I apologize for the length of this first post, but I was cut off from the internet for the first few days of our trip, so this is a collection of several days’ experiences.

July 3.  We are off to Sweden! Why Sweden? Our friends, Tim and Annalena Öhlund live there, and it is a beautiful place. (The photo at the top of this blog was taken near their home. Other photos are on my Europe 2006 page.) Our first trip to Europe in 2006 was supposed to be primarily to Ireland, but we decided to “drop by” Sweden to see Tim and Annalena. We didn’t really  know what to expect, but we loved it.

A little over a year ago, Tim and Annalena were visiting the Northwest, and when I told them I planned to retire, they suggested that we visit them for a longer time. They live on a farm, and Tim does some very interesting things with his part of the property. He has a large and interesting garden and likes building things, and so do I, so we thought it would be fun to work together. (Tim has his own blog at Timogarden.)

Tim is originally from the US (we went to HS together), but moved to Sweden in the 70’s. There, he met and married Annalena, and he’s lived there ever since. Annalena is originally from Lappland, in the far north, above the Arctic Circle. I really wanted to see the area and culture where she is from, so we timed this trip to coincide with their visit up there. Later, we’ll go back to their home and stay there awhile, then Janie and I will set off on our own to Southern Sweden and Copenhagen.

Our flight left at 6 AM, so we had to be at the airport by 4:30.  That began a grueling 24-hour trip!  We flew to Newark, NJ, had a 3-hour layover, then to Stockholm with a 5-hour layover, and then to the Northern city of Kiruna.  The flights were pretty routine, except long.  I tried to adjust my sleeping in anticipation of the time shift to Sweden.

When we got to Newark, we got one of those scooter rides to the shuttle between terminals because of Janie’s bad leg.  Apparently, the scooter needed some maintenance because the driver had to yell out “beeeep, beep, beep, beep” every time we approached people in the way.  (The pedestrians were surprisingly oblivious to the scooter bearing down on them.) Janie then had to choose between negotiating 30 steps down to the shuttle bus and 30 up to the next terminal, or we would have had to go through TSA security again.  She braved the steps and did OK with them.

July 4.

We arrived in Stockholm around 7 AM Stockholm time—10 PM July 3 Seattle time.  The airline had an angel meet us to assist Janie with the distance between terminals.  It was a good thing, because it was at least a ½ mile complicated hike between them!  Anna the angel not only knew exactly where to go, but she also expedited our way through customs and another security checkpoint.  (She also taught us how to pronounce Kiruna and Pajala—Pie’-ya-la; I had been pronouncing it Pa-ja’-la.) Once we got to the 2^nd terminal, we just had to wait.  Our phones did not work both because of a mix-up in getting them unlocked (to be able to use a Swedish SIM card in them) and because SIM cards were not sold inside the secure part of the airport.  I was able to get a short-term Wi-Fi connection to connect with AT&T to start the process of unlocking the phones, but as I write this on July 5, we haven’t had a chance to complete the unlocking process or get Swedish SIM cards.

Tim met us when our plane arrived in Kiruna at 2 PM—by now it was 5 AM on July 4 in Seattle, a 24-hour trek that wasn’t over yet.  We rented a car at the airport, stopped at a couple of stores for supplies, stopped to look at a couple of sights and started the 2-hour drive to Lovikka, our home for the next few days.  One of the places we stopped was the beautiful Kiruna Church, built in the style of a Sami home.  Amazing!   I found out later that the church and much of the city center of Kiruna will have to be moved in the next 20 years or so because the iron mine that is the heart of Kiruna’s economy is literally undermining the town.

Lovikka is a pretty village on a large river, but it is so small it is only a dot on the map with no label.  Tim was familiar with it, though, and he did the driving, giving me a chance to acclimate a little.  Thankfully, they drive in the right side in Sweden.

We called our AirBnB host before leaving Kiruna, and he arranged to meet us and lead us to the cottage.  When we told him we might stop for dinner along the way, he told us we shouldn’t—he had just caught a 10 kg (22 lb) salmon in the river, and his wife would cook dinner for us!  They are so warm and friendly!  Lasse, the husband, us and led us to the house.  He and his brother were somewhat in a hurry to go fishing, but Eva, the wife, stayed, oriented us to the house, and finished cooking dinner.  (The salmon was delicious!)

Our house in Lovikka

Eva left, and after dinner, Tim took the car to Pajala, where Annalena is. Now that I think of it, we had Tim leave us in the middle of the Arctic, in a country where we don’t speak the language, without any means of transportation or communication.  The start of an adventure, I guess!  Most people in Sweden speak English very well, so I am not worried about the language too much.

By the time Tim left, it was getting late and we were jet-lagged and tired from traveling, so we took some time to organize our things and went to bed.  This is the land of the Midnight Sun, so not only were we adapting to the time change from Seattle, but we also have to adapt to the lack of darkness.  Believe me, these things play havoc with your sense of time! I am not sure as I write this whether it will help with getting over the jet lag, or make it harder.

