your clothing – but in small doses I challenge you to find anything of equal value in terms of a body pick-you-up except perhaps a dip in a cool lake on a summer’s day.

So it seems to me altogether appropriate, in this place of cold therapy, that our choice of equipment for tackling some of the daily bed and breakfast chores should be a cold mangle. We found one in the local charity recycling shop, for 200 SEK. A cold mangle has a rotating roller that is driven by electricity. You use it on your washing when it is dry – there is no water involved, and the material is flattened purely with pressure. I suppose we had hopes of finding a hot mangle, to ease the ironing duties that had assumed such massive proportions since the opening of the b and b. But if no hot mangle was available (and by all accounts, very pricey to buy new), then a cold mangle would have to do. So we bought it.

We did not have high hopes. However, one run through of a cotton sheet for two minutes and I was in ecstasies. If you’ve never seen or felt an old cotton sheet put through a cold mangle, then this is something else you are going to have take my word for (or come here and sleep on one). The sheets come out really flat and soft. They don’t look completely uncreased though – the aim is not for luxury hotel advertising pictures but for a high quality surface to sleep on, and this is it.

I read on an American weaving website that the reason a cold mangle works so well is that it relaxes the fibres rather than agitates them. I think we can all relate to that.

Now before you all rush out to buy one, a few notes of warning. I’m not sure you can buy them anymore – you’d have to find a secondhand one. They’re also probably more available in Sweden and the US than elsewhere (we like our linens neat…). But most importantly, a cold mangle will not work on your average modern sheet. Cold mangling works best on linen, but also on very good quality natural fibres like cotton. The reason my sheets are in seventh heaven are because, like me, they have reached a good age, and they were very good quality to start with.

We have a very good store of sheets which Rolf inherited from a great aunt in western Sweden. (Imagine that – people used to inherit sheets! What chance is there of that happening with your latest purchase from IKEA?). They are mostly still in very good condition, wonderful quality cotton, and many of them embroidered with the initials of his great aunt Elin and her husband Carl. Later sheets that he inherited from his mother even have Rolf’s own initials embroidered on them, though sadly not mine. I don’t like to reveal these too much when I make the beds – you never know if people would regard it as charming or a bit creepy, so the initials are usually tucked away under the top mattress.

And another small secret. Some of our sheets have very very small holes in them. I think for sixty year old sheets, this is to be expected. Some of these holes are beautifully darned (not by us). I don’t think any guests would notice – after all, they are snuggling up to a cold-mangled old cotton sheet – but if they ever did, and if anyone ever complained, I think we might just have to close the bed and breakfast.

Today was the first day of Kiruna’s winter market. This is a motley collection of market stalls – all things woollen (socks, gloves, hats, jumpers), warm slippers, boots, anything you can make from a reindeer, skins and furs, meat and cheese, freshly made northern breads, craft (from iron, bark, or anything from a reindeer), jewellery, deep freeze plastic bags, toffee and donuts, kitchen tools, baskets, dog bowls, wooden spoons, brushes, hot dogs, and something you definitely need in a cold climate – forty different kinds of colour casing for your i-phone.

As always, the market is well-visited, and the atmosphere is a good one. People hang around despite the temperature, chatting over a hot dog, trying on hats, saying hello to the stall holders. Some of them they see every year – these are itinerant sellers, travelling so far across Sweden that they connect distant communities like a human internet. Some of them are well known – for instance, the man in a cowboy hat that sells his own country music CDs, with a clockwork puppet that dances along to the recording . All that dancing must keep him fit – he doesn’t seem to have aged over the years. Perhaps he’s clockwork too.

