You did what? Saw the northern lights on a dog sled. What about it?

Hi all my lovely readers! Sorry to keep you on the edge of your seats about my trip to Kiruna. If you are friends with me on facebook, I'm sure you've seen all the 300 pictures I took. Yea, I think I went a little camera happy. I didn't have enough window photography opportunities yet so I had an itch that needed scratching if you know what I mean! :) Anyway, I returned to Stockholm and had to prepare for an in class and a take home exam so that kept me pretty busy and away from typing up this delightful blog. Oh and the responsibilities of laundry and other classes too. In case you were wondering, I do actually do things over here! :) However, that's not what you want to hear about right now so we'll save that for another post and I'll tell you all about Kiruna and Lapland right now! 


First we need a lesson on Swedish geography. Kiruna is above the arctic circle in, yep you guessed it, northern Sweden. From Stockholm it took about 18 hours on train to get there. You might be surprised that we even opted to take a train for that long but it was overnight and was actually quite nice. My favorite part was that we got to see the Swedish country side when it was light out. This is where a lot of my window photography came into play. I was really intrigued by the types of trees that we saw. There were tall red pines and birch trees for most of the way and as we got farther north there were more birch trees. I was trying to figure out why the bottoms of all the trees were black and appeared to have no bark. Here are a couple pictures from the train and see if you have any idea. 

Views from the window. See the trunks of the trees?

This was taken closer to Kiruna. The landscape is a bit different and you see the awesome Swedish MOUNTAINS in the distance! :)

The train! 

Because of Kiruna's northern location we were able to experience a lot of winter things at their best which is just how I like to do it! Our first winter adventure was dog sledding. We checked into our hostel and went grocery shopping (to buy our favorite cereal ICA Crunchy!) before the guide picked us up at our hostel to get all bundled up for our 3 hour dog sledding adventure. We got into these big red coveralls and big boots before hopping on sleds (4 people per sled) with 14 dogs each. The dogs were so eager to get going that they were barking up a storm but they were so cute! All of the dogs were Alaskan Huskies and were anywhere from 1 to 12 years old. I was most surprised by how quite the guide (his name was Mikael) spoke all the commands. He talked louder to us sitting on the sled than to the dogs way ahead of the sled! They still heard his commands and responded at once! We just rode and didn't get to drive but it was still so cool because the dogs were fast dogs - they used to race. We saw the lights too. They were beautiful and I was surprised by how much they moved. I don't know why I expected them to be stagnat but they definitely weren't. They swirled and moved around and made quite a beautiful picture! I don't have any pictures of them because I was either watching them or they were took weak to get a good photo with my camera. One of my friends did so I am going to get the pictures from her! My other favorite part of this was that we got to eat some traditional Lapland (that is the name of the northern region of Sweden) food - reindeer meat and cloudberries. They were both delicious! 

My view from the sled. I got front seat! 

Petting the super cute dogs! Don't worry, I was warm the whole time in all my gear!

The next day was full of more winter wonderland. The highlights were feeding reindeer and then visiting the Ice Hotel. We traveled to Jukkasjvärvi which is about 30 minutes to the east of Kiruna by bus. We walked around in the sunshine to the Sami Culture Museum. The Sami and the indigenous people to Lapland so we got to learn all about their life. One of their teepee structures is used as a basis for current camping tents today! We even got to feed the cutest reindeer while we were there. The hysterical thing was that they only wanted to get food from us. They had no interest in being petted and they would crowd around if they thought we had food. It is quite intimidating to have reindeer come at you! haha! Right after that we got a snack of reindeer sandwiches again before heading to the Ice Hotel. Yes, we fed then ate reindeer. 

the sun and snow in the small, beautiful town of Jukkasjvarvi

The church built by the missionaries to convert the Sami peoples to Christianity with the gang minus one in front!

The reindeer were attacking! Annie (left) and Lucy were trying to escape! 

Sami sandwiches with reindeer meat!

