I’d assumed Swedish Lapland would mean stylish chunky knits and chic fur hats, but I’ve just been strapped into a bright orange survival suit that consumes everything but my face. I’m an oversized traffic cone turned Teletubby – but thus goes the fashion when gloating in icy Arctic waters.
I’m in Sweden’s far north, trying to pre-empt a northern lights no-show by diving (literally) into more Earthly adventures. Basing myself around coastal Luleå (with help from specialist holiday company The Aurora Zone, I soon find I can swim, sled and sauna without ever driving much more than an hour. And the northern lights I’d travelled to see? A distant memory.
The tourist-friendly icebreaker ship I’m on does just that as it plies the frozen waters of the Bothnian Sea: it carves a pool of inky black water… and in plop the lurid tourists, fully waterproof.
I feel both weightless and safe as I bob on my back like an untethered buoy beneath the pewter clouds. Only it’s hard to cling to any meditative state for long because I’m laughing so much. My friends and I flounder with our oversized, cartoon hands, unable to stop giggling at our cumbersome, human-highlighter selves. I clamber onto an ice shelf and bounce back in with a splash, gurgling happily. An ice bath without any of the agony, this wholesome, silly dunking delivers a hit of wellness I’d not anticipated.
Back on board, calm comes in a different form: the hissing crack of the 50-metre-thick ice beneath the hull is surprisingly like ASMR. Pale fissures snake across the crystalline surface before they gape wide in grizzly grins. Larger chunks capsize and upend, the beauty and power of their Haribo-sweet interior – gelatinous blue topped with white – is momentarily exposed before they sink to the depths like drowned spectres.
Later that day at the Arctic Bath hotel, we step into a menthol-scented wooden room where “sauna master” Sven promptly roasts us to within an inch of our lives. The perfumed water sizzles furiously on the rocks as Sven wafts a large red fan; he’s a flamenco dancer, bullfighter and torturer all rolled into one as he moves the increasingly hot air around the sauna. Sweat bursts from my every pore like a confetti gun.
When I am finally allowed outside for phase two of the ritual, a cold plunge feels incredibly welcoming. Though not for long. My language is as blue as my skin, as I’m stabbed repeatedly by the -1°C water. And then I’m out, marching around the pool in a bid to reanimate, like a prisoner released for yard exercise. Before it’s back into the sauna to repeat the experience. Twice.
Of course, one doesn’t need to be in the freeze to enjoy the Arctic’s adventures. I have a whale of a time trying my hand at ice fishing. I don shoe grip spikes and stride off like a modern-day Shackleton across the solid sea. Armed with a hand drill, I churn down into the thick whiteness, lower a fishing rod baited with a wriggling maggot into the hole, and wait for what seems like a very long time.
Eventually, success strikes. Our guide guts the snared perch with aplomb, slicing it open, peeling off the skin and plucking out entrails as we watch with morbid fascination before he places it reverently inside a smoking tin to cook. I pause my angling to feast on the fresh catch – it’s gently charred, tender and delicious – but return only to find some aquatic blighter has nibbled the worm right off my rod and scarpered.
Survival talents are further tested when I head out for a wilderness skills afternoon. Equipped yet again with an unflattering ‘outfit’, I clamp into snowshoes – it’s like walking on grippy frisbees as they clunk and flap – and make my way into the forest.
Our guide points out the Arctic’s edible secrets as we wander – blueberries, lingonberries, juniper and even wild rosemary (but don’t eat that unless hallucinations are your thing). Spruce is great for tea, he says, as is Old Man’s Beard – a plant signifying the air’s purity.
Luckily, a brew is on the agenda – provided we make the fire first. We’re taught how to split birch logs, assemble them like Jenga, position scraped bark on top and use a nifty flint tool to spark our DIY stove alight. Before long, the fire is roaring and a little kettle burbles storybook-style, producing a tasty infusion that Twinings should probably investigate.
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We’re even taught what a female moose’s mating call sounds like – part baby mewling, part cat in pain. Fortunately, the cacophony is courtesy of our guide’s horn, not a lovesick cow. He’s got a special whistle to mimic bird calls, too – Sweden’s answer to Snow White.
My fantasy of gliding over the white stuff in a sleigh finally becomes a reality when we take a snowmobile-pulled sled over a frozen lake. Everything in me screams to get off the ice – surely it’ll crack at any minute?
But no, this ice is thick and the worrisome puddles of water are simply melting snow sitting on the surface. After all, travelling this way is a standard commute here; I regularly spot locals zooming past on snowmobiles.
Admittedly, it’s not quite as smooth as I’d imagined – I don’t exactly feel like a serene heroine from a 19th-century Russian novel as I bump along. And ideally, the soundtrack would be husky barks instead of a rumbling engine… and I’d be enrobed in furs rather than a snowsuit, but then life isn’t all Doctor Zhivago (thank goodness).
So yes, style-wise, the trip’s been a letdown – but the adventures? Anything but. Who needs the Northern Lights when the real magic is right in front of you?
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Harriet Mallinson was a guest of The Aurora Zone.