Jokkmokk winter market is the largest and most traditional of the winter markets up here. It takes place at the beginning of February, and the temperature there can easily dip into the minus 30s. It’s traditionally a Sami winter market, but although there are many Sami stall holders there are many other kinds of things for sale as well. We travel three hours’ drive there every year, though we struggle to find anything to buy. We go because it’s a tradition and the journey there is a large part of the pleasure. On the way there we see swathes of sparkling cold snow over forests of stunted trees in a pale blue sky, and on the way home there is the dark starry sky and the possibility (only the possibility) of northern lights. This year the stops on the dark road on the way home were all to lean against the car door and look up at a wonderful Milky Way.

The number of people at Jokkmokk market is far greater than the amount sold – the avenue of stalls is a great public promenade – crowded, cold, and full of reindeer skins. A famous character at the market is ‘Wild Hasse’ who sells reindeer meat, and skins and furs, and dresses like an old style fur-trader of the wild west. Spotting him every year at the market street, his beard covered in ice, is like meeting an old friend. And it’s a nice feeling that your friends and relatives hundreds of miles away will have had the same meeting a few months before.

The winter market is a deep-rooted tradition, from a time when communities relied on the traders for their household needs. Nowadays there is nothing they sell there that you couldn’t buy from a shop, but the habit refuses to die. People seem to have the feeling that this is a community event that should be supported – an opportunity to see and be seen, to reconnect with passing traders, to eat a hot dog and buy this winter’s new pair of gloves.

The number of different kinds of gloves and socks you can buy at this market is beyond your wildest imaginings. These are socks for every occasion: they include ‘hunting socks’, ‘fishing socks’ and ‘snowscooter socks’ . No need to do it yourself – let your socks take the strain. This year my gloves are inner gloves. I think they are ‘photography gloves’, and I’m hoping they’ll take some very good pictures.

Hotels reflect an international standard – there’s an expectation that a hotel room will provide you with certain things in a certain way and you’ll know what that way will be. Once you’re inside the hotel you could be almost anywhere in the world, and the only difference is whether or not it has a trouser press. Staying at a bed and breakfast, though, brings you a bit closer to the culture of the country you are in.

For instance, the first thing that happens when people arrive here at 68 degrees is they are asked to take off their boots or shoes. This probably does not come as a surprise, given the snow and potential for wetness if you walk in with them – but the same request would be made whatever the time of year. When I first moved to Sweden I failed to appreciate that removing your shoes at the door wasn’t just the personal whim of my host but a national unwritten law, and I was later embarrassed to be told to remove my shoes in what seemed to me to be unlikely places – a visit to the dentist, for instance, or a gym changing room.

The second unwritten law I stumbled over was in the bedroom section of IKEA. I had recently moved in with Rolf, my Swedish partner, and – quickly tiring of the charms of sharing his single bed – we were there to buy a new double bed. Given that we were from different countries, our relationship had so far developed along safe, shared, international lines. Within twenty minutes I feared an international crisis – we were about to have our first major row, in IKEA.

This was back in the days when IKEA was less international than it is now, when it tended still to sell items to suit the different countries (although they were still called Björn or Billy). We didn’t seem to be able to agree what bed or bedding to buy – every time I suggested something he looked puzzled and picked up something else. When he suggested something it seemed to me he was trying to persuade me that we should keep our single bed habit. It was a new relationship; we were trying very hard to make this work.

Eventually the wires crossed badly enough to blow a fuse and the truth came out…. A Swedish ‘double’ bed is likely to be two beds, joined together. A Swedish mattress is not a thick bouncy thing, but a thin mattress, laid on top of a (slightly bouncy) bed base. And, most surprising of all, people in a double bed never share a double duvet.

I found these revelations deeply disturbing and not at all conducive to a good night’s sleep. But once the purchase had been made, I saw the sense in them – to the extent that I now think my own country’s habits in this regard rather bizarre. Who can claim they are never bothered by their partner’s twitchy foot or constant turning? Or that their partner has never rolled over in the night and taken all the duvet, leaving them with a cold chill down the far side?

When people come to stay here at our bed and breakfast, I see them eyeing up the two duvets on the bed, thinking this is a make-do arrangement. I don’t try and convince them this is the Swedish way and that they might like it. I just smile, and wait. I know that the next morning they’ll tell me they’ve had the best night’s sleep for ages.