If you didn't guess already, the Ice Hotel is cold. It is a constant -5C all the time inside. There are about 100 rooms I think and the building is made of artificial snow to keep the shape and to keep it the same temperature all the time. The snow in Lapland is to dry to use which is why the snow is artificial but the ice is natural is is actually from the river right behind the ice hotel. The ice (the clearest ever) is harvested in huge blocks and then sculpted for the hotel. The ice is stored for a year before it is used in a big warehouse (the guide told us why but I can't remember!). Each year, artists apply to design rooms in the ice hotel and 20 win. They submit their designs and then they have 2-3 weeks to actually build the rooms. After seeing the rooms, that was pretty incredible because they seemed like they would take a lot more time than that to build. OK, now to answer the question you are all dying to ask. How do people sleep here? Well, there are actually mattresses on the beds of ice and they have reindeer skins on top of them. Guests are given sleeping bags to use and wear long underwear and such..just enough to keep the sleeping bag warm. If guests survive the night then they are awarded a diploma saying they survived a night in the ice hotel! After visiting, I don't think I would want to stay there. It was just too cold and not comfortable at all! They have "warm rooms" for those who want to stay in the area but not the ice hotel. 

The gang in front of the ice hotel. 

One of my favorite art rooms..a fridge called "deep freeze"

The ice hotel ice freshly harvested from the river!

The next day we did more exploring around Kiruna and finished seeing the sights of the town. Kiruna was founded because of the large iron ore bodies in the two mountains nearby so the town owes its existence to the mine. We got a guided tour of the mine which was so legit! We were 540 meters below the top of the mountain where they had a museum and a film telling us all about the mine. We saw equipment and learned how they mined the ore and how that is resulting in having to move the town. In a quick explanation, the iron ore that is removed from the mine is replaced by the rock on the other side and this displacement is causing the surrounding land to be unstable. This includes the town so in the next 40 years, they need to move the town. Some buildings will actually be moved some will be destroyed and rebuilt. The tour guide said that most people were ok with the move because they knew it was the best thing for the town and needed to be done. I found it fascinating! We also got to have coffee and cookies in the mine. Those Swedes love to fika and now I do too! I'm bringing it back so get excited everyone! We all got to leave the mine with our own samples of iron ore pellets made from the mine! They make enough to share! 

The levels of the mine and our lovely tour guide! The dark gray part is the iron ore body. 

How they mine the iron ore...explosion after explosion.

The gang in front of the big loader! Yea, it was huge!

Fika in the mine! :) Tea and cookies, yum!

There were a couple buildings in the town that were modeled after the mine. These tall buildings are the mountains. They each have different colored sections in the middle that represent the iron ore and the balconies are the mine elevators, skipps. There are buildings below them (not seen here) that represent the terraces on the side of the mountain. It was so cool to see buildings built after the two mines in the town!

We also saw some of the sights around Kiruna: the city hall which is the most beautiful public building in Sweden, the church donated by the mine, and the cute houses all around! I really liked Kiruna and Lapland and I would love to go back! :) Here are some more pics: 

Sun, the other mountain (not being mined currently), and the snow get a thumbs up from me!

The City Hall. This will have to be destroyed and rebuilt for the town to move by 2022.

Yep, an ice throne! They had lots of ice sculptures all over town! 

The church. It was donated to the town by the mine. It was very pretty inside as well.

Aside from all these awesome touristy things, we hung out at the hostel and made dinners and enjoyed food at a delicious cafe called "Cafe Safari." I really enjoyed hanging out with my fellow students and seeing a new side of Sweden! If you want to see the rest of my pictures from the trip, you can look at these two links: 
album 1: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=272114&id=575993715&l=c76e641cc8
album 2: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=272142&id=575993715&l=a0d339e35c


I would highly recommend going up to Kiruna is you are ever in Sweden! It is awesome. Now, I'm sure you've had enough since this post is so long! Thanks for reading and there will be more to come! :) Let me know if you have any more questions and I would be glad to answer them!