July 5.  I’m also not sure whether it is July 5 or July 4.  Counting the days, I’m pretty sure it is the 5^th, but my watch says it’s the 4^th and our phones and computer don’t give us accurate times since they are not connected.  (Later, Tim confirmed the date.) We were tired enough to sleep and although we woke up a few times, we slept through until about 5:30 AM (from now on, I am talking about Swedish time.)  We feel pretty good.  We finished reorganizing our suitcases, and Janie is making breakfast for me as I write.  I had a chance to take some pictures this morning.  This is our home for the next few days.  It is a classic Swedish country house.  There are plenty of birds flying around.   I recognize swallows, but I’m not sure of most of the others.  There are plenty of birds because there are plenty of mosquitoes for them to eat!  Tim says they are thick all over the North Country, so I expect to keep my mouth closed as much as possible for the next few days.

Sami bracelets

We left to spend most of the day at the Pajala Market, an annual fair.  For those of you who are familiar with it, it reminded me of the Kent Cornucopia Days, only larger.  While there, we were able to shop for some traditional Sami handiwork, taste local foods (including smoked reindeer and “coffee cheese”), listen to music, watch Bollywood dancing(!) and see the first ever Pride parade in Northern Sweden. We were surprised at the huge turnout for the parade!

Pride parade

A Finnish rock and roll group reminded me somewhat of Irish rock.  It was rock and roll, but you could definitely hear the rhythmic patterns of the traditional music—in this case Polka.  While listening to the music, Janie struck up a conversation with some friendly local people who were involved in the Pride parade.

After the parade, we went to Annalena’s family property for a big outdoor dinner.  Again, everyone was extremely welcoming, and since everyone speaks English, we were able to have a great time talking about their family history, what their childhood in the rural Arctic was like, and where we come from.  The property was homesteaded in the early 20^th century by Annalena’s grandparents, and then her father and uncles built houses on the property.  Annalena said that when she was growing up there were 15 cousins all living on the homestead.  The food was fantastic, cooked by the women of the family.  We ate outside at makeshift tables because there were over 30 people there.

Midnight Sun

It was still hard to get used to the Midnight Sun.  As it went down toward the horizon, I kept expecting it to go down, but it just hung there.  I also had in the back of my mind that we needed to leave before it got dark, but it wasn’t going to get dark!  We didn’t leave until 10 PM, and the light was similar to just before dusk.  When we got to our place, I decided to stay up until midnight, just to say I actually saw the Midnight Sun.  So here is a picture of the sun on the horizon at midnight.

July 6.  We met Tim at the Market in Pajala, but on the way we saw reindeer.  A male, a female and a white baby were wandering down the middle of the highway!  I was surprised that the reindeer were not skittish at all.  The baby especially seemed oblivious of the traffic, including a giant ore-hauling semi.  The drivers were careful to ease around the deer, but the deer pretty much owned the road.  Unfortunately, I was not able to get a picture of them because of the traffic and no good place to pull over.  I learned later from Tim that white reindeer are somewhat rare.  After getting to the Market, we decided that we needed a down day, and didn’t want to spend all day walking around again.  We got food for lunch and for dinner later, and headed back to the cottage for a quiet afternoon.  I felt so lucky to be relaxing on the porch on a warm (near 80 degrees) sunny day with a breeze blowing, watching the river and drinking a beer!  The mosquitos even left me alone!  I also had an opportunity to chat with Eva, the wife of our host couple, to find out that she was born a few houses away in this village, and our cottage is their summer home.  She is staying nearby with her sister while the cottage is rented.  She also told me the story of the famous Lovikka mittens and the giant mitten that is in the Guinness Book of World records.

July 7.  We were to leave the Arctic and drive to Tim’s home near Uppsala. Tim went with us and Annalena planned to stay a couple more days.  This is a lonnggg drive—about 1000 Km or over 600 miles, but it gave us a chance to see a lot of Sweden, and we also crossed into Finland for part of the way.  This was a beautiful drive through forests and farmland.  We saw more reindeer along the way, but none of them cooperated by going the right direction on being sighted in an area where I could pull off and take a picture.  Again, they were pretty oblivious to any traffic and obviously felt that the road was theirs.  Against Janie’s better judgment, we followed Tim’s advice and did not make any hotel reservations along the way.  As it turned out, we were unable to find any hotels that were open along the way, until nearly midnight.  (Although we had gone below the Arctic Circle, we were still far enough North that it was still light at midnight.  We finally found a very beautiful hotel—restored from an obviously old hotel in Örnsköldsvik.

July 8.  After a nice breakfast in the morning, I was able to get Janie’s phone working with a Swedish SIM card.  We still don’t have internet on it, but I’ll work that out soon.  We left for Tim’s and made it to Uppsala around dinner time.  After dinner, we arrived at the farm and moved into our suite at the bed and breakfast at the same farm on which Tim lives.  So here we’ll stay for a week and then head further South on our own.  It is very warm here and there is no air conditioning or even fans, so we have to get used to the heat.  It is supposed to cool off in later in the week though.

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