Despite predictions that this year would be a very active one for the northern lights, and the large groups of foreign tourists lured here in the hope of seeing them, they have been remarkably quiet so far. It’s hard to get one’s head around just how impossible it is to predict anything when it comes to northern lights.

That’s not to say they haven’t appeared at all. They have, usually the one night we have no-one staying here. It feels almost deliberate. There have been some nights of moderate activity – visible in wildly leaping coloured lines on the ‘magnetogram’ – but on each of these occasions a thick layer of cloud has been in the way. Sometimes, if we look on the internet at the large camera pointing at the sky here, we see a tantalising green glow through the cloud cover. It’s possible to see it looking on the computer screen, but step outside and there’s nothing there.

Some people staying here last week were out walking nearby in the hope of seeing some aurora. They met an excited Japanese tourist who showed them the image on her camera screen – a thick wedge of pale green sitting close to the northern horizon. They couldn’t see it in the sky, but looking at the camera, they knew it was there. They were in the presence of the aurora at least. Just the thought of it was enough.

I feel that way when I read reports and forecasts. Just thinking about the idea of space weather transports me to a more wondrous place and lifts my spirits. Down here on planet Earth I am subjected to a daily diet of weather reports, usually of no significance, and nothing I can’t see with my own eyes. Space weather, on the other hand, takes me above the stratosphere where the solar winds are at play. Boulder, Colarado is the place I go to connect with these wonders: the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has real-time solar wind pages showing speed and dynamic pressure, small arrows shivering up and down, presumably with the flow of the solar winds.

NOAA cares about space weather because it cares about the environment for satellites, and it cares about the possibility of radio blackouts affecting flights and machinery. Somebody has to care.

There are numerous sites detailing measurements of electron flux at geosynchronous orbit and of the interplanetary magnetic field. I’ve learnt to pick out things that indicate a likelihood of seeing the northern lights. I get excited when I read that ‘at 03/1130 UTC, the lower energy particle flux reported by the EPAM instrument aboard the ACE spacecraft rose sharply and then leveled off while some of the lower energy channels declined’. Who wouldn’t? Just the thought of it…whatever it is..

Tonight I read there are ‘coronal hole high speed stream effects’. It’s a clear sky and I’m looking forward to them. Whatever they are.

There’s a tension we experience here that is rather hard for some people to understand. It’s the stress of watching the temperature rise. Most people I know live in a climate where cold equals discomfort and gloom, and warm equals happiness. It’s a totally different equation here.

In winter (at least five months of it) we experience temperatures reliably below zero. They can vary enormously – easily by 20 degrees in one day – but they will stay below zero. This is why it isn’t difficult to walk on the pavement or drive a car in Kiruna – below zero means no melting snow, which means no ice on surfaces. The downside is that the snow doesn’t go away, and shovelling and building piles is essential. On the plus side that white fluffy stuff stays white and fluffy and looks beautiful throughout the winter.

Friends calling from London offer me sympathy when the temperature dips down to minus 20, but ignore my gloom as the temperatures rise. I’m gloomy when the temperature creeps up to an uncomfortable minus 6. ‘Surely not a bad thing!’ I hear you cry. ‘Doesn’t that just means less warm clothing required? Less money spent on heating?’

There’s a real deterioration in comfort when it gets above minus 10. Snow gets less fluffy, heavier to shovel, less sparkly. The wind gets up, the humidity increases – these things make cold temperatures very uncomfortable. Minus 20 in a dry climate feels invigorating; minus 5 with humidity is miserable. Not only that, but as the temperature rises, the house gets colder. The cold in the building is somehow pushed inside. The time we light the fire is always when the temperature outside goes up.

This winter, in January, it even went up to zero for a few days. The snow became wetter and compacted, pressing heavily down on itself. A slightly icy layer was created, making it hard for the reindeer to reach their food. The local council were worried there might be some slippery conditions where the snow had been warmed, so the pristine whiteness got peppered with council grit. And that didn’t only make it less pretty – it meant my shopping vehicle – a kick sled – could no longer run smoothly on white pavements, but juddered every minute as it hit pieces of grit.

It isn’t only that higher temperatures bring humidity. I miss the sharp cold. There’s a psychology to this I’m sure, because at the start of the winter season, the cold feels worryingly cold. And then you start getting used to it, it feels normal and, like chilli, it’s addictive. It’s an adrenalin rush to stride out in real cold. The body tingles. I’m convinced it works like a sauna, only in reverse. The challenge to the body’s systems brings the body alive. For me it resembles the pervading sense of well-being after a swim in a summer lake.

Out of the window I can see the tall chimneys of the rubbish-burning plant in town, with the (filtered) smoke shooting into the sky. When that plume of smoke is shooting vertically up, I relax – the temperature is sinking. When it is horizontal I feel stressed – it’s getting warmer.

Inevitably, in May, the temperature creeps closer and closer to zero, and one day it goes over. That day the big melt begins, the whiteness begins to disappear, the lakes begin to unfreeze, and I know the thrill of the winter cold will be taken away from me. Every year it takes me several weeks to recover from the stomach-churning stress of the thermometer showing plus two.

‘The cold is your friend’ I assure some English people staying here, about to embark on a seven day husky dog trip and worried how they will cope with the climate. They do not look convinced.

They are one of the world’s oldest still-existing migratory animals. They have strong endurance, can migrate thousands of miles, can live comfortably in temperatures of minus 50 degrees Celsius, and their meat is a much sought-after delicacy.

They are one of the most beautiful creatures I’ve ever seen. I completely understand Bruce Parry’s reaction (in a TV series about the Arctic) when he wants to take one home with him and live with it forever.

A reindeer head has the strong features of a horse and the sleek beauty of a seal. Reindeer skin is very soft to touch because every hair is hollow and full of air. A reindeer foot is like something out of a fashion detail for Cinderella’s ball – a neat white fur triangle sitting on an elegantly tall Cuban hoof, showing off a pale slim ankle. Yet this design feature makes the reindeer sturdy, resistant to cold, able to run in deep snow, and flexible enough to scratch its own ear.

Reindeer in Sweden are ‘semi-domesticated’ – that is they are all owned by someone, but they move with the seasons to new feeding places and in the summer to avoid the insects. They are gathered together a few times a year for marking and for slaughter. Only the Sami are allowed to herd reindeer, which is the traditional occupation (though these days reindeer-herding Sami are in the minority in the Sami population). Very long ago reindeer were wild, and hunted, but another breed of reindeer developed which could be herded and it is their ancestors that are in Sweden today. However, reindeer will usually run from humans and other animals. They cannot be fully domesticated, always retaining a wild streak. You’ve got to like them for that.

People coming to Kiruna like to see reindeer, and so do we. If there are reindeer on the E10 there are likely to be several cars kerb-crawling nearby, zoom lenses pointing hopefully in their direction. They’re lucky if they get more than reindeer bottoms in view. (That’s all we usually get.)

My most vivid memory of reindeer is seeing a herd on a distant hill, a line of narrow legs and tapering heads silhouetted against a pink sky. Like watching birds, the pleasure of seeing reindeer is that you sense their freedom, their ability to roam at will and visit places we find hard to reach. It’s great to see the animal close at hand, but it is that distant view of the herd that is for me the real thrill. Perhaps it’s no co-incedence that we associate them with being able to fly.

Oddly enough it seems to be elk (or ‘moose’) that people are really keen to see when they come to this part of the world. Elk are magnificent creatures – but for me a group of reindeer is a better sight by far. If you want to see reindeer here you have a few obvious choices. You can book onto a tour to visit a Sami village, see some of the herd that are kept there for tourists, and learn about the yearly cycle of the reindeer herder’s life. You could also visit the Sami museum in Jukkasjärvi where there are some semi-tamed reindeer (kept in corrals and trained to pull a sled from a young age). You’ll be able to see the animals in captivity at least, and learn about their habits in the wild.

Alternatively (and my favoured option) you could choose to get out in the landscape, take your chances, and hope that, at some point, you’ll be lucky enough to see a group of reindeer moving slowly by. Or, better still, see them running, very determinedly, into the far distance, somewhere you cannot follow.

They say that people’s characters are partly formed by their environment. People in this part of the world are a determined lot, and known to be flexible and ‘can do’ (because if you can’t do then there isn’t anyone you can pay to do it for you, so it just won’t get done).

People are patient because ordinary things take a long time – going out the house for instance. You decide to go shopping. for instance. If you’re lucky you can walk, or go on your kick-sled. Next in the luck stakes is you have a car and it’s in the garage – you only have to make sure the drive is clear of snow so you can move it out the garage. If you haven’t cleared the drive lately, that’s a 10-20 minute job, depending on the size of your drive. After that you need a rest.

If your car isn’t in a garage then you have to go out, connect the engine heater and begin to push the snow off so that the car is actually visible. Then you begin the task of scraping the ice off the windscreen. You may have ice on the inside as well – that’s another ten minutes, once you’ve turned on the car fan heater. You forgot to lift up the windscreen wipers so they’re stuck to the screen. This procedure is not to be recommended if you want to get to accident and emergency in a hurry (which you probably do in Kiruna, since it shuts at 20.00hrs).

Then you get ready to go out. A warmer pair of socks to fit in your boots, trouser overalls (it’s minus 19 out there), the big coat, hat, gloves. By this time you’re perspiring because it’s warm in the house and you’re dressed for minus 25. You’re finally out the door, and it’s taken you 45 minutes. Can’t go to the shops in a rush then.

So people here are patient. When you get to the supermarket no-one will push in front of you at the till. The people working there will find time to have a chat with you about what they’re doing at the weekend. When you step into the car park the car about to drive past will stop and wave you across the path in front of them. People have learnt not to be in a hurry.

I wouldn’t say people are resigned to their fate, but they’re not very likely to rail against the gods when things aren’t perfect. This is a town that is about to fall into a pit (the iron ore mine is destabilising a large proportion of the town, causing it to be almost entirely rebuilt over the next 10-40 years). Are there protests on the street? Are there demands to close the mine? Are people panic selling their flats, due to be emptied in less than 5 years? No. People are calm. What will be will be, and somehow they’ll find a way to make it work. Can do.

I was thinking about this while shovelling snow. I’ve not grown up with snow, at least not the kind that lasts long enough to need shovelling. Here it falls and stays there, until you shovel it out the way. If you want to have access to your outbuildings/ garage /the street, or simply want to get in and out of your house, you need to shovel. Often.

It’s a pleasant process. We have a sled shovel; you throw your body weight into it and it glides forward. Pushing snow here – usually light and fluffy – isn’t difficult. But then you need to pile it up somewhere, because it isn’t going to go away until June. Piling it up is harder. Anyway, it’s satisfying, seeing the snow cleared, the piles growing. You collapse afterwards on the sofa, exhausted but feeling it was a job well done, with the results clear to see. You look out the window. The snow falls relentlessly on your freshly-cleared path. There is a seemingly unending supply of snow – it falls and falls and falls. Soon you will have to go out there and do it all over again. Oh well.

We’re not experienced hoteliers. We’re in Kiruna because we like it, and we needed to find a way to make a life here. When we set up the b & b in the spring we had no idea how it would go. There are no bed and breakfasts in Kiruna – just hotels and hostels – and the concept of a b & b isn’t so well known.

After a couple of months and a slow trickle of guests we discovered there were other sides to this experience than the ones we were expecting. Yes it was good to have paying guests, and we learnt how to improve our systems so we were a bit more efficient getting rooms ready, washing and ironing, and managing the booking and administration. We made some mistakes. Fortunately we had some very understanding guests when things went wrong (a double booking, for instance, was a low point…).

But more than we’d expected, we’ve really enjoyed meeting the people who have come to stay. They don’t, of course, all share our particular interests, but it’s been interesting learning about what they do and don’t find exciting here. Some people come before a tour – walking, sled dogs – and then come back afterwards, and we hear where they went, what it was like, see the photos. Other people come here and don’t have any plans – they just go out and play in the snow and look at the sky.

It’s been difficult to keep our own lives going during all this – our focus has been so much on the b & b. We never thought just two rooms – a maximum of five guests – would be so tiring. We’re still having to learn how to keep our lives in balance with it all. There’s a tendency to focus on guests having a good time, and then wonder why we never go out ourselves. You can’t split yourself into too many directions, and running a b & b in your own home means you can’t, and shouldn’t want to ‘get away’ from the work.

At the moment we’re having to face the fact that we can’t meet absolutely everyone’s needs. When we started we were happy to help people with anything. We still want to be like this, but inevitably some people began thinking all our ‘extras’ were their right, and making demands on us which we couldn’t live up to. We also had our first malicious review. Another low point… discovering you can be anonymously slandered on Trip Advisor.

Our favourite moment since we opened must be when very late one night a group of Russians let themselves in to our hallway (the door was unlocked) and we heard them speaking in Russian while we were half asleep. They spoke no English and we no Russian, but somehow we worked out that they needed rooms for the night, and there was much hilarity as they sat on the sofa and watched us making beds and trying to find out what they wanted for breakfast. Then at breakfast, one of the party – later revealing herself as a concert pianist – serenaded us on the keyboard with an ABBA medley.

It isn’t just the northern lights that are magical up here. The sky has a clear ethereal blue colour. It always makes me think of watercolours, pale translucent colours that blend into the whiteness of the landscape. The colours of midwinter are understated. At first you think it is monochrome, but then you begin to notice delicate shades of blue and pink in the landscape.

December is officially a month of no daylight at all, but it is quite light in the middle of the day for a couple of hours, even in midwinter, because the twilight is bright. It is a luminous uplighting, lighter than experienced further south because of the flat top of the earth. It is a lovely soft bluish light.

When the sun begins to return it throws up pink and orange spots on the horizon and colours the skies pink for hours. Dawn and dusk last a very long time. When we first came here, expecting to hate the dark months of winter, we just sat all day staring out of the window, gawping at the skies. When the sun returns it just peeps over the horizon and then sinks not far from where it came up, all in the southern sky. Then within a few days it is visible for a couple of hours, lazily rolling along the horizon. As it begins to be fully visible the sky is flooded with colour, which – if you have been here for the darker months – can come as a bit of a shock to the system. Suddenly the brain is stimulated by deep shades of colour.

In the cold winter months effects in the sky created by the sun are exaggerated and enhanced by ice crystals in the air, creating huge haloes, ‘sun dogs’, light ‘pillars’, and yellow and orange candle shapes. The clouds that shoot over the sky can be ‘nacreous’ or ‘mother of pearl’ clouds – waving and colourful reflecting the winds of the stratosphere.

The light rushes back here at such a speed so that by the end of May there is daylight 24 hours a day. The midnight sun is well documented, and – strangely – isn’t so much to see, once you’ve seen it. It looks the same at ‘night’ as it does in the ‘daytime’, the variety and colour has gone, and there is no dawn or dusk twilight. But it it an experience to live in so much light. Light is stimulating, and sleep isn’t so easy, but you do get used to it. It’s addictive – it feels really bad the first day you are aware there is twilight again.

See some of the light in the sky at:

www.gallery.68degrees.se

There’s a good website that describes the variety of effects that can be seen up here.

http://www.atoptics.co.uk/